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Article: Afghans try opium-free economy: Taliban turns the world's largest supplier of opium into a wheat grower.(World)
- Article from:
- The Christian Science Monitor
- Article date:
- April 3, 2001
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2001 The Christian Science Publishing Society. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Last year, Mahgul and her family cultivated one acre of wheat and five acres of opium poppy, just as farmers on this land have done for generations.
The fields of white, pink, and purple opium flowers grow so well here that Afghanistan had become the world's biggest supplier of the narcotic base.
As much as 80 percent of the opium used by heroin addicts from Amsterdam to Haight Ashbury could be traced to Afghan farmers like Mahgul - until now.
Today, her family's entire plot - and all the farmland for miles around - is covered in lush green wheat, on the order of the ruling Taliban government. Once the annual source of 3,500 tons of ...