Afghan farmers of poppies find themselves caught between the devil and the deep sea. With poverty rife in the war-torn nation, it’s difficult to resist the lure of easy money from cultivating opium poppies, despite international efforts to curb the poppy trade.
Hat tip: DrugSpot
More revelations from The Senlis Council today, with a new report on the wires that the British government has failed to honor its pledge to compensate Afghani poppy farmers for eradicating papaver somniferum crops, causing widespread anger in the volatile region.
Based on interviews with farmers in the Helmand province, where 3,300 British troops will arrive over the coming months, the group claims that U.K. counter-narcotics officers promised local farmers $350 for every fifth of a hectare of opium poppies they destroyed.'These farmers kept their side of the deal and eradicated their crops, but the British Government did not keep their word,' said Mohammad Gull, a local representative from the Sharwali District in Helmand who was involved in the initial negotiations with the British representatives. 'In our culture this is very dishonorable and we are very angry.'
Over at DRCNet there's an interesting article about the "Strategic Communications Plan" seeks to specifically target Congress members, religious leaders, state elected officials, think tanks, media outlets, university students and officials, and the business community, both inside and outside the US.
The plan calls for big efforts to ensure that journalists are given every opportunity to figure out and report the official line. It calls for journalists to be escorted on eradication missions, regular bulletins for the press "assuming poppy eradication goes well," and "professionally designed" press kits with fact sheets "that can last for several months."
Wow.
Back in February I posted about a viable alternative to erradication in the Afghan opium war -- embracing the opium poppy as a legitimate resource. Parisian security and policy think-tank Senlis Council issued a report on this issue last month that strongly supports this position.
Well, it looks like the idea is finally gaining a bit of momentum in the mainstream press, with articles and commentary appearing in the Toronto Star and on the AFP Wire.
Continue reading "Mainstream picks up on poppy legitimization scheme" »
Using tractors, they started to tear up fields of opium poppies in Helmand province in Afghanistan's "poppy belt". Helmand alone accounts for more than a quarter of the country's poppy cultivation.
The problem for the British and the Afghan authorities is that the opium poppy trade is vital to farmers in the region. Getting the farmers to stop growing the flowers - which thrive in Afghanistan's poor soil and abundant sunshine - could take decades.
It looks like with Dubya's second unnanounced trip to Afghanistan, the mainstream US and UK media has picked up on Harmed Karzai's opium poppy eradication plan.
The Washington Post tries to keep things as boring as possible with the stats-laden report Afghan drugs trade still a major threat, while the Houston Chronical takes a more pessimistic view with Afghan Opium stymies US efforts. So where does the truth lie? Well why not just read the damn thing for yourself and make up your own mind, because it looks like all the mainstream outlets have to say is just the same-old status quo.
Drug WarRant has some interesting commentary on the south-american stats in the report.
Just in time for an official visit by American president George W. Bush, the Afghan forces assigned to eradicate the opium poppy fields have arrived at the capital of Helmand province from Kabul. Despite being the livelihood for many small farmers, President Hamid Karzai is under intense pressure from the US and Britain to end his country's opium production. The farmers' resentment is expected to spark violence. Helmand, which produces 25 per cent of the poppy crop, has been chosen as a show of his government's toughness during Dubya's visit.
It seems the enormity of the problems in tackling Afghanistan's massive opium crop are finally becoming apparant to the soldiers sent in to rid Afghanistan of its only verified export crop.
British Government ministers had repeatedly declared that one of the primary tasks of the 5,700- strong expeditionary force was to help end Afghan heroin production, which supplies 90 per cent of the narcotic in Britain. But the commander of the British forces in southern Iraq insisted yesterday that his troops would play no part in destroying poppy fields, while senior British civil servants cautioned that ending cultivation may take years.
The United Nations says Laos needs economic assistance to support farmers facing poverty after the eradication of almost all opium production. In a country that was the world's third- largest opium producer in the mid-1990s, only about 1,800 hectares (4,446 acres) of land in Laos was used for opium cultivation last year compared with 26,800 hectares in 1998 . Aid projects to Laos include $18.4 million for a three-year program that will create alternative activities for farmers.
American forces in Afghanistan are planning an offensive against the nation's poppy crop -- supposedly the country's biggest ever. Apparently a couple of Generals saw those "if you buy drugs, you're supporting al-Qaida" commercials, and decided to take action. After all, if you can't find any of the actual terrorists, you gotta make it look like you're doing something.
A United Nations-funded anti-narcotics agency says Afghanistan has again become the world largest producer of opium with a significant upsurge in 2002. The agency is urging the world community to do more to help eradicate poppy cultivation in Afghanistan.
A new report by the United Nations drug-control agency calls on the international community to help Afghanistan attack its flourishing opium economy at its roots. It urges steps such as a reinvigorated policy of crop replacement, new jobs for rural workers, and the transformation of opium bazaars into legal commodity markets. UN officials say that unless the drug economy is dismantled, there will be no sustainable development for Afghanistan and continued problems for its neighbors.
Continue reading "UN Stresses Alternate Crops for Afghans" »
Afghanistan remains the world's largest producer of opium poppy despite efforts by the war-battered country to stop trade and cultivation of the crop that is used to make heroin, the U.N. drug agency said Monday in a new report.
The executive director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime says that the price of Afghan opium has recently risen to around $600 per kilogram, making it more difficult to offer attractive incentives for farmers to grow legal crops.
Continue reading "Afghan Opium Farmers Reject Legal Crop Alternatives" »
If you can wade through all of the scare-talk and pro-WoD rhetoric, there's an amusing article from Asia Times about the continuing glut of opium coming out of Afghanistan despite the new governments "get tough" stance on Opium cultivation. Check it out here.
Afghanistan is expected to have a bumper crop this year, harvesting as much as 3,400 tons of Opium, up from 185 tons in 2001.
