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Afghanistan is just FANTASTIC!
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| MisterOpus1 |
For heroin and opium addicts, that is:
| quote: | Afghanistan Opium Crop Sets Record
U.S.-Backed Efforts At Eradication Fail
By Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, December 2, 2006; A01
Opium production in Afghanistan, which provides more than 90 percent of the world's heroin, broke all records in 2006, reaching a historic high despite ongoing U.S.-sponsored eradication efforts, the Bush administration reported yesterday.
In addition to a 26 percent production increase over past year -- for a total of 5,644 metric tons -- the amount of land under cultivation in opium poppies grew by 61 percent. Cultivation in the two main production provinces, Helmand in the southwest and Oruzgan in central Afghanistan, was up by 132 percent. |
I have to tell ya, I just think that opium flower is quite precious and beautiful, especially when the sun hits the pedals just right and sees that beautiful red glowing color.
| quote: | White House drug policy chief John Walters called the news "disappointing."
The administration has cited resurgent Taliban forces as the main impediment to stabilization and reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan, and the U.S. military investment has far exceeded anti-narcotic and development programs. But U.S. military and intelligence officials have increasingly described the drug trade as a problem that rivals and in some ways exceeds the Taliban, threatening to derail other aspects of U.S. policy. |
I've never been one to comment much on the so-called "war on drugs," but I will say that if this is how we supposedly fight such a war, well, that's not really a war on our part.
It's an outright ing embarrassment.
| quote: | | "It is truly the Achilles' heel of Afghanistan," Gen. James L. Jones, the supreme allied commander for NATO, said in a recent speech at the Council on Foreign Relations. Afghanistan is NATO's biggest operation, with more than 30,000 troops. Drug cartels with their own armies engage in regular combat with NATO forces deployed in Afghanistan, he said. "It would be wrong to say that this is just the Taliban. I think I need to set that record straight," he added. |
Ahh, duly noted, but the relevance of that in regards to properly controlling either the country or this outrageous growth in drug trade is slight.
| quote: | "They have their own capability to inflict damage, to make sure that the roads and the passages stay open and they get to where they want to go, whether it's through Pakistan, Iran, up through Russia and all the known trade routes. So this is a very violent cartel," Jones said. "They are buying their protection by funding other organizations, from criminal gangs to tribes, to inciting any kind of resistance to keep the government off of their back."
Any disruption of the drug trade has enormous implications for Afghanistan's economic and political stability. Although its relative strength in the overall economy has diminished as other sectors have expanded in recent years, narcotics is a $2.6 billion-a-year industry that this year provided more than a third of the country's gross domestic product. |
>1/3 of that country's GDP.
Ummm, is a "Holy !" in order here?
| quote: | Farmers who cultivate opium poppies receive only a small percentage of the profits, but U.S. officials estimate the crop provides up to 12 times as much income per acre as conventional farming, and there is violent local resistance to eradication.
"It's almost the devil's own problem," CIA Director Michael V. Hayden told Congress last month. "Right now the issue is stability. . . . Going in there in itself and attacking the drug trade actually feeds the instability that you want to overcome."
"Attacking the problem directly in terms of the drug trade . . . would undermine the attempt to gain popular support in the region," agreed Lt. Gen. Michael D. Maples, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. "There's a real conflict, I think." |
Well that puts a crimp in the attack mode, doesn't it? Is there anything we haven't invaded and created a mindnumbing cluster with lately?
| quote: | The Afghan government has prohibited the aerial herbicide spraying used by U.S. anti-narcotic programs in Latin America. Instead, opium poppy plants in Afghanistan are destroyed by tractors dragging heavy bars. But only 38,500 of nearly 430,000 acres under cultivation were eradicated this year.
Because of security concerns and local sensibilities, all eradication is done by Afghan police, and corruption is a major problem at every level from cultivation to international trafficking. Although the drug trade is believed to provide some financing to the Taliban, most experts believe it is largely an organized criminal enterprise. According to a major report on the Afghan drug industry jointly released last week by the World Bank and the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, key narcotics traffickers "work closely with sponsors in top government and political positions." |
I don't doubt the latter part of this paragraph, but I do wonder if there is indeed any evidence to payoffs in profits to the Taliban.
| quote: | | The report drew specific attention to the Afghan Interior Ministry, saying its officials were increasingly involved in providing protection for and facilitating consolidation of the drug industry in the hands of leading traffickers. "At the lower levels," the report said, "payments to police to avoid eradication or arrest reportedly are very widespread. At higher levels, provincial and district police chief appointments appear to be a tool for key traffickers and sponsors to exercise control and favor their proteges at middle levels in the drug industry." |
Read this next paragraph very carefully:
| quote: | | Opium cultivation was outlawed during Taliban rule in the late 1990s and was nearly eliminated by 2001. After the overthrow of the Taliban government by U.S. forces in the fall of that year, the Bush administration said that keeping a lid on production was among its highest priorities. But corruption and alliances formed by Washington and the Afghan government with anti-Taliban tribal chieftains, some of whom are believed to be deeply involved in the trade, undercut the effort. |
Yikes. Of course the Taliban had to get overthrown and run out. But did that necessarily entail forming corrupt alliances with this Administration and the Afghan gov't?
It's funny, I don't know why but there's a hint of the Iran-Contra Cold War feeling of this to me here. Perhaps it's not substantiated and supported at all, which I must admit might be the case, but something is just kinda eerie about this that's seemingly familiar. Creating alliances in hopes to fight the common enemy, but turning a blind eye on those supposed allies as they do wonderous things.
Ahh the world is indeed a strange place in global politics.
| quote: | Afghan President Hamid Karzai recently noted that "once we thought terrorism was Afghanistan's biggest enemy" but said that now "poppy, its cultivation and drugs are Afghanistan's major enemy."
Eradication and alternative development programs have made little discernible headway. Cultivation -- measured annually with high-resolution satellite imagery that is then parsed by analysts using specialized computer software -- is nearly double its highest pre-Karzai level.
"There is supposed to be a tremendous energy associated with this," Jones said of the counter-narcotics programs, "but it needs a fresh look because . . . we're losing ground.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy...0101654_pf.html |
Perhaps a different strategy is in order? It would appear the current one is not going so smoothly, but given this Administration's record on :
a) listening to common sense
b) understanding reality
c) listening to anything other than God's voice in his annoited head, a.k.a. "gut feeling"
I doubt much will change anytime soon. |
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| Sunsnail |
Awesome. I was wondering why heroin prices were dropping around here.
In all seriousness, this doesn't surprise me. |
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| shaolin_Z |
| Looks like the CIA (Cociane Import Agency) is back in the opium business. |
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| Krypton |
| The US gov't has had 70 years to eradicate a simple weed, and have failed miserably. They think they can do it for afghanistan?? |
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| Sunsnail |
Actually weeds would be the hardest kind of plant to kill.
edit: Opium poppies literally spread thousands of seeds per plant. So if you kill 10 million poppies, but miss 1000 poppies, you'll still get millions of poppies in the next generation ;) |
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| Psy-T |
| a thread that was posted here the other day about lobbying in the us government delt extensively with the afghan drug trade, and the corruption that allows it to reach markets rather easily, give it a read. |
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| Lilith |
Afganistan isnt noted for fertile, rolling fields, weeds grow really easily there it seems :)
Part of the problem with the drug cultivation there is much the same kind of problem as coca cultivation in south america. Someone will buy the junk for $5 a kilo from you or you can grow food which someone will buy for $0.50 a kilo. So what the farmers do is scratch out a bit of dirt to grow food for the immediate family to tide them over and the rest goes into growing drug crops, which in turn pays for things essential to sustaining a living.
They just can't support themselves growing an honest crop.
Doesnt mean it's a good thing at all but you can understand the desperation faced by some people in that position.
The other problem is, you kill off the poppies and you kill off the people, or send them into a welfare state having to survive on donations from abroad.
It's a classic lose-lose war if ever there was. |
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| Q5echo |
| quote: | Originally posted by Sunsnail
Actually weeds would be the hardest kind of plant to kill. |
:haha: |
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| pkcRAISTLIN |
| so its the US' fault that those now not stifled by a dictatorial regime have greater freedom to cultivate a drug trade that (shock horror!) provides a better turnover than conventional farming? how exactly does one stamp out the drug business, you know, considering that not one single country has been able to do it yet? |
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| Fir3start3r |
| quote: | Originally posted by Lilith
Afganistan isnt noted for fertile, rolling fields, weeds grow really easily there it seems :)
Part of the problem with the drug cultivation there is much the same kind of problem as coca cultivation in south america. Someone will buy the junk for $5 a kilo from you or you can grow food which someone will buy for $0.50 a kilo. So what the farmers do is scratch out a bit of dirt to grow food for the immediate family to tide them over and the rest goes into growing drug crops, which in turn pays for things essential to sustaining a living.
They just can't support themselves growing an honest crop.
Doesnt mean it's a good thing at all but you can understand the desperation faced by some people in that position.
The other problem is, you kill off the poppies and you kill off the people, or send them into a welfare state having to survive on donations from abroad.
It's a classic lose-lose war if ever there was. |
The Afgan president actually brought this very point up when he addressed Parliment here in Canada recently; both that the farmers need an alternative and that the poppy business is undermining everyone's efforts to stabilze their country. |
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| pmoisse |
| quote: | Originally posted by Psy-T
a thread that was posted here the other day about lobbying in the us government delt extensively with the afghan drug trade, and the corruption that allows it to reach markets rather easily, give it a read. |
i think that was mine. The US indirectly generates a vast sum of money from the opium trade. I had another article on the subject, I'll try to find it.
link
It's not in the US's best interests for there to be peace. Peace doesn't make money. It's been this way for decades now. |
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