The 2001 NATO invasion of Afghanistan – with the stated goal of hunting down terrorists – provides a stark example of an operation designed to establish a situation conductive to the expansion of the drug business in a whole country. Its actual result was a boost of drug output – of heroin and opium – in the settings of the international occupation. The Talibs who ruled Afghanistan prior to the coalition offensive managed to induce a considerable reduction of poppy farming, whereas the intervention led to an increase of drug production in Afghanistan by orders of magnitude and to the conversion of the country into the world's top narcotics supplier…