This book lifts the lid on the reality of Afghanistan’s growing drug trade and the role played by the US military in its trajectory. Where conventional accounts blame the Taliban for the expansion of drug production, Cruel Harvest shows that the US shares responsibility by supporting drug lords, refusing to adopt effective drug control policies and failing to crack down on drug money laundered through Western banks. Julien Mercille argues that the best way to address drug problems is by reducing demand in consumer countries, not by conducting fruitless and damaging counter narcotics missions in Afghanistan.
Julien Mercille is a lecturer in the School of Geography, Planning and Environmental Policy at University College Dublin, Ireland. He has had articles published in Third World Quarterly, Geopolitics and Political Geography, amongst others.
AbbreviationsAcknowledgements1. Introduction2. Perspectives3. Rise to Prominence4. From Forgotten State to Rogue State5. To Afghanistan6. Washington and the Afghan Drug Trade since 20017. Solutions8. Conclusion: American Power, Drugs, and Drug WarsNotesIndex
'Rips the cover off one of the dirtiest secrets of the war on Afghanistan: the corrosive relationship between the CIA and the opium trade. This is hard-boiled history from the front lines of America's longest and cruellest war'