So, why we still have troops in Afghanistan? The list of reasons are endless, depending on whom you ask. One might even say the United States is keeping troops in Afghanistan as a way of maintaining leverage over China due to our recently acquired debt.

ZARI, Afghanistan — Because of the poppies, the raw material for most of the world’s heroin, the list of things 1st Lt. Christopher Gackstatter an...

BANGKOK -- The cultivation of illegal opium has increased in Myanmar for a sixth successive year, fueled in part by rising demand for heroin across As...

It's time to turn conventional wisdom upside down. Fighting drugs is not a precondition for security. On the contrary, security is a necessary condition for curbing drugs.

KABUL, Afghanistan — For years, American officials have struggled to curb Afghanistan’s opium industry, rewriting strategy every few seasons and p...

By Mong Palatino, The Diplomat Opium cultivation is on the increase in the Palaung communities in the northern Shan State of Burma. This fact...

Despite increased efforts to destroy fields of opium poppies and wean Afghan farmers off the country’s biggest cash crop, poppy cultivation in Afgha...

The February issue of National Geographic takes an in-depth look at Afghanistan's opium wars. As writer Robert Draper discovers, a key step to securin...

Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Saturday denounced a large-scale drug raid in which U.S. forces and Russian drug agents took part, calling it a viola...

President Hamid Karzai may have slammed recent drug raids conducted by U.S. and Russian agents in Afghanistan as "a violation of sovereignty," yet tha...

There is definitely a huge drug problem in Afghanistan, and our strategy seems to be the cause of it. Our allies that we desperately rely on are all high on drugs, selling drugs, or both. And not only are we paying for it, people are dying because of it.

A small group of Pentagon and USAID officials and American geologists may have found the biggest single solution to permanently transforming Afghanistan's economy and winning the struggle against Taliban.

Afghan government must protect farmers from Taliban violence, stop participating in the drug trade, and encourage the growth of a diversity of legal crops.

I find it infuriating when a discussion of strategy in Afghanistan is hijacked by the fallacy that it is an inherently ungovernable zone.

Why isn't Mr. Karzai being held responsible for this blatant act of election fraud? And who can guarantee that a repeat of the fraud won't happen? Or that all hell won't break loose during the run-off?

Afghanistan is not Iraq. Unlike the Sunni Awakening, when Iraqi tribe members took up arms against al-Qaeda and foreign insurgents, the Taliban are an integral part of Afghanistan, not foreign fighters.

Malalai Joya has been called "Afghanistan's bravest woman." But that doesn't mean she supports President Obama's decision to double the number of American troops in her country.

As President Obama is getting ready to live up to his promise, renew American efforts in Afghanistan and make a number of critical decisions regarding an increase of troops, an ever-growing chorus of liberals is pressuring him to abandon Afghanistan and withdraw without any regards to what will happen next.

We are partnering with a symbol of government corruption, which undermines any trust we might receive from the population. We are funding the insurgency we are attempting to counter.