Ten years ago this week, President Bill Clinton signed off on the first $1.3 billion installment of Plan Colombia. A decade later, how is that working out? We ask the experts.
This week's outbreak of violence between supporters of a drug gang leader and Jamaican police and soldiers in the Kingston slum neighborhood of Tivoli Gardens reveals not only the weakness of the Jamaican state, but also some usually obscure links between politicians and the underworld.
Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy has spent years trudging through the poppy fields of Asia on his way to becoming one of the world's leading experts on the opium trade. With the publication of "Opium: Uncovering the Politics of the Poppy," the fruits of his labors are now available in English, and we should be thankful for that.
US, NATO and Afghan military forces are consolidating their hold on the Taliban stronghold of Marja in Helmand province. But now is when the real battle for hearts and minds begins.
The UN Office on Drugs and Crime has issued a dire new report warning that the Afghan opium trade is spreading addiction, disease, and insurgency. Too bad it doesn't address the role of global drug prohibition in exacerbating all these problems.
The US is employing a new tactic in Afghanistan: Killing or capturing drug traffickers linked to the Taliban (though not those linked to the Karzai government). Is that even legal under international law? The US military says it is, but not everyone agrees.
Things are getting very bloody in Afghanistan as thousands of US Marines pour into Helmand province, the country's opium capital, in a bid to drive out the Taliban.
It's summer in Afghanistan, and that means more fighting, more casualties, and this year, more drug war. Western militaries are now aiming directly at drug trafficking networks that fund the Taliban, and the Taliban isn't taking it lying down.