Afghanistan: February 8, 2004

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The Afghan government is trying to raise $300 million from foreign donors to fund a campaign against the drug gangs inside Afghanistan. The drug operations are pretty much out in the open and defy local police. But the government has begun using some of their army troops, and American air power, to go after drug laboratories (where the poppies are refined into opium and heroin) and stockpiles of drugs waiting to be shipped out of the country. But not all the drugs are exported. There is so much opium and heroin that it is being sold inside Afghanistan. There are thousands of addicts and the problem is growing.