the future of nato

A local Zhari farmer harvests his poppy field. The dark tar will be then secretly sold to a senior Taliban who will eventually sell the product in exchange for weapons and ammunition to fund their insurgency against NATO coalition troops. Around 90 percent of the world's opium comes from Afghanistan. The survey showed that the area of land used for opium poppy cultivation in 2011 was 131,000 hectares, 7 percent higher than in 2010. The amount of opium produced, increased by 61 percent, from 3,600 metric tons in 2010 to 5,800 metric tons in 2011 (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime). Photo: Sebastiano Tomada Piccolomini.