Afghan Opium Output Up 61%

Data recently released by the United Nations shows a 61% increase in opium production in Afghanistan this year. This continues an upward trend ever since the US invasion in 2001, which also happened to be the year that the Taliban outlawed opium. The government crackdown that year resulted in a 185 ton yield. The harvest has since grown to 5,800 tons a year.

The UN figures make grim reading for those who backed the invasion of Afghanistan.
-PressTV

I can't help but notice that wherever the CIA goes, rising drug production seems to be a consistent theme.

Ironically, the Taliban had overseen a significant fall in heroin production in the months before the invasion. Their leader Mullah Mohammed Omar – collaborating with the UN – had decreed that growing poppies was un-Islamic, resulting in one of the world’s most successful anti-drug campaigns.
As a result of this ban, opium poppy cultivation was reduced by 91 per cent from the previous year’s estimate of 82,172 hectares.
The ban was so effective that Helmand Province, which had accounted for more than half of this production, recorded no poppy cultivation during the 2001 season.
However, with the overthrow of the Taliban opium fields returned, despite the destruction of crops by coalition forces and initiatives to persuade farmers to switch to other produce.
-Daily Mail

Mission Accomplished?