U.S. Reverses Afghanistan Opium Policy
June 29th, 2009 by Rick
The U.S. has changed it’s policy when it comes to eradicating poppy fields in Afghanistan, that’s done nothing but put Afghani farmers out of work.
Richard Holbrooke, U.S. envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan said at the G8 conference in Trieste, Italy on Saturday:
The Western policies against the opium crop, the poppy crop, have been a failure. 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.
The new plan, being all about bringing the fight to the drug lords and drug suppliers, seems more like an old plan, seeing how the drug lords in these regions are also the Taliban. The U.S. has been in that region fighting the Taliban since the invasion in 2001, yet according to the U.N., Afghanistan’s opium production has risen 40-fold.
Antonio Maria Costa, head of the U.N. Office of Drugs and Crime said the effort has been a “sad” joke and:
Sad because many, many Afghan policemen and soldiers … have been killed and only about 5,000 hectares were eradicated, about 3 percent of the volume.
The U.S. plans on reducing the budget it allocates for crop eradication in Afghanistan and spending several hundred million dollars on supporting legal crops.
U.S. Fails to Slow Down Afghani Opium
May 26th, 2009 by Rick
You’d think that after invading a country known for it’s opium trade (90% of the world’s supply,) that the opium supply coming from that country would be severely crippled — especially with military intelligence, special forces and even the CIA stationed there, eradicating crops they come across.
That’s just not the case in Afghanistan, according to Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, when he talked before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee:
We have had almost no success in the last seven or eight years doing that, including this year’s efforts.
Apparently the Taliban controls the opium trade, pulling in as much as a $100m a year. They then in turn use that money to buy weapons for the insurgents. The majority of the opium comes from the southern area of Afghanistan, where the Taliban are the strongest. One of the ways they attempted to curb the opium trade was to give Afghan farmers an alternative to harvesting opium.
We’ve got to have a concerted effort, not only the United States, the international community, to displace it (opium crop) and to do it in a way that makes sense.
The troops are are now leveling the playing field however, with a change of the rules.
Recent rules of engagement have allowed us to go after labs, people associated with labs. That’s a step in the right direction but until we are able to execute a comprehensive agricultural strategy, it’s going to be very difficult to really have a strategic impact on that.
President Obama has already ordered an additional 21,000 U.S. soldiers there, with most being deployed directly to the south.
Afghan Chief Gets Life in U.S. Prison
May 4th, 2009 by Rick
Check out the new scapegoat poster child for the U.S.’s war on drugs.
Bashir Noorzai, 45, a once powerful Afghani Tribal leader, was ordered by an American judge to pay a fine of $25,000 and spend the rest of his life in a federal prison for conspiring to import, manufacture and distribute $50m worth of heroin.
Before his 2005 arrest, Noorzai had aligned himself with his old friend Mullah Mohammad Omar and the Taliban, formed his own army and was at the helm of a heroin empire involving some of his tribe and a million people in southern and western Afghanistan and Pakistan. At that time he was one of the most powerful and dangerous narcotics traffickers in the world.
In 2005, he came to the United States after being invited to speak with government officials. He was interviewed by investigators for 11 days, at a hotel near the former World Trade Center site and then arrested.
Britons Smash $70m Heroin Stash
February 18th, 2009 by Perry
A raid by more than 700 troops, British and Afghan, seized a couple tons of heroin worth about $11 million, and smashed chemicals valued at nearly $60 million.
Britain’s Defense Secretary John Hutton was one of the first people to come out and congratulate himself on the seizure and the impact it will have on the explosive heroin drug trade.
Maybe his troops found the magic heroin bean that keeps turning all those poppy seeds into dope, but I can’t imagine that the drug trade in Afghanistan will be altered by anything other than a cheaper heroin route being discovered elsewhere.
Especially since recent reports cite more than 60 percent of Afghan police officers are on drugs. But good job all the same, the Taliban’s a bunch of dicks.
Aaron Huey: The Afghanistan Drug War
October 30th, 2008 by Alex
Aaron Huey is a guy who can take some seriously good photographs. Best known for his Walk Across America, Aaron has been all over the Middle East – Pakistan, Georgia, Iraq, Afghanistan and others – covering items of cultural and political significance.
His 37 picture photo-set titled ‘Afghanistan Drug War‘ is of particular beauty. Here’s how Aaron describes it:
These images show poppy eradication in Nangarhar Province, East ofJalalabad and also outside Tarin Kowt, in Oruzgan Province.
Since his site is flash, I can’t link directly to the feature, so here’s the navigation path:
Homepage -> Features 1 -> Afghanistan Drug War
Go check it out and see the how a country most of us can’t pinpoint on a map heavily affects heroin production around the world.
Oh yea, all of Aaron’s images are available as limited edition prints in the following sizes – 11×14, 16×20, 20×24, 30×40 – and range from $500 to $4000. If you’ve got good taste, and plenty of spare cash, get in contact with him.
[image copyright Aaron Huey]
Afghanistan, Global Drug Free Market
October 6th, 2008 by Perry
As we watch perhaps more poorly executed Bush foreign policy go by the wayside, I honestly wish saying, “I told you so,” was more satisfying.
Not only did his search for Osama in the wrong country come up not surprisingly, empty-handed. But apparently Hamid Karzai, the leader of the provincial government over there, has begun storing heroin and trafficking it using state resources.
