America gave Afghanistan weapons when it withdrew on purpose. It wasn't incompetence. America is also currently massively funding Afghanistan through Qatar and other means. You can look up the list of mega projects and infrastructure Afghanistan is doing but this canal should be sufficient: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6q_e94Ixb8.
But why?
Are they going to have the Afghans invade Iran and link up with ISIS elements in Syria and Iraq? Maybe also destabilize countries near Russia such Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Kazakhstan?
Whatever the end goal is, it's not going to be pretty and it probably pushes the establishment of greater Israel project.
They could plant opium in a number of areas. Pakistan is also controlled by the Americans through (ISI) and they can plant there if they wanted to and they have a number of options in south America and even the Sinai of Egypt.
Looks like they are attempting a bigger ISIS 2.0 but it's one of those things that are still brewing.
May be some fashion thing or specific variety of poppies? Like coke grow anywhere, but somehow Columbia prevail.
When you make v2.0 things you usually try to make them better than v1.0. This v2.0 looks like awfully designed and awry manufactured replica made in a hurry just in attempt to prove mostly to themselves they still could make such things.
Making cocaine is labor intensive and not very safe for the workers. They put the leaves in gasoline and stomp on it with bare feet. Remove the leaves and dispose of them in an environmentally unfriendly way. Then something about chemically removing the gasoline from the solution in an environmentally unfriendly way. Pretty toxic really. If people knew how it was made, they would probably stop using it. Columbia is probably one of only a few places they could get away with the process.
About same as extraction of many pretty legal substances from plants for pharma and cosmetic industry. Just with bare hands (feet) instead of industry machinery.
Looks like Columbia just have enough poor people ready (or forced) to participate in illegal production.
Nicaragua has a lot of poor people willing to stomp around in gasoline for 12 hours a day for just $5 a day. One of the guys at work has the scars on his feet and lower legs to see what happens when you do that work for a few months. Plus the cartels would kill you if you tell them you don't want to do the work. He had to get his family out of the area so he could run away
Or just synthesize fentanyl...