A combined Afghan Special Mission Wing and National Interdiction Unit operation targeting a Taliban drug cache location resulted in the seizure of 34 tons of raw hashish and 300 kg of processed hashish in Mohammed Agha district, Logar province, Afghanistan, Dec. 12, 2017. The confiscated hashish removed $5.6 million in potential revenue from the Taliban’s criminal trafficking enterprise.
This operation is one of the largest narcotics seizures that the SMW has supported. The hashish was destroyed on site by the NIU and Afghan Air Force A-29 munitions.
“First, the Taliban is not a popular insurgency,” said Gen. John Nicholson, NATO Resolute Support commander during a Pentagon Press briefing on Nov. 28. “So we believe that the Taliban, in some ways, have evolved into a criminal or narco-insurgency. They are fighting to defend their revenue streams. They have increasingly lost whatever ideological anchor they once had.”
The SMW is a special aviation wing that provides persistent reach for the ASSF during counterterrorism and counternarcotics missions designed to disrupt insurgent and drug smuggling networks in Afghanistan. The SMW supports helicopter assault force raids and provides resupply, close-combat attack, CASEVAC, and ISR support for ASSF and ANA conventional forces. The SMW is the only ANDSF organization with night-vision, rotary-wing air assault, and fixed-wing ISR capabilities.
The NIU is a specialized unit assigned to the Counter Narcotics Police of Afghanistan. From Jun. 1 to Nov. 30, 2017, the NIU and Commandos from the Afghan National Army Special Operations Command seized and destroyed over $76 million worth of narcotics revenue, equipment, precursors, and refined narcotics.