Social - US wants to bring Colombia tactics to Afghan drugs war

[enquirewithin]

By Kim Sengupta in Lashkar Gar

The Independent: Published: 04 October 2007

The Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, is resisting American pressure to authorise a major programme of crop spraying to eradicate the country's massive opium crop amid warnings that it would lead to a rise in support for the Taliban.

The plan has been strongly opposed by the British, who hold that it will make the task of the military in Helmand, the province which produces 50 per cent of the opium crop, much harder. Spraying from the air, critics say, carries with it the danger of destroying other crops, causing long-term ecological damage, and affecting the health of livestock.

But according to senior Western and Afghan officials, the American position has been significantly strengthened following the latest poppy harvest, which shows a jump of 34 per cent from last year, which was already a world record. America's determination has also been sharpened with the evidence that Afghan opium, which now accounts for 93 per cent of the world's supply, has started reaching markets in the United States.
The recent appointment of a former US ambassador to Colombia as envoy to Kabul is seen as the most overt move by Washington to ensure that spraying takes place in Afghanistan. William Wood, who has acquired the nickname "Chemical Bill" among British and other Nato officials for his fervent belief in chemical spraying, was in the team which implemented "Plan Colombia", which involved aerial spraying in the Latin American state in an attempt to eliminate cocaine production.

The policy in Colombia came under severe criticism with claims that it damaged legitimate crops and ultimately failed in its aims of destroying the coca crop. However, during his confirmation hearing before Congress, Mr Wood said the Colombian option may be repeated in Afghanistan and General Peter Pace, chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, has also voiced the opinion that it could be a template for Afghanistan. Members of the Colombian security forces are already training Afghan police in counter-narcotics.

A recent meeting of the Afghan cabinet, according to senior officials, came close to approving the use of spraying on a limited, experimental basis. However President Karzai is said to have agreed to delay the decision after impassioned pleas from the ministers of Agriculture and Public Health. The issue remains immensely sensitive and yesterday President Karzai's spokesman insisted: "Our view is there should be a comprehensive policy to tackle the problem, including the provision of alternative livelihoods. It was decided that we will not start crop spraying. This was a unanimous decision by the government."

Yet Ahmed Zia Massoud, one of Afghanistan's two vice-presidents, has publicly declared his support for spraying. He said: "I have no doubt that the efforts of Britain and the international community in fighting the opium trade in Afghanistan are well-intentioned, and we are grateful for their support. But that policy has not worked and the time has come for us to adopt a more forceful approach.

"We must switch from ground-based eradication to aerial spraying. The opium directly supports those who are killing Afghan and international troops. Failure to achieve a substantial reduction in the opium crop will be equivalent to supporting the Taliban."
A US diplomatic source said: "There is absolutely no evidence that spraying causes harm to people or cattle. Everyone has seen the rise in the poppy harvest, and obviously the current policy is not working."

Additional reporting by Ahmed Nasruddin Ali


__________________________________________


Spraying crops didn't work in Colombia, so why not try it in Afghanistan? Some logic.
See this post.

[Lunar Loops]

This from e-ariana.com (original source Reuters):

U.S. ponders future of spraying Afghan opium crops

Reuters
08/11/2007
By David Morgan

WASHINGTON - A heated debate within the Bush administration over Afghanistan's surging opium trade could lead the United States to shelve a contentious plan to spray poppy crops with herbicide from the air, officials say.

Aerial spraying, used by the United States to fight cocaine production in Latin America, is championed by counternarcotics officials in the White House and State Department as the most effective way to destroy poppies in Taliban-controlled areas and cut a key source of funding for the Islamist militants.

But it has run into broad resistance from Afghan officials, the U.S. Congress and Defense Department, and European allies who fear it could backfire on efforts to win over the Afghan people, according to officials and experts involved in the discussions.

Critics say spraying would give the Taliban a powerful propaganda tool among villagers devastated by a Soviet campaign that destroyed food crops with aerial defoliant.

"Aerial spraying would likely have a serious detrimental effect on the counterinsurgency front," said Seth Jones of the RAND Corp, a global policy think tank based in California.

"It's hard to overstate how much disinformation there is among Afghan farmers. It would be fairly easy for insurgents to say: 'The U.S. is spraying chemicals to kill your crops.' And in fact, they've already started saying this."

Record poppy harvests have given Afghanistan a $3 billion opium industry whose corrupting influence poses a serious threat to government authority and saddles other countries with the criminal and health problems of the heroin trade.

The Afghan crop, which produces 93 percent of the world's opiates, is a major source of income for Taliban insurgents in the south who have deepened ties with farmers and traffickers, according to U.S. defense and counterterrorism officials.

"It's fueling the insurgency. Removing that revenue would diminish the threat considerably," said Beth Cole of the U.S. Institute of Peace.

CHEMICALS OR TRACTORS?

U.S.-backed herbicide spraying proved controversial in Latin America, where its use on coca fields is blamed for anti-American sentiment that helped bring leftist Evo Morales to power in Bolivia.

The U.S. House of Representatives endorsed a funding ban on Afghan herbicide spraying in its 2008 appropriations bill for foreign operations, while the Senate version declared aerial spraying as less effective than manual eradication. Final legislation is expected later this year.

The U.S. National Security Council entered the debate on Thursday at a meeting that considered whether aerial spraying should be part of U.S. policy on Afghanistan.

"The question is whether aerial spraying would be an option. This would be a decision by the administration as a whole as to what avenue to pursue here," said one U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Thursday's NSC discussion illustrated the divided positions of the State Department and Pentagon, according to a knowledgeable source. There was no immediate word on whether the meeting reached a resolution.

Formal NSC backing could escalate U.S. efforts to persuade the Afghan government to accept a limited aerial spraying program, experts said.

NSC officials declined to comment, while a State Department spokeswoman said only that the United States will implement whatever strategy the Afghan government chooses to adopt.

In 2007, Afghan poppy cultivation jumped 17 percent to 477,000 acres -- more than all of the land set aside for coca in Colombia, Peru and Bolivia combined, according to the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime.

[tranquillike]

oh jeeze... I better keep my nose out of this one. Anything dealing with politics is likely to get me a pat on the back by one and a smack on the face by another. Oh, but I could go on and on about this one.

[tranquillike]

anyways, since 14-cinnamyl 3-acetyl oxymorphone will be flooding the streets after they shut down all of the illicit opium growers no worries LOL ;-)

sorry, just couldn't help myself