Taliban to face a very long winter, says US General

“Since the beginning of this campaign, we have eliminated 25 narcotics processing labs from the Taliban inventory.  This equates to almost $80 million of drug money eliminated from the kingpins’ pockets, while denying over $16 million of direct revenue to their Taliban partners,” he told reporters in Pentagon via teleconference from Kabul.
 
Gen. Bunch further added that while U.S. air interdiction has been very successful, it’s not just the U.S. doing this work, and it’s not just airstrikes that are having an impact at cutting off Taliban lifelines so effectively.
 
“Just last week, we released video footage from Helmand province of our U.S. Marines high-mobility artillery rocket systems that took aim at more Taliban narcotics processing facilities while still enabling the Afghan 215th Corps’ continued offensive in Helmand,” he said.
 
According to Gen. Bunch, the Afghan National Interdiction Unit conducted two simultaneous raids of Taliban narcotics bazaars, as part of this integrated campaign.  This resulted in over 2,000 kilograms of heroin and 5,000 kilograms of opium getting confiscated.
 
“And it’s not over.  In fact, it’s only just begun.  And this will be a very long winter for the Taliban, as we will continue to disrupt their revenue sources again and again and again,” he added.