Afghanistan generates up to $70bn annually from drug trafficking

Drug money is a massive source of profit for criminal groups and terrorists that makes up to $70 billion annually from drug trafficking and production.

The profits are largely reaped at the level of the international wholesale and retail markets of drug as well as in the process of money laundering in Western banking institutions. 

The revenues derived from the global trade in drug constitute a multibillion dollar bonanza for financial institutions and organized crime.

Afghanistan transparency watchdog says illegal financial flows created fields for terrorists and criminal groups.

According to the watchdog’s findings, millions of dollars annually transferred to foreign countries from Kabul airport by the government officials and powerful.

But the government asked an opportunity to review the report and emphasized that they are working in a scheme that no one can illegally transfer the money outside the country.

 US has pumped $7.6bn in counter-narcotics spending into the country, but the results have been dismal.

The explosion in opiate production, unaffected by the $7.5bn spent by the US since 2002 to combat it, puts “the entire US and donor investment in the reconstruction of Afghanistan at risk,” special inspector general John Sopko told a Senate panel.

Based on recent figures, drug trafficking  constitutes “the third biggest global commodity in cash terms after oil and the arms trade.