US gives up on eradicating Afghanistan’s opium
Published: June 27, 2009
Updated 4 months ago
Since the United States invaded Afghanistan, the country’s number one cash crop, opium, has repeatedly broken production records. By some estimates, the occupied territory now supplies some 90 percent of the world’s poppies.
So far, eradication efforts have merely fueled the Taliban’s coffers and driven civilian farmers further outside of U.S. influence. Because of this, the United States has formed a new strategy in the fight against the crop: They are giving up.
“The Western policies against the opium crop, the poppy crop, have been a failure,” said Richard Holbrooke, America’s envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, speaking to a G8 conference on Afghanistan.
“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,” he told Reuters.
He said the new U.S. strategy will focus on intercepting chemicals used to refine opium into heroin. Troops will also attempt to target the country’s most powerful drug barons, although this has been a component of counter-narcotics in the country since the invasion.
“The Taliban [...] derives up to $100 million a year from the poppy harvest by taxing farmers and charging safe passage fees — money that will buy weapons for use against U.S., NATO and Afghan troops,” noted the Associated Press.
In spite of past efforts, from 2005 - 2006, opium production ramped up 26 percent, reported The Washington Post.
“Any disruption of the drug trade has enormous implications for Afghanistan’s economic and political stability,” reported the Post. “Although its relative strength in the overall economy has diminished as other sectors have expanded in recent years, narcotics is a $2.6 billion-a-year industry that this year provided more than a third of the country’s gross domestic product. Farmers who cultivate opium poppies receive only a small percentage of the profits, but U.S. officials estimate the crop provides up to 12 times as much income per acre as conventional farming, and there is violent local resistance to eradication.”
The following year, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime estimated that opium production had doubled since 2005, raising crop estimates to nearly 93 percent of world supply.
“‘The results are very bad, terrifyingly bad, because cultivation has increased by 17% to an historic level,’ said Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the Office on Drugs and Crime,” in a BBC report. “No other country beside China in the 19th Century ever had such a large amount of land dedicated to illegal activities.”
Costa told Reuters on Saturday that U.S. opium eradication efforts had been a “sad joke” and a waste of lives, all to eliminate approximately three percent of the county’s production volume.
Officials in President Barack Obama’s administration say they want to emphasize alternative crops and avoid aggressive eradication operations that could alienate Afghans.
Graph credit: BBC.
With AFP
19 comments
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Anyone who thinks they are goving up because it causes problems needs to have their head examined. The real reason is that there is a criminal element within our Federal Government that is selling the drugs in a world wide distribution market. The proceeds from the sale of the huge drug sales are being used to fund Black-Op’s within the US and elsewhere.
How I know is because I was in a family for more than 26 years who are directly involved in laundering and actually distribution of these drugs.
Meet the family:
Mexico drug plane used for US ‘rendition’ flights: report - Sep 4, 2008
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5j6QonBKKMo2gw1e3ql-xUcQEZbVg
Cocaine plane trail is open challenge for Obama administration - January 11, 2009
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/notebook/bill-conroy/2009/01/cocaine-plane-trail-open-challenge-obama-administration
Clyde O’Connor is my ex-sister-in-law’s brother. Her husband is my ex-wife’s brother and both Clyde and him are partners in the business who owned the planed featured in the news article above.
Please note the CIA link. The family often bragged about being a CIA Asset.
There is a lot more for another time….
Marty Didier
Northbrook, IL
Yeah, and besides the pot culture is way more easier pickins’. Ruining lives for using it is the Drug Warriors’ Cash Cow.
The U.S. ‘gave up’ because they finally struck a $atisfying deal, like a boss with striking workers. And that’s a DUH.
sigh… another example of how Obama has given in to the demands of the CIA….
If you guys compare opium production while the Taliban was in power, to the present, you’ll see a huge increase right after they were toppled. Before hand, while the Taliban were still in power, any form of narcotics were banned, with those caught receiving harsh sentences (like death).
This only means that the control over the Afghan poppy is total.
We all know that stopping the heroin production was a lie.
The wests’ invasion of Afghanistan was to protect one of their major income markets, not destroy it.
The American, British government and a little bit of the Vatican thrown in, are now in total control the drug trade.
Out there somewhere is a GE poppy that could eventually replace and erradicate todays species, you know like the eventual erradication of rice and corn etc. but its been put on the shelf alongside free energy and cure-all drugs and locked away.
Fighting the cartells is just another smoke screen and food for thought for the masses. If they fought the cartells they would be biting off their own fingers.
An economic solution would be cheaper than the current military solution in both lives and American dollars. We are committed to helping the Afghans so lets put the money up front and buy the raw opium directly from the farmers. Whether the US uses it for medicine, comes up with new and better uses for it, or burns it makes little difference right now. It would put money where it is most needed, into the farmers hands. It would cut out the middlemen Taliban. We would stop killing civilians, who aren’t seen as acceptable collateral damage by the Afghans. We could quickly move on to the process of helping farmers move into other forms of agriculture. Time to quit the mindless pursuit of Al Qeada. That lost it’s importance the minute we invaded Iraq. An economic solution for Afghan was suggested before the Taliban ever got control but it was ignored. Time to dust out the old plan and give it a try.
The ‘war on (some) drugs’ is an excuse to invade and murder and carpet bomb their fields causing their unborn children into deformity, so can can officially fuel an underground market free of taxes, and replace outlawed slave labor with prison labor.
tinyurl.com/1mn
I’ve always enjoyed CIA cocaine; maybe it’s time to try a lil federal heroin.
There is one very important point not mentioned:
Kharzai and his power base is in the south where most of the opium is produced. Eradicating the crop weakens Karzai. Since we believe he is helping us against taliban, the opium can stay.
I knew from day one if you eliminate the poppies from Afghanistan you cut the money off, IF YOU WANT TO STOP THEM. It was never an issue. The fucking CIA can go into south american countries and fuck with their land as pointed out in John Perkins book “Economic Hitmen”, but they couldn’t figure out the opium in Afghanistan. Gee, I guess they wanted the shit storm to never end.
Ah, did Marty just suddenly stop breathing? From ‘Natural Causes’ I presume?
Stephen —
when I saw the headline, I planned to post that graph, you know, showing the year 2001 with virtual stoppage of Afghan opium, but when I read the article, there it was! And yet you, Stephen, make no mention of the fact, nor of the fact that the CIA is the primary drug operation in the world, and has been for generations. Were you assuming (rightly) that your readers and commenters know all about it, and you could let them bear the opprobrium of the Powers?
I have that same graph as part of my CIA Narcotics street placard, which rehearses the intertwined history of that Secret Society and drugs through the past few centuries.
Click the image to expand to a readable size.
It also covers the story Marty mentions above — published in the Miami Herald Spanish Edition, but never in English, to my knowledge. Undeniable CIA culpability.
Did I forget to close that anchor? Sorry — the URL is http://proudprimate.com/images/narcoCIAphoto.JPG
I thought that the whole idea of the attack on Afghanistan was to get the heroin business rolling again and put some cash into the slush fund for illegal activities at the CIA. Those damned Talibanis had it shut off for a decade or more!! Talk to your kids the USA will be up to its ass in heroin for the working class as soon as Ollie North can get it processed and shipped here. This is going to be worse than 1973. God Bless Amerika.
You might have a point Marty about the drug planes. What I think is that the contractors and the private individuals doing work for the govt. and some in the govt. (military, cia agents etc.) are working side deals. By using the govt. rendition planes (a way to get past inspections) they can make a killing with transporting drugs. And here’s another catch also, it seems a lot of these planes are crashing after they are sold. So what that tells me is one of two things. One, they transport enough drugs and when suspicion starts to stick it’s nose into the operation they sell it to international players (there suppliers or partners) for a large sum of money a capstone if you will. The second, part of the govt. is finding out that their planes are being used for drugs and are deciding to “take them out”.
In a nutshell a criminal organization is running parallel with an illegal torture program. What did people and congressmen and women expect to happen. When you have employees in the employee of your organization doing illegal things, can’t expect them to be honest once there done doing your illegal things. Some may but many will find an advantage to make money using your equipment or your knowledge. Just like in the movie Casino, if the mob is skimming in the count room the skimmers are going to enrich themselves to at the same time.
Welcome to the slippery slope of morals and crime.
We should let the Pharms buy Afgan opium and compete directly with the Taliban. Let BigPharma fight the war, they will destroy any Taliban competition faster than an air-strike.
Why not have the US government by the poppies from the farmer. Farmers get their money. The farmers get 12 times what they were getting before. 2 times the what… 2 dollars a year they were getting before?
That mean for 22 bucks a year per farmer, the farmer are thrilled with the USA. They don’t plow out crap up, no heroin, and people can wallpaper Pasadena with flower petals for free every New Years Day.
Outlawing plants and drugs does not work. The more they are supressed the higher the profit margin. Let’s legalize the Afgans’ opium, we have to buy it from somewhere. We will make lots of poor Afganis happy, they can feed their kids and completely cut out the Taliban.