Since the United States invaded Afghanistan, the country’s number one cash crop, opium, has repeatedly broken production records. By some estimates, the occupied territory now supplies some 90 percent of the world’s poppies. So far, eradication efforts have merely fueled the Taliban’s coffers and driven civilian farmers further outside of U.S. influence. Because of this, the United States has formed a new strategy in the fight against the crop: They are giving up. ‘The Western policies against the opium crop, the poppy crop, have been a failure, said Richard Holbrooke, America’s envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, speaking to a G8 conference on Afghanistan. ‘They did not result in any damage to the Taliban, but they put farmers out of work. We are not going to support crop eradication. We’re going to phase it out, he told Reuters. He said the new U.S. strategy will focus on intercepting chemicals used to refine opium into heroin. Troops will also attempt to target the country’s most powerful drug barons, although this has been a component of counter-narcotics in the country since the invasion. ‘The Taliban […] derives up to $100 million a year from the poppy harvest by […]
Sunday, June 28th, 2009
US Gives Up On Eradicating Afghanistan’s Opium
Author: STEPHEN C. WEBSTER
Source: The Raw Story
Publication Date: 27-Jun-09
Link: US Gives Up On Eradicating Afghanistan’s Opium
Source: The Raw Story
Publication Date: 27-Jun-09
Link: US Gives Up On Eradicating Afghanistan’s Opium
Stephan: Year's ago, when I was in government during the Viet Nam War, I was put on a committee whose focus was what to do about the drugs grown in the Gold Triangle. We were, at the time, spending tens of millions -- today it would be hundreds of millions -- on an eradication program that not only didn't work, but was alienating the locals. There was a CIA guy on the committee, and I asked him once over lunch, what did the locals get for their work? If memory serves he said the warlords, who controlled the whole thing, made about $23 million. I was stupefied, and at the next meeting I asked, 'why don't we just buy the damn stuff from the warlords, and turn it into legal medical morphine, of which we were then having trouble getting enough. An incredibly supercilious little functionary sent over by the White House pronounced, 'We will never do such a thing. It is against Administration policy to buy illegally grown narcotics.' I responded, but it would only cost a fraction of the money we are now spending, it would break the source linkage that was leading to the addiction of American servicemen, and people would stop hating us. Everyone looked away as if I had farted in church and the conversation rolled on. I was taken off the committee three days later.
I wonder what it would cost to buy all the opium in Afghanistan, and if we have learned anything at all in the intervening four decades?
