Iran blame USA & UK for Afghan flow of Opium

[enquirewithin]

This is almost comical. The US send Colombians to Afghanistan to help them eredicate drugs'. Everyone knows that the war on drugs is being lost in Colombia-- what are the Colombians going to teach them? More violence. The real cuases are the same. the US backs a corrupt government which is involved in the drugs trade. As usual, the US is the cause not the solution to the problem:

After the Taliban collapsed in late 2001, farmers began to plant opium across the countryside.
Some warlords and commanders that the C.I.A. and military helped put in power — including tribal figures who had been in exile in Pakistan and others in the American-backed Northern Alliance — quickly began to enrich themselves through drug trafficking, several American officials say.
“At the time of our intervention, there wasn’t an active drug trade going on,” said Mr. Dobbins, the former State Department official. “But some of the people we supported became involved and active as the drug trade took hold.” American officials say that the postwar chaos left them with no choice but to work with militia leaders involved in drug dealing.

[snapper]

Yes but the US does a fine job of lying and finding a scapegoat. Gotta give 'em credit for that !

[The Doors]

I've had my doubts for a little while now that the USA went to Afghanistan in order to take control of the poppy fields. The Afghan drug forces... with a country affected by war and having to completely rebuild a country, one would assume they would have bigger priorities then drugs - which the poppies have been an integral part of the Afghan's culture for years.

[snapper]

Drug are money for the Taliban and are virtually the sole source of income for most of the country. Money fuels war, and without money the Taliban will have more trouble financing themselves. The afghans know this is their only cash crop, hence they are resistant to having it eradicated. However, it is also helping fuel turmoil.
Thing is, they will never be able to stop it to a meaningful extent, and only the peasants being forced to grow the stuff will suffer in the end. Sorta like in Colombia - what a coincidence ...
The US can legitimately say it is a problem, but it can also be said that they merely want some control over drug supplies, and eradicating the world's best heroin source would be against the better interests of the US as much as eradicating the coca fields in Colombia would be. A black market is an essential political tool in attempts at world domination.

Not that the US is trying to dominate the world or anything like that ... they just want to help oppressed people all over the world (God bless 'em). Everyone knows that the people of Afghanistan and Iraq were way more oppressed than some other places before the US came and 'liberated' them and need the US's help the most. Places like Somalia and the Congo, for instance, only have minor human rights violations and can fend for themselves ... (once again, dripping sarcasm like venom from a hungry cobra's fangs..)

[Triple7]

Have you guys seen the movie 'Lord of War'? A very good movie.

SWIM told me it is based on reality and that the trader lives in New York still dealing. Anyone else heard such?

[Alfa]

Yes, that's a good movie.

Opium production Afghanistan in Metric Tons (MT) before and after the US invasion:

1994 - 3.400
1995 - 2.300
1996 - 2.200
1997 - 2.800
1998 - 2.700
1999 - 4.600
2001 - 185 (after Taliban ban on poppy growing)
2002 - 3.400 (after US invasion)
2003 - 3.600
2004 - 4.200
2005 - 4.100
2006 - 6.100

Source: UNODC

In direct relation:

Afghanistan, Opium and the Taliban
JALALABAD, Afghanistan (February 15, 2001 8:19 p.m. EST

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.


A 12-member team from the U.N. Drug Control Program spent two weeks searching most of the nation's largest opium-producing areas and found so few poppies that they do not expect any opium to come out of Afghanistan this year.


"We are not just guessing. We have seen the proof in the fields," said Bernard Frahi, regional director for the U.N. program in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He laid out photographs of vast tracts of land cultivated with wheat alongside pictures of the same fields taken a year earlier -- a sea of blood-red poppies.


A State Department official said Thursday all the information the United States has received so far indicates the poppy crop had decreased, but he did not believe it was eliminated.


Last year, Afghanistan produced nearly 4,000 tons of opium, about 75 percent of the world's supply, U.N. officials said. Opium -- the milky substance drained from the poppy plant -- is converted into heroin and sold in Europe and North America. The 1999 output was a world record for opium production, the United Nations said -- more than all other countries combined, including the "Golden Triangle," where the borders of Thailand, Laos and Myanmar meet.


Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Taliban's supreme leader, banned poppy growing before the November planting season and augmented it with a religious edict making it contrary to the tenets of Islam.
The Taliban, which has imposed a strict brand of Islam in the 95 percent of Afghanistan it controls, has set fire to heroin laboratories and jailed farmers until they agreed to destroy their poppy crops.


The U.N. surveyors, who completed their search this week, crisscrossed Helmand, Kandahar, Urzgan and Nangarhar provinces and parts of two others -- areas responsible for 86 percent of the opium produced in Afghanistan last year, Frahi said in an interview Wednesday. They covered 80 percent of the land in those provinces that last year had been awash in poppies.


This year they found poppies growing on barely an acre here and there, Frahi said. The rest -- about 175,000 acres -- was clean.
"We have to look at the situation with careful optimism," said Sandro Tucci of the U.N. Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention in Vienna, Austria.
He said indications are that no poppies were planted this season and that, as a result, there hasn't been any production of opium -- but that officials would keep checking.


The State Department counternarcotics official said the department would make its own estimate of the poppy crop. Information received so far suggests there will be a decrease, but how much is not yet clear, he said, speaking on condition of anonymity.


"We do not think by any stretch of the imagination that poppy cultivation in Afghanistan has been eliminated. But we, like the rest of the world, welcome positive news."
The Drug Enforcement Administration declined to comment.
No U.S. government official can enter Afghanistan because of security concerns stemming from the presence of suspected terrorist Osama bin Laden.


Poppies are harvested in March and April, which is why the survey was done now. Tucci said it would have been impossible for the poppies to have been harvested already.


The areas searched by the U.N. surveyors are the most fertile lands under Taliban control. Other areas, though they are somewhat fertile, have not traditionally been poppy growing areas and farmers are struggling to raise any crops at all because of severe drought. The rest of the land held by the Taliban is mountainous or desert, where poppies could not grow.
Karim Rahimi, the U.N. drug control liaison in Jalalabad, capital of Nangarhar province, said farmers were growing wheat or onions in fields where they once grew poppies.


"It is amazing, really, when you see the fields that last year were filled with poppies and this year there is wheat," he said.
The Taliban enforced the ban by threatening to arrest village elders and mullahs who allowed poppies to be grown. Taliban soldiers patrolled in trucks armed with rocket-propelled grenade launchers. About 1,000 people in Nangarhar who tried to defy the ban were arrested and jailed until they agreed to destroy their crops.


Signs throughout Nangarhar warn against drug production and use, some calling it an "illicit phenomenon." Another reads: "Be drug free, be happy."
Last year, poppies grew on 12,600 acres of land in Nangarhar province. According to the U.N. survey, poppies were planted on only 17 acres there this season and all were destroyed by the Taliban.


"The Taliban have done their work very seriously," Frahi said.
But the ban has badly hurt farmers in one of the world's poorest countries, shattered by two decades of war and devastated by drought.
Ahmed Rehman, who shares less than three acres in Nangarhar with his three brothers, said the opium he produced last year on part of the land brought him $1,100.


This year, he says, he will be lucky to get $300 for the onions and cattle feed he planted on the entire parcel.
"Life is very bad for me this year," he said. "Last year I was able to buy meat and wheat and now this year there is nothing."
But Rehman said he never considered defying the ban.


"The Taliban were patrolling all the time. Of course I was afraid. I did not want to go to jail and lose my freedom and my dignity," he said, gesturing with dirt-caked hands.
Shams-ul-Haq Sayed, an officer of the Taliban drug control office in Jalalabad, said farmers need international aid.


"This year was the most important for us because growing poppies was part of their culture, and the first years are always the most difficult," he said.
Tucci said discussions are under way on how to help the farmers.
Western diplomats in Pakistan have suggested the Taliban is simply trying to drive up the price of opium they have stockpiled. The State Department official also said Afghanistan could do more by destroying drug stockpiles and heroin labs and arresting producers and traffickers.


Frahi dismissed that as "nonsense" and said it is drug traffickers and shopkeepers who have stockpiles. Two pounds of opium worth $35 last year are now worth as much as $360, he said.


Mullah Amir Mohammed Haqqani, the Taliban's top drug official in Nangarhar, said the ban would remain regardless of whether the Taliban received aid or international recognition.


"It is our decree that there will be no poppy cultivation. It is banned forever in this country," he said. "Whether we get assistance or not, poppy growing will never be allowed again in our country.

[oxalot]

quote "For the moment, the problem is what to do with the growing stash of dope at the little American base in Farah. "

SWIM bets he knows some folks willing to hold those for them. Just until they make a decision of course!!!!!!

[VincentVan]

The taliban regime may have curbed the opium production during their time in power in Afghanistan,but it still remains one of the most abominable results of the lethal mix of theocracy with ignorance and integralism the world has ever known.
I´m quite sure that if SWIM would have been an afghan living under the taliban regime, the opium production of the country would have been the last of his worries.
For most afghans, under Kharzai, under the talibans or anyone of the many local warlords, the main problem is stayng alive another day.
The yearly opium production is something that worries westerners living byond a couple of oceans.
VV

[MrJim]

Well said as usual, Vincent. Alot of people in their zealous desire to bash everything about Bush and these wars do often overlook the fact that, yes the Taliban might have had a handle on the opium production, but these were the same people who oppressed women and their own minorities with such force and heavy hands that it was hard to believe that they were living in our millenium.
They used some of the worlds most impressive and aged buddha statues for target practice. Anything outside of their own narrow idealogy wasn't just wrong but punishable by death. That included science and just about every other damn thing that causes people to continue to evolve.
Are the wars wrong? Yes.
But were the Taliban good leaders? Hell no.
We can only hope that stability will one day come to these poor people that have to live with this chaos and death day in and day out. But realistically that stability probably has to emerge from within the country - Not from
"Enlightened" armies. It is so easy for us to point out the faults of others as we sit back consuming more than we create, and egocentrically thinking it is our right to be right how we think right is.

Reputation Comments on this post:

Good post. Always, both parts are evil.

[fnord]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6239734.stm
By Imogen Foulkes
BBC News, Geneva

Opium poppies
Afghanistan produces 92% of the world's illegal opium, the UN says
Opium production in Afghanistan is soaring out of control, the annual UN report on illegal drugs says.

The World Drug Report says more than 90% of illegal opium, which is used to make heroin, comes from Afghanistan.

It says cultivation of opium poppies increased dramatically in the country, despite the presence of more than 30,000 international troops there.

The report says Afghanistan is unlikely to regain real security until the production of illegal drugs is tackled.


map
Facts and figures
SEE THE FULL REPORT
2007 World drug report[7.27MB]
Most computers will open this document automatically, but you may need Adobe Reader

In the 1980s, Afghanistan produced some 30% of the world's opium, but now that figure has more than tripled, the UN document says.

It says that Helmand province alone cultivates almost half the world's illegal opium.

Thomas Pietschmann, the report's author, says production in Helmand has now outstripped that of entire countries.

"The province of Helmand itself is around 70,000 hectares under cultivation, which is three times the total area under cultivation in Myanmar (Burma).

"So only one province, three times as important as the whole of Myanmar, the second-largest opium-producing country," Mr Pietschmann says.

Graph showing soaring opium production in Afghanistan

The report says that while global co-ordination of drug law enforcement has improved, traffickers of heroin from Afghanistan and of cocaine from Colombia are now targeting new routes in Africa.

The UN says this threat must be addressed immediately if Africa - already struggling under the burden of HIV/Aids, tuberculosis and malaria - is to avoid the serious health damage caused by drug abuse.

The report also shows that the overall market for illicit drugs remained relatively stable in 2005-2006.

[Lunar Loops]

This from The Guardian (UK):
Poppy eradication risking lives, warn MPs
Richard Norton-Taylor
Wednesday July 18, 2007
The Guardian

The lives of British soldiers in Afghanistan are being put at risk because failure to develop a coherent strategy for eradicating the country's opium poppies has led to the Taliban forming an alliance with heroin traders, a highly critical parliamentary report warns today. The Commons defence committee also warns that the refusal of other Nato countries to deploy more troops to Afghanistan is undermining Nato's credibility and the international military operation in the country.
Tony Blair accepted British responsibility for developing a counter-narcotics strategy in a country which provides some 90% of the heroin on British streets, yet the policy lacked "coherence and clarity" while the Taliban was developing close links with the narcotics trade, the MPs say.An opium poppy eradication programme is starting but without the money promised, or needed, to provide Afghan farmers with an alternative livelihood. The defence committee heard evidence that poppy fields belonging to poor farmers were being destroyed by Afghan officials working with Dyncorp, a private US security company.
Most Afghan farmers did not distinguish between International Security Assistance Force - including British - soldiers, Dyncorp employees, or Afghan authorities. As a result, even though British troops did not take part in eradication, they were a target for opium farmers worried about losing their livelihood, says the committee.
"We are deeply concerned that uncertainty has arisen among Afghans about [Nato-led] policy towards, and role in, poppy eradication and that UK forces ... may consequently have been put at risk," the MPs say. They paint a picture of almost complete confusion, with the government failing to explain the purpose of British operations in Afghanistan at a time when an increasing number of its troops are being shot. This year, 20 have been killed and 26 seriously wounded in southern Afghanistan, where 7,700 UK troops are based.
The MPs' report comes as the Ministry of Defence is preparing to announce a changeover in regiments deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq. It is expected tomorrow to announce a modest reduction in the number of British troops in southern Iraq from 5,500 to 5,000.
The defence committee says that combating the narcotics trade is crucial to the future stability of Afghanistan. Yet senior British officers have told the Guardian that there is no clear policy within the British government, let alone among the Nato allies. The UN warned last month that Helmand province in southern Afghanistan, where British troops are based, is on the verge of becoming the world's biggest drugs supplier, cultivating more than entire countries such as Burma, Morocco, or even Colombia.
Nick Harvey, the Liberal Democrat defence spokesman, said: "Any suggestion that UK forces have been put at risk due to a confused opium policy is deeply disturbing, particularly when it is the British government that has responsibility for the multinational strategy."
Liam Fox, the shadow defence secretary, said: "The committee's report is a severe indictment of the government's handling of the situation in Afghanistan."
Backstory British troops were first deployed to Afghanistan in early 2006, when 3,300 soldiers were judged sufficient by the then defence secretary, John Reid, to carry out their mission of maintaining security to make way for the development of the country's infrastructure and civil society. Reinforcements increased the total to about 7,700 in southern Afghanistan, significantly more than in southern Iraq. Ministers say there is no confusion between the tasks of defeating Taliban fighters, helping Afghans rebuild their society, and eradicating opium poppies. Military commanders say there is confusion; soldiers cannot do all this themselves and need a more robust UN presence.

[Twiglet]

excellent, so there will be loads of cheap smack on the streets.
well done

[Nagognog2]

August 5, 2007

WASHINGTON --Afghanistan will produce another record poppy harvest this year that cements its status as the world's near-sole supplier of the heroin source, yet a furious debate over how to reverse the trend is stalling proposals to cut the crop, U.S. officials say.


As President Bush prepares for weekend talks with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, divisions within the U.S. administration and among NATO allies have delayed release of a $475 million counternarcotics program for Afghanistan, where intelligence officials see growing links between drugs and the Taliban, the officials said.

U.N. figures to be released in September are expected to show that Afghanistan's poppy production has risen up to 15 percent since 2006 and that the country now accounts for 95 percent of the world's crop, 3 percentage points more than last year, officials familiar with preliminary statistics told The Associated Press.

But counterdrug proposals by some U.S. officials have met fierce resistance, including boosting the amount of forcible poppy field destruction in provinces that grow the most, officials said. The approach also would link millions of dollars in development aid to benchmarks on eradication; arrests and prosecutions of narcotraders, corrupt officials; and on alternative crop production.

Those ideas represent what proponents call an "enhanced carrot-and-stick approach" to supplement existing anti-drug efforts. They are the focus of the new $475 million program outlined in a 995-page report, the release of which has been postponed twice and may be again delayed due to disagreements, officials said.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because parts of the report remain classified.

Counternarcotics agents at the State Department had wanted to release a 123-page summary of the strategy last month and then again last week, but were forced to hold off because of concerns it may not be feasible, the officials said.

Now, even as Bush sees Karzai on Sunday and Monday at the presidential retreat in Camp David, Md., a tentative release date of Aug. 9, timed to follow the meetings, appears in jeopardy. Some in the administration, along with NATO allies Britain and Canada, seek revisions that could delay it until at least Aug. 13, the officials said.

The program represents a 13 percent increase over the $420 million in U.S. counternarcotics aid to Afghanistan last year. It would adopt a bold new approach to "coercive eradication" and set out criteria for local officials to receive development assistance based on their cooperation, the officials said.

Although the existing aid, supplemented mainly by Britain and Canada and supported by the NATO force in Afghanistan, has achieved some results -- notably an expected rise in the number of "poppy-free" provinces from six to at least 12 and possibly 16, mainly in the north -- production elsewhere has soared, they said.

"Afghanistan is providing close to 95 percent of the world's heroin," the State Department's top counternarcotics official, Tom Schweich, said at a recent conference. "That makes it almost a sole-source supplier" and presents a situation "unique in world history."

Almost all the heroin from Afghanistan makes its way to Europe; most of the heroin in the U.S. comes from Latin America.

Afghanistan last year accounted for 92 percent of global opium production, compared with 70 percent in 2000 and 52 percent a decade earlier. The higher yields in Afghanistan brought world production to a record high of 7,286 tons in 2006, 43 percent more than in 2005.

A State Department inspector general's report released Friday noted that the counternarcotics assistance is dwarfed by the estimated $38 billion "street value" of Afghanistan's poppy crop, if all is converted to heroin, and said eradication goals were "not realistic."

Schweich, an advocate of the now-stalled plan, has argued for more vigorous eradication efforts, particularly in southern Helmand province, responsible for some 80 percent of Afghanistan's poppy production. It is where, he says, growers must be punished for ignoring good-faith appeals to switch to alternative, but less lucrative, crops.

"They need to be dealt with in a more severe way," he said at the conference sponsored by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "There needs to be a coercive element, that's something we're not going to back away from or shy away from."

But, in fact, many question whether this is the right approach with Afghanistan mired in poverty and in the throes of an insurgency run by the Taliban and residual al-Qaida forces.

Along with Britain, whose troops patrol Helmand, elements in the State Department, U.S. Agency for International Development, the Defense Department and White House Office of National Drug Control Policy have expressed concern, saying that more raids will drive farmers with no other income to join extremists.

There is also skepticism about the incentives in the new strategy from those who believe development assistance should not be denied to local communities because of poppy growth, officials said.

Opponents argue that the benefits of such aid, new roads and other infrastructure, schools and hospitals, will themselves be powerful tools to combat the narcotrade once constructed.

One U.S. official said the plan was a good one but might take another year or two before it can be effectively introduced.

------

On the Net:

White House Office of National Drug Control Policy: http://www.whitehousedrugpolicy.gov/

State Department Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs: http://www.state.gov/p/inl/

Audio link to comments on new strategy by acting Assistant Secretary of State for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Thomas Schweich at the Center for Strategic and International Studies: http://www.csis.org/component/option...,view/id,1350/

U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime: http://www.unodc.org/unodc/index.html

Reputation Comments on this post:

cool, made my day

[D.U.M.B]

It seems the more the US tries to stop Afghanisatans poppy growing trade, the stronger it seems to get

[rocksmokinmachine]

Hopefully this will mean a drop in a price and a increase in quality

[lulz]

U.S. unveils carrot and stick Afghan drug strategy


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States on Thursday said it plans to reward Afghan provinces that combat the opium trade with more development aid in a new anti-drug strategy but analysts doubted it will make much difference anytime soon.

U.S. officials unveiled the plan as part of a new carrot-and-stick approach of giving greater financial incentives to provincial governors to fight the opium trade while stepping up efforts to eradicate poppy crops and stem the flow of drugs.

They said they plan to spend $25 million to $50 million to reward provinces that make significant progress against drugs, up from about $21 million budgeted in the current fiscal year and $6 million the previous year.

They also plan to better coordinate counter-narcotics and counter-insurgency work in Afghanistan, which is the source of about 90 percent of the world's opium and is grappling with a revived Taliban insurgency.

"We want to make sure there are greater rewards for success and greater consequences for failure," Ambassador Thomas Schweich, the acting U.S. assistant secretary of state for international narcotics and law enforcement, told reporters.

U.S. officials said the insurgency and the opium trade are increasingly intertwined in the country, which in the past 18 months has seen its bloodiest fighting since U.S.-led and Afghan forces toppled the Taliban movement in 2001.

While praising elements of the new counter-narcotics plan, analysts said the magnitude of the drug problem in Afghanistan and the depth of corruption made it unlikely that it would make much headway.

'TOO UNSTABLE, TOO POOR'

"There are some positive ideas ... which may help to boost the effort but it's very hard for me to see in the near term that these are efforts are going to make a serious dent," said Alex Thier of the United States Institute of Peace think tank.

"It probably plays out very badly and that's simply because Afghanistan is too unstable, too poor and its officials are too corrupt," analyst Anthony Cordesman of the CSIS think tank in Washington said of the overall approach.

The $25 million to $50 million for economic development in provinces that tamp down the drug trade is only a part of the substantial U.S. budget for counternarcotics in Afghanistan.

According to figures provided by the State Department, Congress initially set aside $449.9 million for Afghanistan counter-narcotics work in the current fiscal year, which ends on September 30, and then approved another $388.2 million.

U.S. officials also plan to provide more troops to accompany Afghan forces that eradicate poppy crops and go after drug traffickers. They also will have a stepped-up public education campaign about the evils of growing poppy.

In a joint statement, the top Democrat and Republican on the House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs welcomed the new emphasis on financial incentives but said the strategy needed to do more to go after major traffickers.

"What the plan lacks is the recognition that Afghanistan is approaching a crisis point, and that immediate action is required to eliminate the threat of drug kingpins and cartels allied with terrorists so we can reverse the country's steady slide into a potential failed narco-state," Committee Chairman Rep. Tom Lantos, a California Democrat, and Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Florida Republican, said in the statement.

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsO...9?pageNumber=2

Jenius! I'm sure the warlords will be blown away by the US offer of 25-50 million dollars, and instantly burn their multi-billion dollar opium operations to the ground!

Reputation Comments on this post:

hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaahahaa!

[Joe Duffy]

I think Mr. Bush should send all the DEA out to Afghanistan to stop those nasty drug lords, that would show them who is boss.

[Alfa]

Fighting drug lords with drug lords eh?

[Paracelsus]

Not the DEA. The Cocaine Import Agency handles such situations in foreign countries.

Reputation Comments on this post:

lol

[farser]

http://www.newsflavor.com/World/Asia...Harvest.113816

Interesting statistics about the Afghanistan Opium trade.