While searching for Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters, U.S. special forces in Afghanistan routinely come across something they're not looking for: evidence of a thriving Afghan drug trade. But they're not doing anything about it, antinarcotics experts tell TIME. Several Kabul diplomats familiar with U.S. military operations say that while carrying out searches in eastern and southern Afghanistan--opium-growing areas that are also Taliban strongholds--U.S. soldiers have found hidden caches of narcotics, crude heroin-processing labs and convoys racing across the desert with bundles of hashish and opium, headed for Europe and Central Asia. "If these drug convoys have any connection with terrorists, special...
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