"U.N. drug control officers said the Taliban religious militia has nearly wiped out opium production in Afghanistan -- once the world's largest producer -- since banning poppy cultivation last summer."
I don't want to analyze or comment on this story again because I FOUND it to be the MOST REPREHENSIBLE PROPAGANDA!!!
And let us say it is true, a true accounting of this destitute family.
Well, then, the INVASION and OCCUPATION of Afghanistan has UTTERLY FAILED and WE SHOULD LEAVE NOW!!!!!!!!!
Of course, the WHOLE WORLD KNOWS NATO and AmeriKa are there to PROTECT OIL PIPELINES and the PROFIT-MAKING ILLEGAL DRUG TRADE!
First the women, now the kids. You should go enlist now, college kid.
"Opium addictions grip families in Afghanistan’s remote villages" by Rukmini Callimachi, Associated Press | August 9, 2009
Islam Beg of Sarab village in the Badakshan province of Afghanistan offered his opium pipe to his grandson after having an early-morning smoke recently. (Julie Jacobson/ Associated Press)
SARAB, Afghanistan - Open the door to Islam Beg’s house and the thick opium smoke rushes out into the cold mountain air, like steam from a bathhouse. It’s just past 8 a.m. and the family of six - including a 1-year-old baby boy - is already curled up at the lip of the opium pipe.
Beg, 65, breathes in and exhales a cloud of smoke. He passes the pipe to his wife. She passes it to their daughter. The daughter blows the opium smoke into the baby’s tiny mouth. The baby’s eyes roll back into his head.
Their faces are gaunt. Their hair is matted. They smell.
In dozens of mountain hamlets in this remote corner of Afghanistan, opium addiction has become so entrenched that whole families - from toddlers to old men - are addicts. Cut off from the rest of the world by glacial streams, the addiction moves from house to house, infecting entire communities. From just one family years ago, at least half the people of Sarab, population 1,850, are now addicts.
Related: The Children of Afghanistan
Afghanistan supplies nearly all the world’s opium, the raw ingredient used to make heroin, and while most of the deadly crop is exported, enough is left behind to create a vicious cycle of addiction. There are at least 200,000 opium and heroin addicts in Afghanistan - 50,000 more than in the much bigger, wealthier United States, according to the US Department of Health and Human Services and a 2005 survey by the United Nations. A new survey is expected to show even higher rates of addiction, a window into the human toll of Afghanistan’s back-to-back wars and desperate poverty.
That's how the western imperialists nearly destroyed China.
Part of a plan. How evil is that, huh?
Unlike in the West, the close-knit nature of communities here makes addiction a family affair. Instead of passing from one rebellious teenager to another, the habit passes from mother to daughter, father to son. It’s turning villages like this one into a landscape of human depredation. Except for a few soiled mats, Beg’s house is bare. He has pawned all his family’s belongings to pay for drugs....
Yeah, good thing AmeriKa doesn't have people with problems.
Beg’s forefathers owned much of the land in the village, located beside a gushing stream at the end of a canyon of craggy mountains in Badakshan province, hundreds of miles northeast of Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital.
He once had 1,200 sheep. He sold them off one by one to pay for drugs. The land followed. He’s turned his spacious home, once lined with ornamental carpets, into a mud shell. He grows potatoes in rows in the last of his fields and each time he harvests the crop, he has to make a choice - feed his grandchildren, or buy opium. He usually chooses drugs. Basic necessities like soap long ago fell by the wayside.
I can't take the Muslim-hating of the newspaper anymore.
“If we have 50 cents, we buy opium and we smoke it. We don’t use the 50 cents to buy soap to clean our clothes,’’ explains Raihan, Beg’s daughter and the mother of the 1-year-old. The toddler wears a filthy shirt and no underwear. “I can be out of food, but not out of opium.’’
Oh, yeah, they got people down in the center of the county like that, hanging out on the corners, smoking crack in the apartments. Everybody knows all about it, but the cops never do a thing.
The country’s few drug treatment centers are in cities far from villages like this one. And even those able to get themselves to the cities are often unable to get help. The drug clinic in Takhar province, the nearest to Sarab, has a waiting list of 2,000 people and only 30 beds.
So the villagers are drowning in opium. They begin taking it when they are sick, relying on its anesthetic properties - opium is also used to make morphine. Sarab is a day’s walk over mountain paths to the nearest hospital. The few shops in town do not even sell aspirin.
“Opium is our doctor,’’ says Beg. “When your stomach hurts, you take a smoke. Then you take a little more. And a little more. And then, you’re addicted. Once you’re hooked, it’s over. You’re finished.’’
When his 1-year-old grandson Shamsuddin cut his finger in the jam of the door, Beg blew opium smoke into the child’s mouth, a common practice in this part of the world which is now resulting in rampant child addiction. He doesn’t want his grandchild to become an addict, but he says he has no choice. “If there is no medicine here, what should we do? The only way to make him feel better is to give him opium.’’--more--"
So much for "liberating" the Afghan people.
"Taliban not moving to overthrow, US says" by Reuters | August 10, 2009
Maybe they SHOULD!!!!!!
WASHINGTON - The war in Afghanistan has not reached a crisis point despite gains by Taliban insurgents, US national security adviser Jim Jones said yesterday.
“I don’t think we’re at a crisis level where there is any move by the Taliban to overthrow the government,’’ Jones said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.’’
They already have: Taliban Taking Back Afghanistan
Time to COME HOME, Jim!!!!
But he said Washington would not rule out an additional increase in US troop levels.
Yeah, so the VIOLENCE will get WORSE!!!!
And this guy made the rounds yesterday, huh?
I wouldn't know; I no longer watch television news.
My only exposure to the MSM is the Globe.
Violence has increased in Afghanistan....
Isn't that something? Troop levels increase and violence goes up.
Doesn't it stand to reason that troop levels decrease and violence goes down?
--more--"