Afghanistan is a beautiful harsh land steeped in a troubled history, the reason being it’s really good at growing opium.
A few facts, the UK invaded twice, way back (Victorian), both times congruent with the opium wars we had with the Qing dynasty in China, drugs have always one of the best ways of undermining a nation, flood cheap narcotics into a market you destabilise the country, pacifying its workforce/potential army and splitting society as those with the vast amounts of wealth generated defend themselves against others who see that wealth and want it.
In the late 70’s early 80’s the Russians wanted control and set up a puppet government, Maggie and Ronnie in the name of all that was holy sent the CIA and SAS to train the Mujahedeen in the use of roadside bombs and guerrilla tactics, who then taught their sons and so on, who managed to force out the Russians using the methods they now use on the US forces (are your Marines aware it was their fathers who taught Afghans how to blow up their own sons?), so the plucky Mujahedeen were the heroes. The CIA were paid in opium for the $3bn worth of weapons.
And the US had no real care what type of government got in as long as the CIA could still get their opium. There was an internal battle in the US that drugs would sort out, that of black consciousness, the burgeoning civil rites movement that looked for a while it would sweep away the white strangle hold on power, until black areas were swamped with copious drugs, cheap guns and bling, swapping Martin Luther King for a paltry 50cents, the dream died. Maggie used the same tactics to destroy a generation to head off potential backlash to the poverty measures and breaking of the unions as demanded by the IMF.
Fast forward, the Mujahedeen become the Taliban, same people perhaps slightly more religiously inclined, galvanised by an influx of fighters from Saudi indoctrinated Wahhabi ultraconservatives, in 2001 they burnt pretty much the whole crop, why? The official line is it was un-Islamic or that it was under pressure from the UN to limit heroin production, none of this adds up. More likely to boost prices, the 2 years before they had un-Islamic bumper crops, opium stores well.
The CIA clearly didn’t like this a year later the war against terror, invasion and the production in heroin rises.
And has risen ever since.