And his brother-in-law Mukthar notes that Afghan eradication teams didn't touch Ateegh's cannabis crops last year, while they did destroy more than half of his poppy fields. "The foreigners don't ...

Cannabis is the most lucrative cash crop in ... increasingly higher prices in these new markets," said Steve Tavella, a field program officer for the U.S. Agency for International Development ...

a success touted often by Afghan and international officials. But one look at Mohammad Alam’s fields tell the story of another emerging drug problem. Towering, three-meter cannabis plants ...

As the Afghan and Western governments focused on the problem of soaring Afghan opium production, which hit record levels this year and remains a booming industry, cannabis cultivation increased 40 ...

21, 2008, 12:38 AM EST / Source: The Associated Press Afghan and coalition ... stamp out its poppy fields, an increasing number of farmers have turned to marijuana, which is receiving less ...

“Eradicating marijuana and opium fields can breed resentment by people and be destabilizing,” says John Dempsey, a rule-of-law adviser to U.S. and Afghan officials for the U.S. Institute of Peac ...

This makes locating Taliban fighters seeking cover in Afghan marijuana forests difficult to locate ... has been unsuccessful in their attempts to incinerate the lush fields of very moist cannabis ...

A boy works in a cannabis field on the outskirts of Kandahar - Copyright AFP BULENT KILIC A boy works in a cannabis field on the outskirts of Kandahar - Copyright AFP ...

“They were going to go back and grow opium or marijuana ... Afghan National Police officers “would shake down these farmers and say if you paid them 10,000 afghanis, they would bypass a field ...