Defense
REUTERS/Goran Tomasevic
Afghan men harvest opium in a poppy field in a village in Golestan district of Farah province, May 5, 2009.
After 15 years of war in Afghanistan, the government there and its allies from the US and elsewhere have had little success staunching the flow of opium and heroin out of the South Asian country.
According to recent data from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, opium-poppy cultivation in Afghanistan rose 10% in 2016, reaching an estimated 201,000 hectares, or about 496,000 acres.
A number of factors have played into the uptick in cultivation, like widespread insecurity and ineffective government oversight.
And while production has remained high but steady in southern Afghanistan - a stronghold for the Afghan Taliban - the northern and eastern parts of the country have seen recent increases in cultivation as well.