Washington Post (DC)
Tue, 16 Jan 2007
Copyright: 2007 The Washington Post
Author: Anne Applebaum

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ENDING AN OPIUM WAR
Poppies and Afghan Recovery Can Both Bloom

Once, the British Empire fought a war for the right to sell opium in China.  In retrospect, history has judged that war destructive and wasteful, a shameless battle of colonizers against the colonized that in the end helped neither one.

Now, NATO is fighting a war to eradicate opium from Afghanistan.  Allegedly, the goals this time around are different.  According to the British government, Afghanistan's illicit drug trade poses the "gravest threat to the long term security, development, and effective governance of Afghanistan," particularly since the Taliban is believed to be the biggest beneficiary of drug sales.

Convinced that this time they are doing the morally right thing, Western governments are spending hundreds of millions of dollars bulldozing poppy fields, building up counternarcotics squads and financing alternative crops in Afghanistan. 

Chemical spraying may begin as early as this spring.  But in retrospect, might history not judge this war to be every bit as destructive and wasteful as the original Opium Wars?

.....

Yet by far the most depressing aspect of the Afghan poppy crisis is that it exists at all -- because it doesn't have to. 

To see what I mean, look at the history of Turkey, where once upon a time the drug trade also threatened the country's political and economic stability.  Just like Afghanistan, Turkey had a long tradition of poppy cultivation.  Just like Afghanistan, Turkey worried that poppy eradication could "bring down the government." Just like Afghanistan, Turkey -- this was the era of "Midnight Express"-- was identified as the main source of the heroin sold in the West.  Just like in Afghanistan, a ban was tried, and it failed.

As a result, in 1974 the Turks, with American and U.N.  support, tried a different tactic.  They began licensing poppy cultivation for the purpose of producing morphine, codeine and other legal opiates.  Legal factories were built to replace the illegal ones.  Farmers registered to grow poppies, and they paid taxes. 

...

the U.S.  government still supports the Turkish program, even requiring U.S.  drug companies to purchase 80 percent of what the legal documents euphemistically refer to as "narcotic raw materials" from the two traditional producers, Turkey and India.

Why not add Afghanistan to this list? The only good arguments against doing so -- as opposed to the silly, politically correct "just say no" arguments -- are technical: that the same weak or nonexistent bureaucracy will be no better at licensing poppy fields than it has been at destroying them, or that some of the raw material will still fall into the hands of the drug cartels. 

Yet some of these issues can be resolved, by building processing factories at the local level and working within local power structures.  And even if the program succeeds in stopping only half of the drug trade, a huge chunk of Afghanistan's economy will still emerge from the gray market; the power of the drug barons will be reduced; and, most important, Western money will have been visibly spent helping Afghan farmers survive, instead of destroying their livelihoods. 

The director of the Senlis Council, a group that studies the drug problem in Afghanistan, told me he reckons that the best way to "ensure more Western soldiers get killed" is to expand poppy eradication.

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Or we could try this way instead:

WE CAN STOP OPIUM: EX-GENERAL
http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v07/n049/a03.html

Fri, 12 Jan 2007
Vancouver 24hours (CN BC)
Copyright: 2007 Canoe Inc
Author: Joe Warmington, Sun Media

Excerpts:

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WE CAN STOP OPIUM: EX-GENERAL

It may not just be NATO soldiers who will help end Afghanistan's dependency of the poppy trade, a Canadian general and former NATO commander in the region said yesterday.

Canadian farmers and agriculture experts may also play a key role, he said.

"It's the infrastructure and how to market their traditional products that they need," Gen.  David Fraser said of Afghan farmers' desire to get out of supplying drug lords and instead feeding their own people with crops from their own land.

It's not going to happen overnight - nor will the eradication of the poppy fields which fuel the opium drug market.

But the solution is not to destroy every field right away, he said.  It must be done slowly for rural farmers to gain the trust of the Afghanistan government.

For Aghan farmers the poppy is a "cash crop" which is used to feed their families, Fraser said.

This is why there will have to be new markets in place and new money in their pockets before the poppy farmer completely abandons this plant.  But, he said, many eventually will.

"They don't make the money on it," he said.  "It's the middle man who is making the money on it."

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[ 16 January 2007: Message edited by: Dana Larsen ]

[ 16 January 2007: Message edited by: Dana Larsen ]

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Originally posted by Cueball:
That article is painfully naive.

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First of all I think the idea that "NATO is fighting a war to eradicate opium from Afghanistan" is something which is highly questionable.

More to the point, as Jester alludes, there is all likelyhood that many people connected to the present government are tied in. Therefore it seems to me that the real purpose of any poppy erradication programs will be to do with crops not authorized by the allies of the US and NATO in Afghanistan.

So, when considered from this perspective, it seems likely that the poppy-crops already exist in a two tiered legal framework of state authorized crops and non-state authorized crops. This doesn't seem to be cooling things off.

This suggests that even if there were official sanctioned crops there would still have to be agressive enforcement against non-licensed operations -- war in other words. War with people who see it as their sovereign right to govern themseleves and determine for themselves wether they should grow beans or poppies, rather than to be governed by those whose policy seems dictated to by foreigners for the benefit of local competitors.

Applebaum writes from the hip, so to speak, but those hips are planted firmly in DC.

Secondly, while Applebaum is correct in pointing out that 80% of the legal opiates delivered to the US come from Turkey and and India, she fails to take account for the fact that this only leaves a small percentage available for Afghan poppy farmers. Not only that, but she also fails to note that back in the day, the remaining percentage was largely taken up by Afghan farmers because US pharmaceutical companies were legally allowed to purchase up to 15% of their base material from Afghanistan -- even when that was the case, the illegal opiates business thrived in Afghanistan.

Is she suggesting that the percentage for Turkey and India be reduced? And if so, would that not force legal poppie growers in those countries into the underground? In that case all she seems to have accomplished is a shifting the locale of the problem from one country to another.

The Legal opiates market is still limited, though Applebaum seems to be doing her best to expand that market as she will surely give me a headache if I read her to much.

[ 16 January 2007: Message edited by: Cueball ]

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Originally posted by Cueball:
..while Applebaum is correct in pointing out that 80% of the legal opiates delivered to the US come from Turkey and and India, she fails to take account for the fact that this only leaves a small percentage available for Afghan poppy farmers. Not only that, but she also fails to note that back in the day, the remaining percentage was largely taken up by Afghan farmers because US pharmaceutical companies were legally allowed to purchase up to 15% of their base material from Afghanistan -- even when that was the case, the illegal opiates business thrived in Afghanistan.

Is she suggesting that the percentage for Turkey and India be reduced? And if so, would that not force legal poppie growers in those countries into the underground? In that case all she seems to have accomplished is a shifting the locale of the problem from one country to another.

The Legal opiates market is still limited, though Applebaum seems to be doing her best to expand that market as she will surely give me a headache if I read her to much.

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Thanks cueball, I had mulled some of that over already while waiting. But you worded so much better than my brain did.

However, I would ask, as this is where I kept getting stuck, is the legal market full, or is it supply and cost gouging going on to make more money? Is there room to open up more legal markets?

Personally, I hope there is more room, and I would like to see more flooding/expanding of the legal market, as opposed to having quotas that are only in place to drive up legal derivative costs.

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The Legal opiates market is still limited,

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Actually there is a global shortage of opiates and pain medications. Especially in Africa and the thrid world.

The rapid spread of diseases like cancer and AIDS is leaving millions of people to die in pain without access to pain-relief medications.

The World Health Organization calls this a global pain crisis. WHO estimates that we need about 10,000 more tons of opium each year to meet this demand. That means that the Afghanis need to increase their production substantially to meet this global crisis.

Western nations should pay top dollar for all the opium afghan farmers can bring them. This would cut off the major source of funding for our enemies there, it would help win the hearts of the Afghani farmers, it would provide tax revenue for the afghan government, and it would provide essential pain relief to many people currently dying in pain.

This sure seems like a good idea to me.

This idea, buying the Afghan opium crop and using it to meet the world pain crisis, has already been endorsed by the Globe and Mail, the New York Times, the European Parliament, and many other media and political groups.

Here's an excerpt from a Globe and Mail Op-ed from Sept 23, 2006:

http://www.senliscouncil.net/modules/media_centre/opeds/04_oped

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By 2015, the World Health Organization estimates there will be 10 million cancer cases per year in the developing countries, in addition to the millions of cases of HIV/AIDS. The WHO describes the expected demand for opium-based medicines as a “world pain crisis.”

Traffic in morphine and codeine is licensed by the International Narcotics Control Board. The INCB points out that the richest nations (the United States, United Kingdom, France, Japan, Germany, Australia and Canada) consume nearly all of the world's opiates, leaving 80 per cent of the globe's population virtually without.

Could opiates made from Afghan poppies make up the shortfall, if the INCB were to license growing there, as it does in France, India and Turkey? Undoubtedly. Meeting the global demand for pain medication has been estimated to require about double the current Afghan production. Maia Szalavitz, a senior fellow at Stats, a media watchdog group, has estimated the cost of buying the entire Afghan poppy crop at the current market price, set today by Afghan drug lords, as about $600-million — less than the $780-million the United States budgeted last year for eradication.

It's important to remember that buying poppies for legal use sends a different message to the Afghan people than destroying their livelihood to prevent illegal use. Legal traffic is, at once, more profitable for farmers, who need no longer buy protection. It is hugely more profitable in the long run, since it allows citizens to share in the benefits of a stable, law-based society — the very thing that we, our NATO allies, and the elected government of Afghanistan, are seeking to achieve.

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[ 17 January 2007: Message edited by: Dana Larsen ]

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it seems likely that the poppy-crops already exist in a two tiered legal framework of state authorized crops and non-state authorized crops. This doesn't seem to be cooling things off.

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There are no "state sanctioned" opium crops in Afghanistan. This is absolutely incorrect.

The Afghan government is supporting the US campaign to begin aerial spraying of the Afghan opium fields.

The mission in Afghanistan, which was to capture Osama Bin Laden and break up Al Qaeda, has now morphed into a campaign to wipe out the Afghan opium crop and promote the US drug war.

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Originally posted by Dana Larsen:

There are no "state sanctioned" opium crops in Afghanistan. This is absolutely incorrect.

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Where do you get this information? We have had CAF members come on this site and more or less state that in the process of reconstructing Afghanistan, it is necessary for the NATO forces and Karzai government to strike "deals with the devil" with warloards and other unsavory elements in their efforts to bring some kind of meaningful order to the country.

One merely has to look through the list of MP's of the Afghan parliment and cabinet and the relevant bios to see that this is the case.

As an example, Abdul Rashid Dostum one of the most colourful, not to mention brutal, charachters in pantheon of latter day tribal Afghan warlords, is an Uzbek, who more or less controls the vital land route from Northern Afghanistan through Uszbekistan and to the west and into European markets.

He is probably best remembered as the career mercenary who provided Northern Alliance security at the Qali Jangi fort near Mazar-e-Sharif were CIA operative Michael Spann and several hundered Taliban POW's were killed, and John Walker Lindh was first brought into US custody. Dostum, is the one usually associated with the practice of loading up prisnoners into empty steal shipping containers and leaving them in the desert so the occupants can fry in the sun.

Nonetheless Dostum holds the largely (it is said) cermonial, but quite official title of Chief of Staff to the Commander in Chief of the Army in the Afghan government. The Commander in Chief of course is the President, Ahmed Karzai himself.

Please let me know when the Afghan Army 29th Corps (operational in the Mazer-e-Sharif Uzbek zone) begins operations against poppy growers in that region, and DEA begins spraying crops there.

So much as to say, to talk about legality in Afghanistan, as if it is operable in the nation on the same terms as it is here, is to step through the looking glass and into the world of Lewis Carrol. Whether or not there is a legal sanction of the activities of some poppy growers in a strict sense of the word "legal," is irrelevant to the fact that there is a two tierd system of growers in practice enforced by the government.

[ 17 January 2007: Message edited by: Cueball ]

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Originally posted by Cueball:

Where do you get this information. we have had CAF members come on this site and more or less state that in the process of reconstructing Afghanistan, it is necessary for the NATO forces and KArazi government to strike "deals with the devil" with warloards and other unsavory elements in their efforts to bring some kind of meaningful order to the country.

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The aparrent contradiction seems easily reconcilable to me: Informal agreements with locals made by NATO commanders do not necessarily mean that the poppy growing is state sanctioned.

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Originally posted by Legless-Marine:

The aparrent contradiction seems easily reconcilable to me: Informal agreements with locals made by NATO commanders do not necessarily mean that the poppy growing is state sanctioned.

Wink Wink, nudge nudge, and all that.

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I think the pro-Northern Alliance factions ie. Dostum and company(now absorbed into the government) and pro-Taliban anti-U.S. forces both share common interests in the drug economy. Karzai's people are trying to convince the most powerful drug lords to join the U.S.-backed government and leave the Taliban. Which is really very insane, because the Taliban are thought to have been encouraged by the CIA and ISI to form and develop. One CBC report said people living in and around Kandahar fully believed the U.S. CIA and Pakistani ISI were aiding the Taliban as recently as the start of NATO intervention.

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Where do you get this information? We have had CAF members come on this site and more or less state that in the process of reconstructing Afghanistan, it is necessary for the NATO forces and Karzai government to strike "deals with the devil" with warloards and other unsavory elements in their efforts to bring some kind of meaningful order to the country.

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There are no legal opium crops in Afghanistan. Every dollar of profit between the opium farmer and the final product goes to the underground, mostly to the enemies of NATO.

Yes it's true that NATO doesn't destroy every crop they find, because that would make the locals hate them even more. So they let some crops stay.

And yes it is true that there are members of the Afghan government who are also involved in the opium trade.

If some crops are being protected because of corruption in the government, that doesn't mean that those crops of somehow legal, or that the profits from those crops goes to the government. The profit from those crops goes to our enemies.

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So much as to say, to talk about legality in Afghanistan, as if it is operable in the nation on the same terms as it is here, is to step through the looking glass and into the world of Lewis Carrol.

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Well actually the whole drug war involves all sorts of corrruption, government smuggling, and bizarreness like that everywhere in the world. The US government is also elbows deep in the global drug trade.

Afghanistan isn't the only nation where the "drug war" is backwards and nonsensical.

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Whether or not there is a legal sanction of the activities of some poppy growers in a strict sense of the word "legal," is irrelevant to the fact that there is a two tierd system of growers in practice enforced by the government.

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So what? This means that we shouldn't work to bring the opium farmers into the mainstream? There are people dying in pain worldwide due to a lack of pain medications, and we are working to destroy a huge source of pain medications, and in the process we are driving the Afghan farmers into the hands of our enemies.

NATO should spend $600 million or so to buy up all the raw opium they can, then process it in Afghanistan in pharmaceutical-grade medications, and then provide those for free to African and other impoverished nations which need them.

We should outbid the warlords for the opium and thereby cut off their suply.

This is cheaper, smarter and more humanitarian than our curent doomed plan.

I think the idea that some simple adminstrative stroke of the pen eliminating the illegal drug trade will somehow miraculously resolve all of the sailent disputes within the country is extremely utopian and unrealistic.

As I have tried to point out, regulating the trade is precisely the same as making it illegal. Because in fact making something illegal is in fact regulating it. Even if one were to liecense and sanction some poppy growing operations, (something btw that is not at all alien to Afghanistan and has been done in the past) is not going to eliminate the need to enforce the law regarding the sanctioned trade, and all you would end up with is the same war, except rather than the Karzai goverment and NATO going after Taliban (for want of a better title) crop growers because they are engaged in the illegal drug trade, you would have NATO and the KArazi government going after Taliban crop growers because they are engaging in the illegal drug trade by opertating without a license.

Certainly, I agree that it is necessary to challenge the "war on drugs" but I see the war on drugs as a toole of US imperialism, not the goal, and a such making and attack upon the war on drugs the centerpiece of any progressive strategy is to doom oneself to dancing on the perophery of the issues, not at the center.

[ 19 January 2007: Message edited by: Cueball ]

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We should outbid the warlords for the opium and thereby cut off their suply

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Even if the drug dealers/warlords are outbid, how do you planon stopping them from merely stealing the crops?

As cueball states, joining in the bidding only moves the deck chairs around on the Titanic. If there is a legal industry that supports the farmers, the drug/warlords will still have to be countered.

Legalising poppy production is a start because it will remove farmers as an adversary but no doubt,the drug/warlords have enough mercenaries and tribal vassals to replace them.

Until the US and its strategic asperations are removed from the equation, the tactical situation will not improve. As stated previously, the US is buying off the NA warlords by allowing the illegal drug trade to proceed in "friendly" areas while simultaniously attempting to interdict it in "taliban" areas.

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AFGHANISTAN RULED BY THE POWER OF POPPIES

Liberal MP Suggests Alternatives to Destroying Critical Afghanistan Crop

Opium is a key element of the current conflict in Afghanistan.

Opium poppies are now a form of livelihood for many farmers.  But U.S.  commanders with NATO forces have ordered poppy fields destroyed, sending farmers stripped of their livelihood straight to the Taliban.  At least the Taliban and drug lords allow the farmers means to put food on the table, Liberal MP Keith Martin ( Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca ) said.

"The Americans only want to destroy more of the poppy crop, which drives the subsistence farmers to the Taliban."

Some military pundits have suggested that Canadian forces have been targeted - the fatality rate for Canadians in 2006 was six times the NATO average - because Canadian soldiers turned a blind eye to poppy growth and, rather than destroy the poppies outright, had begun to encourage transition to other cash crops.

That has only enriched and empowered the warlords and drug lords in Afghanistan, creating more power struggles and conflicts, said NDP MP Denise Savoie ( Victoria ).

Martin suggested that Western countries should purchase opium poppies, and use those materials in the manufacture of legitimate opiate-based pharmaceuticals.

At the same time, farmers should be guided on a transition path away from poppies to other viable crops.  That will undermine the power and influence of the drug-dealing warlords that currently afflict Afghanistan.

The cost of purchasing poppies will be extensive, but "it will be an awful lot cheaper than waging a war," Martin said.

"Unless we deal with that, the opium crop is the financial fuel for the Taliban and al-Qaida."

Conservative MP Gary Lunn ( Saanich-Gulf Islands ) did not wish to discuss the role of the opium crop in the ongoing conflict.

Savoie agreed that the opium trade - made more lucrative by "simplistic" U.S.  intervention - is a key issue in bringing some measure of peace to Afghanistan.

"There's no easy answer and I'm not an expert, but I'm told by many that have looked at it that there are many legal, medicinal uses for ( poppies )," she said, echoing Martin's thoughts.

"There would be, I am told, a way of dealing with it that could be channeled into a legal way that would not take away - and that's the key - that would not take away a farmer's only livelihood."

Such uses include legal, medicinal applications and more, she said.

"I am told that there are other uses that we're not even aware of, in terms of fuel," Savoie said. 

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I just wish that Layton and the NDP had been the first to take up this issue.

See the whole story here: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v07/n099/a10.html

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Globe and Mail, Fri, 26 Jan 2007
By: Daniel Leblanc

BLOC WANTS RETHINK ON AFGHAN POPPIES

New Strategy For Opium Farmers Necessary For Support Of Mission, Duceppe Warns

MONTREAL -- The Canadian government has to work on an international strategy to purchase poppy crops from farmers in Afghanistan in order to stop the heroin trade and end the fighting in the war-ravaged country, Bloc Quebecois Leader Gilles Duceppe said yesterday.

In a speech in Montreal, Mr. Duceppe said a new strategy on opium is mandatory if the Canadian government wishes to continue enjoying the Bloc's support for the military mission in Afghanistan.

He said 80 per cent of Afghans live off agriculture, and a strategy has to be put in place to replace opium production with legal crops.

"For a transition period, we have to purchase the poppy crops directly from farmers and use it for medical purposes, to produce codeine or morphine," Mr. Duceppe said. Prime Minister Stephen Harper, he added, "can only count on the Bloc's support if he firmly moves in the direction that I have laid out."

The Department of Foreign Affairs was asked yesterday for its current position on the eradication of poppy crops, and had not responded by the end of the day.

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I am glad this sensible idea is being advocated by prominent canadian politicians.

I sure wish Jack Layton was among them!

http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v07/n191/a03.html?315894

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CANADA URGED TO PROCESS AFGHAN POPPIES INTO MEDICINE FOR THIRD WORLD

OTTAWA - Canada should spearhead an international effort to license opium production in Afghanistan for peaceful pharmaceutical uses to combat the country's chronic economic dependence on the illegal narcotic, deputy Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff said Thursday.

Ignatieff endorsed the proposal of the controversial London-based think-tank, the Senlis Council, which has called for a pilot project to study the licensing of the Afghan opium crop -- the backbone of the world's illicit heroin trade and the cornerstone of Afghanistan's impoverished economy.

The council, which issued a series of scathing reports on the world's failures in the wartorn country, has argued processing facilities should be set up in Afghanistan to convert the opium from poppies into codeine and morphine to meet a shortage of pain medicines in the developing world.

Essentially legalizing Afghanistan's No. 1 criminal activity would revitalize the country's economy, the council says.

Ignatieff said he has spoken to Senlis representatives about the proposal, which they unveiled last summer, and he is convinced of its merits.

"I've stress-tested their proposal. I don't buy anything until I knock it around. But I believe these guys. The Senlis Council has demonstrated there is a market for such medicine," Ignatieff said in a keynote speech at the annual gathering of the Conference of Defence Associations Institute.

He made the pitch to a military audience of hundreds attending Canada's largest security and military symposium.

Ignatieff's address was a partisan attack on what he said are the Harper government's failings in Afghanistan.

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Not only that the front door operations will provide excelent cover for the back door heroin production operation.

Oh yes! And the war? Of course that will continue.

[ 17 February 2007: Message edited by: Cueball ]

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"The Agency neither participated in nor condoned drug trafficking by contra forces." - former CIA director John Deutch

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LLLLIES!

[ 17 February 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

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In at least one case, a plane identified with the CIA practice of “extraordinary rendition” — transporting terrorist suspects — left a US air base just after the arrival of an aircraft using the bogus call sign.

The call sign Juliet Golf Oscar (JGO) followed by a flight number belongs, says the ICAO, to a now bankrupt Canadian low-cost airline called Jetsgo of Montreal.

But for several years and as recently as last December it has been used selectively by both the American air force and army to cover the flights of aircraft to and from the Balkans.

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Originally posted by remind:
So are you saying they are hauling illegal drugs around?

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More information:

http://naturalsociety.blogspot.com/2006/09/unodc-wants-nato-to-eradicate-poppy.html

"I call on NATO forces to destroy the heroin labs, disband the open opium bazaars, attack the opium convoys and bring to justice the big traders. I invite coalition countries to give NATO the mandate and resources required,"

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/15/AR2007011500967.html

"So central is the problem that Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, has called opium a "cancer" worse than terrorism."

http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2007/02/c315df0b-a563-455e-b8be-c69b2ec43d82.html

"LASHKAR GAH, AFGHANISTAN; February 7, 2007 (RFE/RL) -- Once referred to as Afghanistan's "breadbasket," this is among Afghanistan's the most developed regions. Some of Helmand Province's infrastructure -- including irrigation networks and roads donated a half-century ago by the United States and the Soviet Union -- could be returned to use with a minimum of effort.

But Helmand is also home to Taliban militants, opium production, and tribal tensions.

Taliban fighters' brazen takeover of a town in southern Afghanistan this month marked a major setback for NATO and its Afghan allies. Just days before that seizure, British officers were touting the power-sharing deal that kept Taliban fighters out the town of Musa Qala as a possible blueprint for other parts of Helmand Province.

These problems are hampering NATO's British-led efforts to rebuild the province."

http://iwpr.net/?p=arr&s=f&o=325959&apc_state=henparr

"US State Department officials can quote chapter and verse of the anti-drug strategy. Based on five “pillars” that include judicial reform, crop eradication, alternative livelihoods, public information and law enforcement, the counter-narcotics effort has already cost the American taxpayer hundreds of millions of dollars.

While exact figures are difficult to come by, one US counter-narcotics specialist acknowledged that the amount of money devoted to the cause will “significantly” exceed the 780 million US dollars pledged in early 2005. The British government, which spearheads the fight against drugs, has pledged over 850 million pounds, about 1.7 billion dollars, for the period 2002-09.

The issue is wether or not the self-same attention is paid to crops which directly or indirectly fund operations for local allies.

"The UN document shows a 334 per cent increase in production in the region of Balkh, despite the presence of a PRT at Mazar-e-Sharif. The picture is similar in the west with a 348 per cent rise in Farah where ISAF is also present. Meanwhile officials are alarmed at the 162 per cent rise in Kandahar."

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article314476.ece

"This year’s increase in cultivation represents planting decisions made by farmers last fall following disappointing eradication efforts in the spring and summer of 2005 that failed to introduce sufficient threat to deter planting for the new season. We have had more success in eradication efforts this year, both in Helmand province and nationwide, although it is too early to tell how much impact this will have on this coming fall’s planting decisions. Nevertheless, despite the overall increase in the size of this year’s poppy crop, we can already see signs of progress in some regions of Afghanistan. The vast majority of the increase in this year’s crop was concentrated in a few provinces where higher security threats and weak governance limited the central government’s ability to suppress poppy cultivation."

http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/ask/72087.htm

Even by their own esimates:

"Over 50% of the cultivation in 2005--some 54,000 hectares by British estimates--occurred in areas where there is development and where there are alternatives available. "

"If we doubled our rate of interdiction, it would still account for less than 5% of the opium produced. While we agree that we must improve our interdiction capacity, the simple truth is that eradication is much easier. The fields are easy to find--just take a helicopter ride 2 minutes outside the well-developed areas of Lashkar Gah and it is poppy fields as far as the eye can see. "

"This year we eradicated in the south of Helmand and the promises by the Taliban of a fight and protection for poppy farmers barely materialized."

http://www.state.gov/p/inl/rls/rm/72067.htm

So I suppose the answer is both yes and no - yes, they are attempting to interdict and eradicate in many of these areas; but no, they are not having much success, given USAID's amaemic 5% eradication estimate and the HUGE increase (in some areas over 300%) in opium production from 2005 to 2006.

[ 19 February 2007: Message edited by: Village Idiot ]

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Originally posted by Village Idiot:
[b]
"The UN document shows a 334 per cent increase in production in the region of Balkh, despite the presence of a PRT at Mazar-e-Sharif. The picture is similar in the west with a 348 per cent rise in Farah where ISAF is also present. Meanwhile officials are alarmed at the 162 per cent rise in Kandahar."

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Game, set and match.

Clearly. Proved. Either the real drug dealers are not the Taliban, but the Uzbek and Tadjik warlords, as they have increased production by more than twice that of the "Taliban" areas, or that ISAF and the PRT are turning a blind eye to the activities of their allies -- in this case Rashid Dostum: Asshole.

So there really is no war against opium production really, just a war against the financial infrastructure of the opposing military aparatus, disguised as a laudible war against drug production.

[ 19 February 2007: Message edited by: Cueball ]

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Originally posted by Cueball:
More to the point, as Jester alludes, there is all likelyhood that many people connected to the present government are tied in.

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Originally posted by Abdul_Maria:

like the American CIA in Vietnam.

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Yes, in 1949, Mao's Red Army drove Chiang Kai-Shek's Nationalist Chinese forces in two different directions. One was toward Taiwan, and the other part of his gang fled toward Hunam province, where they later fled into the mountains of N-Eastern Burma, where the CIA set up a massive operation and flights from India over the Himalayas into the Hunan province of southern China during World War II. They also interfered in Thailand. They allied themselves with corrupt head of that country's national police, General Pao. General Pao went into the opium business with the nationalist Chinese forces(Chiang Kai-Shek's people) in Laos. There was very little demand for opium in this "Golden Triangle" region until the CIA's support of Chiang's gangster and drug lord connections.

It was a similar story in Pakistan leading up to 1979. Heroin addiction was nearly flat in that country. By the mid 1980's and the height of the CIA's-Saudi's-Brits Talibanization of the region, heroin addicts in Pakistan are said to have shot up to over a million and a half. As long as CIA assets like the Albanian mafia, KLA, mujihaden in Chechnya et al control opium, it's part of the covert ongoing war on the former Soviet Republics with vast oil and gas deposits or lie in the path of proposed oil and gas pipelines to the west and accessable sea ports. The CIA's and western corporatocracy's motives are not difficult to figure out at all. Money rules their tiny, pea-sized brains always, and they'll murder anyone who refuses a payoff or stands in their way. Think psychopaths with more muscle and moxy than Al Capone could have dreamed. The U.S. military, the CIA's muscle, liberated an drug economy in 2001 not women.

CIA spawns Taliban

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Osama bin Laden's organization was incubated by the CIA in the 1980's when the largest-ever covert operation by the CIA was carried out in Afghanistan against a newly born progressive and socialist-oriented government and then against Soviet troops who had come to the defense of that government. These CIA trained mujahideen forces murdered teachers, doctors and nurses, tortured women for not wearing the veil, and shot down civilian airliners with U.S.-supplied stinger missiles. Nevertheless, many of these mujahideen probably never knew they were being funded by the CIA.

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Soviets refused provocation for wider war

This is just a small taste of the details revealed in "Victory," including the shocking information about actual CIA military operations carried out on Soviet territory against the U.S.S.R. The nuclear-armed Soviets showed incredible restraint and refrained from being provoked into a wider war. There is another critical fact that surfaced in intervening years: The Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI)-a British-Pakistani bank which used secret offshore accounts for global money laundering and which victimized many to the tune of $8 billion before it was shut down in 1991. It was the conduit for funding of the mujahideen in Afghanistan. There is no doubt that many who are members of bin Laden's network know all about laundering money through the international bank secrecy system.

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If anyone tries to tell you the Soviet Union collapsed on its own, accept what they say with a large grain of salt. Because it's likely they don't understand it themselves.

[ 20 February 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

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Originally posted by Cueball:
Thank you.

Game, set and match.

Clearly. Proved. Either the real drug dealers are not the Taliban, but the Uzbek and Tadjik warlords, as they have increased production by more than twice that of the "Taliban" areas, or that ISAF and the PRT are turning a blind eye to the activities of their allies -- in this case Rashid Dostum: Asshole.

So there really is no war against opium production really, just a war against the financial infrastructure of the opposing military aparatus, disguised as a laudible war against drug production.

[ 19 February 2007: Message edited by: Cueball ]

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I ask you what it the point of grinding ones higher ideals into dust for the sake of ones "higher ideals?"

Isn't aquiring unfortunate and self-motivated allies merely for the sake of political and military expedience precisely the logic which led to the US's original support Osama bin Laden in the first place -- an act which led directly to the enfranchisement of the "Taliban" as the rulers of the putative Afghanistan, and now our present day enemy?

Frankly, it seems to me that the issue has been reduced to partisanship without even the barest fig leaf being disposed to the effort to cover the naked truth, let alone any real, (or even possible!) efforts being disposed to the creation of a just society ruled by anything less than drug dealing thugs. All we have is a foreign occupation, aimed at supressing one faction in favour of another, in effect, if not in theory. I thought the fact of this was self-evident from the first days of the war an Karzai proudly boasted that "yes, Sharia would form the basis of Afghan law," despite whatever claims we made about "our" mission of enlightenment.

But to get back to the meat of your point: If the point is merely to avoid fragging and deliver a little aid here and there, did it ever occur to you that we could "pay them off", one and all, and avoid a lot fragging and the like an simply by getting the army out of the way in toto?

[ 21 February 2007: Message edited by: Cueball ]

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We have had more success in eradication efforts this year, both in Helmand province and nationwide, although it is too early to tell how much impact this will have on this coming fall’s planting decisions

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It's worth while pointing out that poppies grow in the silliest of conditions... Many farmers unable to irrigate or able to provide favorable conditions for food stuffs are only capable of growing more poppies.

Land recently irradicated of poppies and the pending drought conditions as our global climate changes... Very often the land is only capable growing only poppies (without serious agricultural aid to irrigate crops). The article says it's too hard to tell if this will impact next years planting seasons descisions... I'm pretty sure it already will. Irradicated land is only capable of growning poppies.

added to Cueball

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Just as long as we aren't pretending that this is about war on opium, and that the objectives are elsewhere.

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I would not underestimate the impact of the poppy trade in any case... Although you are correct 'war on opium' being a lesser goal... On the same note, it's certain warlords using the extreme poppy and drug profits to continue to buy the 'power' and force villages of people to grow their poppies.

[ 21 February 2007: Message edited by: Noise ]

[ 21 February 2007: Message edited by: Noise ]

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Originally posted by Cueball:
Fine. Just as long as we aren't pretending that this is about war on opium, and that the objectives are elsewhere. Fine, also that you accept that military expediency requires co-operation and support of some of the most heinous elements in Afghan society. Dangerous not only to Afghans, but also to ourselves, as anyone who has studied the colourful and treacherous political machinations of Rashid Dostum over the years will know.

I ask you what it the point of grinding ones higher ideals into dust for the sake of ones "higher ideals?"

Isn't aquiring unfortunate and self-motivated allies merely for the sake of political and military expedience precisely the logic which led to the US's original support Osama bin Laden in the first place -- an act which led directly to the enfranchisement of the "Taliban" as the rulers of the putative Afghanistan, and now our present day enemy?

Frankly, it seems to me that the issue has been reduced to partisanship without even the barest fig leaf being disposed to the effort to cover the naked truth, let alone any real, (or even possible!) efforts being disposed to the creation of a just society ruled by anything less than drug dealing thugs. All we have is a foreign occupation, aimed at supressing one faction in favour of another, in effect, if not in theory. I thought the fact of this was self-evident from the first days of the war an Karzai proudly boasted that "yes, Sharia would form the basis of Afghan law," despite whatever claims we made about "our" mission of enlightenment.

But to get back to the meat of your point: If the point is merely to avoid fragging and deliver a little aid here and there, did it ever occur to you that we could "pay them off", one and all, and avoid a lot fragging and the like an simply by getting the army out of the way in toto?

[ 21 February 2007: Message edited by: Cueball ]

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Agreed. Opium is yet another pretext, but NATO's eradication and interdiction strategies ARE a vital part of the war. I thought the REAL point, however, was to achieve enough stability in the country for Unocal build the Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline to Pakistan and the Caspian? They GOT the deal signed by Karzai in 2002, but I have not seen anything in print regarding its construction for some time.

I seem to remember a 2000 quote from US negotiators that went something like: 'Either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs.'

Prophetic words, indeed.

[ 21 February 2007: Message edited by: Village Idiot ]