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Re: Re: Congratulations Bush - Opium Trade 20x greater now
| quote: | Originally posted by NYCTrancefan
C'mon now Opus our views usually are shared but on this one not much can be done in the short term to simply stop the production as the cases of Colombia, Bolivia, Peru in the cocaine trade demonstrates, unless and here's the kicker we encourage the Taleban methods of controlling the growth, you grow poppies we cut your hands off and burn down the field, how would that look in the world
The Taleban had their own special methods of dealing with the issue, methods that cannot be employed by the international community in Afghanistan, intead we will have to encourage the growth of other crops, provide other opportunities for the farmers and get full control over the regions where the growth is occuring. Human nature tends to take liberties with newfound freedoms along with circumstances, if I was a poor Afghan farmer I would be growing poppies too and therein lies the problem. Its going to be a long hard effort to curb the production, so to compare America's ability(should be the international community actually) to control poppy production in Afghanistan versus the Taleban is very unfair indeed, after all these were people who shot women in the head as execution |
Agreed. Let's look at how the esteemed "cannabisnews" regarded the US's support of the Taliban's wonderous acheivements in suppressing opium production prior to 9/11:
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That a totalitarian country can effectively crack down on its farmers is not surprising. But it is grotesque for a U.S. official, James P. Callahan, director of the Department of State’s Asian anti-drug program, to describe the Taliban’s special methods in the language of representative democracy: "The Taliban used a system of consensus-building," Callahan said after a visit with the Taliban, adding that the Taliban justified the ban on drugs "in very religious terms."
Of course, Callahan also reported, those who didn’t obey the theocratic edict would be sent to prison.
In a country where those who break minor rules are simply beaten on the spot by religious police and others are stoned to death, it’s understandable that the government’s "religious" argument might be compelling.
Even if it means, as Callahan concedes, that most of the farmers who grew the poppies will now confront starvation. That’s because the Afghan economy has been ruined by the religious extremism of the Taliban, making the attraction of opium as a previously tolerated quick cash crop overwhelming.
For that reason, the opium ban will not last unless the United States is willing to pour far larger amounts of money into underwriting the Afghan economy.
As the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Steven Casteel admitted, "The bad side of the ban is that it’s bringing their country - or certain regions of their country - to economic ruin." Nor did he hold out much hope for Afghan farmers growing other crops such as wheat, which require a vast infrastructure to supply water and fertilizer that no longer exists in that devastated country. There’s little doubt that the Taliban will turn once again to the easily taxed cash crop of opium in order to stay in power.
The Taliban might suddenly be the dream regime of our own drug-war zealots, but in the end this alliance will prove a costly failure.
Our long, sad history of signing up dictators in the war on drugs demonstrates the futility of building a foreign policy on a domestic obsession
http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/10/thread10954.shtml
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The simple fact of the matter is that opium production is a matter of survival for many farmers:
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The farmers' motivation is survival: poppy is about 30 times more profitable than, say, wheat. "If you and I were in their position, we would do the same," says a United Nations official who asked for anonymity. "The alternative is to starve." Most experts say that opium is probably Afghanistan's second-leading industry (behind smuggling), generating several hundred million dollars a year. And unlike the Taliban, which relied on financing from the al Qaeda network to run the country, opium economics have a long local history. Until last year, Afghanistan produced almost three-quarters of the world's heroin.
The Taliban choked the national opium-producing system, though. No one outside the regime knows exactly what motivated the militia to ban poppy production in July 2000. While Taliban spokesmen said they were simply following the strictures of the Koran, others suspected the regime of timing the market or seeking international favor. But the Taliban made the ban stick, using their brutal reputation to scare farmers into complying. The annual opium harvest fell 98 percent in 2001, from more than 4000 tons to 80 tons. Fewer than 20,000 acres remain under poppy cultivation, down from over 200,000 acres. Even suspicious US officials, watching via spy satellites, took notice. "This was something unprecedented," says a State Department analyst who tracks the Afghan drug trade
http://www.eurasianet.org/departmen...eav120501.shtml
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So people had the gall to complain about the US's support of Taliban brutality in order to bolster its war on drugs, and now complain that the US isn't "doing enough" to stop the dreaded growth in opium production? It's a catch-22 situation. If the US resorts to taliban-esque methods for supression you all will be screaming about human rights. If the US respects human rights and attempts to entice farmers through other means, you all will scream about how the US is not as "effective" as the Taliban was. An analagous situation would be if the "liberation" of Germany from the Nazis resulted in dramatic spikes in crime, as the country progressed from a totalitarian state to a democratic state, and people started criticizing Truman for the increased crime. Oh well, whatever fits the agenda I suppose ...
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