After confirming China’s firm opposition to narcotics, “a common scourge of mankind,” Zhao claimed the U.S. conjured the Afghan drug industry into existence during its 20-year occupation, either by criminal neglect or as part of a deliberate U.S. military project to spread drug addiction around the world:

It is worth pointing out that the U.S., the culprit of the Afghan issue, played an ignominious role in the narcotics problem in Afghanistan by acquiescing or even participating in drugs production and trade there. According to some media reports, the U.S. forces stationed in Afghanistan implemented a project to create a drug laboratory on a global scale. As a result, the production of opiates in the country increased more than 40 times. Alfred McCoy, an American historian, said in an article that to fight the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, the U.S. generously funded local guerrillas through the CIA, turning a blind eye to the fact that they were operating a chain of heroin laboratories. Charles Cogan, former director of the CIA’s Afghan operation, said that the U.S. didn’t really devote resources to an investigation of the drug trade in Afghanistan.

The two decades of U.S. presence in Afghanistan is two decades of death and displacement of innocent Afghan civilians and two decades of unchecked local drug proliferation. With its irresponsible and hasty withdrawal, the U.S. has left behind a series of grim challenges to the innocent Afghan people, including the drug issue. The U.S. should reflect on its behavior, offer sincere apologies and ample compensations, and strive to undo the harm it has inflicted on the Afghan people with concrete actions.

China’s state-run Global Times decided Zhao’s latest attack on the US was an opportunity to remind readers that “over 421,000 netizens” signed its online petition demanding the United States give all of Afghanistan’s frozen financial assets to the Taliban.