As ethnic insurgencies continue, opium-growers in Burma's northern mountains issued a statement demanding a halt to eradication programs as essential to any peace deal.
Despite at least $7 billion in counter-narcotics spending, Afghan opium production hit 3,300 tons in 2015—exactly the same level it was in 2001 when the US invaded.
With poppy harvest season approaching, tensions are high in Burma's Kachin state following clashes between opium-growing peasants and a citizen anti-drug movement.
The Taliban are pushing deeper into Sangin district of Afghanistan's Helmand province—a strategic stronghold due to its wealth in opium production.
The UN notes a sharp drop in opium cultivation in Afghanistan after years of big increases—but due to drought and desertification, not government eradication efforts.
Burma’s regime signs a "national ceasefire" with ethnic rebels in the opium-producing north ahead of historic elections—but the biggest rebel armies didn’t sign on.
Fighters loyal to ISIS have seized substantial territory in Afghanistan, burning opium fields in an apparent bid to stigmatize the Taliban as corrupt and soft on drugs.
After weeks of escalating tensions along the remote mountain border, a Burmese MiG-29 fighter jet carried out an air-strike on Chinese territory, killing four farm workers.
The latest fighting in Burma's opium-producing hinterlands involves a Han Chinese ethnic group, the Kokang. Some 50,000 have fled across the border into China.
Despite a democratic opening and hopes for peace with ethnic insurgencies, horrific accounts of rights abuses continue to emerge from Burma's opium-producing hinterlands.
National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB) militants shot dead at least 50 adivasis, or tribal people, in a wave of coordinated attacks across India's northeast state of Assam.
For a second consecutive year, Afghan opium cultivation broke all previous records, according to the latest report from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime.
