MIR ALI, Afghanistan - On the barren high plains of western Afghanistan, along a roadway south of Herat city, is a collection of sturdy earthen huts known as Qala-e-Biwaha, or "village of widows."

Most of the village's men have disappeared - killed while trying to smuggle opium across the desolate frontier into neighboring Iran. The widows have been left to fend for themselves and their children, some of whom have also died while transporting drugs over the border from Herat Province's rugged Adraskan district.

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The Taliban in Afghanistan is now running significant heroin production lines in the war-torn country to provide jihadists and insurgents with billions of dollars, western law enforcement officials

And much of that heroin is flowing into Canada.

"More than 90 per cent of all heroin consumed in the US is of Mexican origin. But in Canada more than 90 per cent of the heroin consumed is of Afghan origin," said William Brownfield, US Assistant Secretary for Drugs and Law Enforcement when addressing reporters in the Afghan capital Kabul recently.

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NAQIL, Afghanistan (AFP) - Lashes swished and whirled through the air in a burst of celebration around a sea of opium poppies, as farmers in a southern Afghan village rejoiced over a bumper harvest with a traditional rope game.

Hundreds of farm laborers from across the Pashtun heartland, many of them Taliban, congregated last month in Naqil in Uruzgan province for the most lucrative time of the year - the poppy harvest.

After laboring all day in the torpid heat, extracting milky opium resin from swollen green pods, they broke into revelry around the bountiful farms.

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KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - It is spring that determines how a year turns out, according to an Afghan proverb. And if the Helmand poppy fields this spring are any indication, the Taliban will have a very good year.

As the opium harvest winds down across Helmand Province, Afghanistan's largest in territory and poppy cultivation, farmers and officials are reporting high yields. The skies were generous with heavy rainfall, and the Afghan government with its cancellation of annual eradication campaigns. It had lost much of the territory in Helmand to the Taliban anyway.

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LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan - Afghans have an expression: "Well, whatever has happened, we are still skinny." In other words, they have not gotten rich yet, try as they might.

It is an expression heard often here in Helmand Province, the southwestern region that is the world capital of opium and heroin production. Afghanistan accounts for 90 percent of the world's heroin; more than two-thirds of that comes from Helmand's opium poppies, according to United Nations figures.

Sometimes, the expression is uttered enviously - how did we miss out? Other times, it is delivered with greedy sarcasm - how much more can we get before the feeding frenzy is over?

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ZARANJ, Afghanistan - Shortly after sunrise, an Afghan special operations helicopter descended on two vehicles racing through the empty deserts of southern Afghanistan, traversing what has become a superhighway for smugglers and insurgents.

Intelligence showed that the men were transporting a huge cache of drugs and weapons from Helmand Province to Nimruz Province, a hub for all things illegal and a way station on the global opium trail. Hovering above, the troops fired tracer rounds into the sandy earth beside the vehicles, which skidded to a stop.

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GARMSIR, Afghanistan - The United States spent more than $7 billion in the past 14 years to fight the runaway poppy production that has made Afghan opium the world's biggest brand. Tens of billions more went to governance programs to stem corruption and train a credible police force. Countless more dollars and thousands of lives were lost on the main thrust of the war: to put the Afghan government in charge of district centers and to instill rule of law.

But here in one of the few corners of Helmand Province that is peaceful and in firm government control, the green stalks and swollen bulbs of opium were growing thick and high within eyeshot of official buildings during the past poppy season - signs of a local narco-state administered directly by government officials.

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GARMSIR, Afghanistan - The United States spent more than $7 billion in the past 14 years to fight the runaway poppy production that has made Afghan opium the world's biggest brand.

Tens of billions more went to governance programs to stem corruption and train a credible police force. Countless more dollars and thousands of lives were lost on the main thrust of the war: to put the Afghan government in charge of district centers and to instill rule of law.

But here in one of the only corners of Helmand province that are peaceful and in firm government control, the green stalks and swollen bulbs of opium were growing thick and high within view of official buildings during the past poppy season - signs of a local narco-state administered directly by government officials.

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KABUL - Afghan opium cultivation and production again reached historic highs in 2014, UN officials reported Wednesday. And in a sign of how deeply entwined drug trafficking and the Afghan political system have become, the officials said protracted elections this year were at least part of the cause.

"With the presidential election ongoing there was a huge demand of funding," said Jean-Luc Lemahieu, a senior official with the UN Office on Drugs and Crime. "And that funding is not available in the licit economy, and that money has to come from somewhere, so they turned to the illicit economy."

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KABUL, Afghanistan - Afghan opium cultivation again rose to historic levels in 2014, United Nations officials reported on Wednesday. And in a sign of how deeply entwined drug trafficking and the Afghan political system have become, the officials said the protracted elections this year were at least part of the cause.

"With the presidential election ongoing, there was a huge demand of funding," said Jean-Luc Lemahieu, a senior official with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. "And that funding is not available in the licit economy, and that money has to come from somewhere, so they turned to the illicit economy."

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The amount of farmland in Afghanistan planted with cannabis fell by nearly a fifth last year after one province carried out a strictly enforced drug eradication campaign. However, a bumper crop showed production had risen compared with 2011, said the UN.

Officials in Uruzgan province, which borders Kandahar and Helmand, largely stamped out cultivation of the drug, acting out of concern that it was financing the Taliban. In 2011 there were more than 1,000 hectares (2,471 acres) of the crop there, but last year less than 100 ha. But planting in most other areas remained largely steady, with just over half of commercial production concentrated in the south of the country.

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KABUL, Afghanistan - For years, American officials have struggled to curb Afghanistan's opium industry, rewriting strategy every few seasons and pouring in more than $6 billion over the past decade to combat the poppies that help finance the insurgency and fuel corruption.

It is a measure of the problem's complexity that officials can find little comfort even in the news this month that blight and bad weather are slashing this year's poppy harvest in the south. They know from past seasons that blight years lead to skyrocketing opium prices and even greater planting efforts to come.

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Growers Action By Taliban Welcomed By Government And Clerics But Insurgent Says Destruction Was For Religious Reasons

Taliban fighters have destroyed fields of opium poppies in eastern Afghanistan this spring, the first time since 2001 the hardline Islamist group is known to have clamped down on the cultivation of a drug that provides a big part of its funding.

While the insurgents appear to have dug up a relatively small area of poppies in a remote area near the border with Pakistan, the move was so unusual it won a chorus of praise from the Afghan government and international organisations, whom the Taliban consider their enemy, as well as senior clerics.

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Few Treatment Options for Afghans As Drug Use Rises

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Once a river flowed under the low Pul-i-Sokhta bridge here, but now the thin stream is clotted with garbage, the banks are piled with refuse and crowds of heroin and opium addicts huddle in the shadows, some hanging like moths near the bridge's supports, then slumping in the haze of narcotic smoke.

When outsiders venture in, dozens of the addicts -- there are 200 or 300 here on any given day -- drift over to see the newcomers. Most of the visitors are health care workers trying to persuade the addicts to visit their clinic for a shower and a medical screening.

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Senate Questions Long-Term Benefits of Spending; A Grain Delivery Goes Awry

TOR GHAI, Afghanistan -- The Senate Foreign Relations Committee questioned the benefit of billions of dollars worth of development aid pumped into Afghanistan, in a report issued Wednesday that called for an overhaul to the effort.

The report said evidence is limited that development helps stabilize territory-a key tenet of the coalition's counterinsurgency strategy. "Foreign aid, when misspent, can fuel corruption, distort labor and goods markets, undermine the host government's ability to exert control over resources, and contribute to insecurity," the report concluded.

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Star Buzkashi Players Can Earn A Lexus By Butting Heads Over An Animal Carcass

MAZAR-E-SHARIF, Afghanistan-In the slums of Brazil, poor children dream of making it big by learning to kick a soccer ball. In the shanty towns of Afghanistan, it's all about tossing a dead goat.

Over the past several years, the ancient sport of buzkashi-Dari for "goat grabbing"-has turned into a big business in northern Afghanistan. Instead of sporting-goods manufacturers, sponsors usually are rival warlords who bet on their favorite goat grabbers.

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KABUL - A growing insurgency in northern Afghanistan could lead to renewed opium cultivation in provinces where the crop has been eliminated, a senior United Nations official warned.

Jean-Luc Lemahieu, Afghanistan representative of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, said at least two provinces were now "vulnerable to relapse" into opium production this year.

The U.N. estimates that the Taliban reaps about $125 million a year in opium profits, an important source of funding for the insurgency. Afghanistan produces some 90% of the world's opium.

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KABUL - After several years of steady progress in curbing opium poppy cultivation and cracking down on drug smugglers, Afghan officials say the anti-drug campaign is flagging as opium prices soar, farmers are lured back to the lucrative crop and Afghanistan's Western allies focus more narrowly on defeating the Taliban.

That combination adds a potentially destabilizing factor to Afghanistan at a time when the United States is desperate to show progress in a war now into its 10th year. The country's Taliban insurgency and the drug trade flourish in the same lawless terrain, and are often mutually reinforcing. But Afghan officials say the opium problem is not receiving the focus it deserves from Western powers.

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Senate Investigation Says Military Depends On Private Security Forces Rife With Criminals, Drug Users And Insurgents

WASHINGTON-A yearlong investigation by a Senate panel has found evidence that the mostly Afghan force of private security guards the U.S. military depends on to protect supply convoys and bases in Afghanistan is rife with criminals, drug users and insurgents.

The Senate Armed Services Committee inquiry, based on interviews with dozens of military commanders and contractors and a review of over 125 Pentagon security contracts, found evidence of "untrained guards, insufficient and unserviceable weapons, unmanned posts" and other failings that put U.S. troops at risk.

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WASHINGTON -- The American commander in charge of building up Afghanistan's security forces said Monday that in the next 15 months he would have to recruit and train 141,000 new soldiers and police officers -- more than the current size of the Afghan Army -- to meet President Obama's ambitious goals for getting Afghan forces to fight the war on their own.

The commander, Lt. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, said the large recruiting number was to allow for attrition rates in some units of nearly 50 percent.

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