United States-Backed Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF), which includes military and police units, reportedly seized about 1,260 kilograms of hashish that unnamed smugglers loaded on five camels to transport to an unknown location.
Foreign troops allegedly spotted the narcotics-carrying camels in the Aab Chakan area near the vicinity of Logar’s provincial capital, Khaama Press (KP) learned from Gen. Abdul Raziq, a local military commander.
KP did not explicitly identify the smugglers.
However, illicit drugs – namely opium, heroin, morphine, and hashish – are one of the top sources of funding for jihadist groups in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region, home to the largest concentration of terrorist groups in the world, including the Taliban and the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL).
Gen. Raziq, the commander of the Logar armed forces’ 4th Brigade, also revealed to KP that “the narcotics were professionally placed inside the bags so that they can not be recognized and be swiftly smuggled,” noting that traffickers loaded the drugs in eastern Afghanistan’s Nangarhar province located on the Pakistan border.
The U.S. military has identified opium-rich Nangarhar the most prominent stronghold of the Afghan ISIS wing. However, the Taliban is also known to operate there.
Although both groups have engaged in turf battles, they reached a ceasefire in eastern Afghanistan’s Nangarhar province, the U.S. military has revealed.
Considered one of his first major decisions after becoming the commander in chief in 2009, former President Barack Obama oversaw the end of the main U.S.-led eradication effort, deciding instead to assist in anti-drug operations carried out by corrupt local and national law enforcement agencies in the war-ravaged country who benefit from the illicit drug trade.
By 2016, the U.S.-backed Afghan authorities carried out virtually zero opium eradication operations in Nangarhar, in part due to the deteriorating security conditions fueled by ISIS.
However, that appears to have changed, with hashish seizures in Afghanistan reaching 227,524 kg so far this year, almost doubling the 123,063 confiscated during all of 2016, reports a congressionally appointed U.S. watchdog agency.
Terrorist groups can generate millions from trafficking illegal drugs out of Afghanistan into Europe, the United States, and other nations through well-established routes controlled by jihadist organizations in West Africa.
Except for heroin, Afghan seizures of illicit narcotics, including opium, morphine, and hashish, have increased so far this year along with efforts to destroy poppy crops.
Afghanistan generated more than $3 billion in funding from the opium business last year, supplying the Afghan Taliban alone with 60 percent of its terrorism money.
Citing Gen. Raziq, KP reports that the traffickers were trying to smuggle the hashish to a southern province — likely to one of the Taliban’s primary strongholds in southern Afghanistan, the top opium producing provinces of Helmand or Kandahar, the birthplace of the terrorist group.
Both southern Afghan provinces together are considered the deadliest region of the nearly 16-year-old war for American troops and their allies, including ANDSF fighters who have sustained the majority of fatalities and injuries in the last few years.
Terrorists traffick much of the illicit drugs produced in Afghanistan out of the country’s southern provinces that border Pakistan, which are mainly controlled by the Taliban.
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