[freeflight]

> The US army was burning millions (billions?) of dollars worth of poppies every year, to deny profit to the taliban.

I'm not sure that's the whole story, if you look at the statistics then it rather looks like poppy production has increased since the US/NATO occupation [0], at least compared to the, very low, numbers in 2000.

Turkey is one example of a country that successfully managed to legalize their poppy production, but it's questionable if that approach would work just as well in Afghanistan [1].

[0]https://www.unodc.org/documents/crop-monitoring/Afghanistan/... (Page 14, Figure 2)

[1]http://www.tdpf.org.uk/blog/turkey%E2%80%99s-opium-trade-suc...

[VintageCool]

The United States gave the Taliban $43 million in 2011 in appreciation of their efforts to eradicate the Afghan poppy crop.

https://www.thenation.com/article/bushs-faustian-deal-taliba... http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05/20/world/taliban-s-ban-on-pop...

[CoryG89]

I think you may have meant 2001? Both links date to 2001 pre-9/11.