• The US is leaving behind a flourishing, violent trade in heroin and crystal meth in Afghanistan.
  • The Om weed, which contains the key ingredient for making meth, grows wild in the mountains.
  • One in 10 Afghans are said to be involved in the drug trade, about as many as are said to be addicted.

HERAT, Afghanistan — For weeks, Afghan police had been staking out a single-family house they believed was being used as a meth lab.

When it came time for the raid, they were caught off guard when a middle-aged woman answered the door. In accordance with local custom, a female officer stepped forward. But before anyone knew what had happened, the woman had struck the officer and bolted the door behind her.

By the time the police managed to knock down the door, only fizzled remnants of meth and heroin were left in the kitchen and bathroom, while a rank odor wafted.

“In the time it took us to enter the house, she had destroyed the hard drugs,” one of the officers told Insider. “We would never be able to prove that the house was being used for cooking meth or making heroin.”

Twenty years after the US invasion of Afghanistan, US troops are preparing to leave the country for good. The announcement has prompted sky-is-falling predictions of a Civil War by some US and Afghan politicians and pundits.

But it’s not just the prospect of a resurgent Taliban that has people on edge.  .. Read complete story from Source