US aims to stay in Afghanistan for heroin

A political analyst says the United States wants to stay in Afghanistan in order to keep its profitable heroin business in the country.

Senior editor at Veterans Today Gordon Duff told Press TV on Thursday: “The only reason the United States would stay there frankly is to keep its multi-hundred-billion-dollar heroin business going. The business of Afghanistan has always been heroin. There’s no other reason the US was involved.”
He added: “The people of Afghanistan have made it very clear they don’t want the United States there.”
Washington and Kabul have not yet reached an agreement over a security deal under which the United States can keep as many as 10,000 troops in the country.
Without an agreement, all American troops should leave the country by the end of 2014.
Duff said: “When the United States went into Afghanistan in 2001, Afghanistan had ended almost every aspect of narcotics production. As of last week, Afghanistan was producing 98 percent of the world’s… heroin.”
The United Nations reported last month that Afghanistan produced record levels of opium in 2013.
Cultivation of opium poppies, which are processed into heroin, rose 36 percent, amounting to 209,000 hectares.