Related: Sunday Globe Special: Addicted Afghans
Seems to be a theme:
"Afghanistan farmers rushing to replant poppies; Record opium harvest aids poor" by Kathy Gannon | Associated Press, November 17, 2013
It also aids CIA drug-running networks with its black profits and the bottom line of money-laundering banks.
CHAM KALAI, Afghanistan — The only crop he says brings him enough money to pay his bills and feed his family....
Afghanistan’s farmers are rushing to replant their fields with the base ingredient of opium after the country reaped its biggest poppy harvest ever last May.
That harvest produced 6,000 tons of opium, 49 percent higher than the previous year and more than the combined output of the rest of the world, according to a report issued Wednesday by the United Nations’ drug control agency....
The province also illustrates all the factors fueling the increase and thwarting efforts by Afghan officials and their US allies to eradicate the crop. Poverty is widespread, making the lucrative poppy crop a draw. Instability is high, making any attempt to control planting impossible.
In Bacha’s village of traditional sun-baked mud houses, there is no electricity, no running water. There isn’t a health clinic for miles. Schools for girls are shunned as being against Islam.
‘‘People are poor, families are big. Wheat is no good,’’ Bacha said. ‘‘The only thing that is good is poppies. They are gold.’’
The area is also a stronghold for Taliban insurgents. Talk of security in the area just makes Bacha smile.
Squatting on the edge of his small plot of land, he gestures off in the distance where he said that just the night before the Taliban fought a fierce battle with Afghan troops backed by ‘‘foreign soldiers’’ — his reference to NATO troops.
The poppy planting season in Afghanistan began last month and lasts until the end of November. Last season, which ended with the May harvest, brought a number of grim milestones: Not only was production the highest level ever, more land than ever before was cultivated with poppies — the amount of poppy crop eradicated by authorities went down....
Cultivation spread to two provinces that had been declared poppy-free. The vast majority of cultivation — 89 percent — took place in nine provinces that are among the most insecure areas in the country, the report said. The biggest producers are Helmand province, where the Taliban insurgency is strong, and Kandahar province, the birthplace of the Taliban.
That's why the Taliban damn near eradicated the stuff. That's another reason an invasion of Afghanistan was needed.
That is bad news for Afghanistan, which has a growing addiction problem, and for Europe, the main recipient of its harvest, said Jean- Luc Lemahieu, the UNODC’s regional representative in Kabul.
As well as for Russia and China. Why leave them out unless that was some sort of covert plan to destabilize a country?
In an interview in Kabul, a frustrated Lemahieu said the international community spent billions of dollars of development money on roads and irrigation projects without getting Afghans to stop growing poppies.
Some might call it wasted.
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Also see: Sunday Globe Special: AmeriKa Building Barracks For Afghan Army
Would that be the same army that has an opium-addiction problem?
