CIA dropped modified poppy seeds to weaken Afghan heroin trade: Report

In a revelation that reads like spy fiction, The Washington Post has uncovered a decade-long covert operation by the US Central Intelligence Agency to weaken Afghanistan’s billion-dollar heroin industry -- not with missiles or bombs, but with poppy seeds.

According to The Washington Post, the CIA dropped billions of modified poppy seeds across Afghan farmlands from 2004 to 2015, aiming to quietly degrade the potency of the country’s opium crop. The clandestine effort, confirmed by 14 former US officials familiar with the classified mission, was designed to make heroin production unprofitable by lowering the chemical yield of the plants.

“It was out-of-the-box thinking — a nonmilitary solution to a deeply military problem,” a former US official told the paper.

The programme unfolded alon