Opium diplomacy

[lequebecfume]

Opium diplomacy
By Tony Barber

Published: February 6 2009 02:00 | Last updated: February 6 2009 02:00

Ever since it looked probable that Barack Obama would win last year's US presidential election, European governments have fretted about how they would react if, upon taking office, he asked them for a bigger military contribution to the US-led war against the Taliban in Afghanistan. The war isn't going down well with European public opinion, especially in Germany and Italy. On the other hand, you can hardly say No to the man you were desperate to see replace George W. Bush in the Oval Office.

Perhaps Europeans have been asking themselves the wrong question. Evidence is growing that Obama will rethink US policies and recognise that there are more desirable - and achievable - goals in Afghanistan than traditional military victory. The appointment of Richard Holbrooke as the special US envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, and of Karl Eikenberry as the next US ambassador to Kabul, is part of this picture.

Eikenberry, a career military man, is also a scholar and linguist with deep knowledge of Asian affairs. William Wood, outgoing ambassador, has been nicknamed "Chemical Bill" because of his insistence that spraying poppy fields is the best way to tackle Afghanistan's rampant heroin business. Afghanistan accounts for more than 90 per cent of the world's heroin supply. Its annual opium harvest is worth up to $3bn, or almost half the country's official gross domestic product. Profits from heroin fund the Taliban - and line the pockets of corrupt Afghan officials. Holbrooke knows all this. In a damning newspaper article on January 23, he said the US counter-narcotics effort in Afghanistan "may be the single most ineffective program in the history of American foreign policy".

So what's the answer? A radical solution is for the US and its European allies to buy up the entire Afghan opium crop every year and turn much of it over for medical purposes around the world. This would not only starve the Taliban of money and undermine global organised crime, it could even improve western relations with Iran.

For according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, the world's 11m heroin addicts include no fewer than 1.6m in Iran, all dependent on supplies flowing from neighbouring Afghanistan. General David Petraeus, the head of the US military's Central Command, observed last month that the Iranians "don't want to see the narcotics problem get worse. In fact, they want to see it reduced. It's a huge issue in Iran."

Quite a few Nato commanders are adamantly against what would be an unconventional approach to the Afghan crisis. But the idea may appeal to Holbrooke and to some of his European friends, such as Bernard Kouchner, France's foreign minister.

One thing is certain. Fail to break the narco-state in Afghanistan, and no military policy the west dreams up will bring it long-term stability.

www.ft.com/brusselsblog

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/fe5c0498-f3ee-11dd-9c4b-0000779fd2ac.html


--LEQ
A sane voice in the wilderness of the unbalanced

[Binky]

Ever since it looked probable that Barack Obama would win last year’s US presidential election, European governments have fretted about how they would react if, upon taking office, he asked them for a bigger military contribution to the US-led war against the Taliban in Afghanistan. The war isn’t going down well with European public opinion, especially in Germany and Italy. On the other hand, you can hardly say No to the man you were desperate to see replace George W. Bush in the Oval Office.

Perhaps the Europeans have been asking themselves the wrong question. The evidence is growing that Obama will fundamentally rethink US policies and recognise that there are more desirable - and achievable - goals in Afghanistan than a traditional military victory. The appointments of Richard Holbrooke as the special US envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, and of Karl Eikenberry as the next US ambassador to Kabul, are part of this picture.

Eikenberry, a career military man, is also a scholar and linguist with deep knowledge of Asian affairs. The outgoing ambassador, William Wood, has been nicknamed “Chemical Bill”, because of his insistence that spraying poppy fields is the best way to tackle Afghanistan’s rampant heroin business.

Afghanistan accounts for over 90 per cent of the world’s heroin supply. Its annual opium harvest is worth up to $3bn, or almost half the country’s official gross domestic product. Profits from the heroin business fund the Taliban - and line the pockets of corrupt Afghan government officials. Holbrooke knows all this. In a damning newspaper article on January 23, he said the US counter-narcotics effort in Afghanistan “may be the single most ineffective program in the history of American foreign policy”.

So what’s the answer? A radical solution is for the US and its European allies to buy up the entire Afghan opium crop every year and turn much of it over for medical purposes around the world. This would not only starve the Taliban of money and undermine global organised crime. It could even improve Western relations with Iran.

For according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, the world’s 11m heroin addicts include no fewer than 1.6m in Iran, all dependent on supplies flowing from neighbouring Afghanistan. General David Petraeus, the head of the US military’s Central Command, observed last month that the Iranians “don’t want to see the narcotics problem get worse. In fact, they want to see it reduced. It’s a huge issue in Iran.”

Quite a few NATO commanders are adamantly against what would be a startlingly unconventional approach to the Afghan crisis. But the idea may well appeal to Holbrooke, as well as to some of his European friends such as Bernard Kouchner, France’s independent-minded foreign minister.

One thing is certain. Fail to break the narco-state in Afghanistan, and no military policy the West dreams up will ever bring long-term stability to the country.

http://blogs.ft.com/brusselsblog/2009/02/buying-up-the-opium-crop-a-new-western-policy-in-afghanistan/

[lequebecfume]

Big Picture in Afghanistan


February 13, 2009, 1:39 PM

By PETER CATAPANO

In the Washington Post today, Max Boot, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, says that a recent cover story in Newsweek suggesting that Afghanistan might become “Obama’s Vietnam” was full of “trite analogies” but “performed a public service by bringing up one of the biggest mistakes the United States made in Vietnam: backing the overthrow of Ngo Dinh Diem, the president of South Vietnam, in 1963.”

Boot points out that Diem’s successors were even more damaging to the U.S. war effort in Vietnam, and advises not to make the same mistake in Afghanistan.

Given recent events in Afghanistan — a gun battle in which five children were killed, the deadly Taliban attack in Kabul and a warning from the U.S. national intelligence chief Dennis Blair that the Afghan government is failing to counter the Taliban, all on the heels of Richard Holbrooke’s arrival today in Kabul, where tensions between the U.S. and Afghanistan were made explicit — the pressure to replace President Hamid Karzai is mounting.

To make his point, Boot turns to Iraq, noting U.S. unhappiness with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki in early 2008, when things seemed to be going wrong. One year later, he says, Maliki’s position is strong: “Maliki only looked weak at a time when conditions in Iraq were so dire that any leader would have had trouble exercising authority. Improvements in security have led to improvements in governance.”

Joe Klein, writing at Time’s Swampland blog, thinks Boot’s Iraq analogy is off base:

First of all, it’s perilous to compare Afghanistan to any other place–and particularly Iraq. As General David Petraeus has found in the course of his policy review, Afghanistan is vastly poorer than Iraq, with extremely low rates of literacy outside the major cities; it also lacks even Iraq’s tenuous and recent history of central control. It is an agglomeration of valleys and tribes, with little to hold it together.

Also, Maliki was not nearly as corrupt as Karzai seems to be. According to the U.S. military, Karzai allies run shadow governments in the two main opium producing provinces. In Helmand, the Karzai operative is a former governor who was caught in possession of nine tons of opium. In Kandahar, it is Karzai’s brother. But the corruption extends well beyond the poppy crop. There’s also the case of the 5,000 missing policemen. My host in Afghanistan, the NATO Commander Egon Rommes, was horrified by the fact that the funding for these officers simply evaporated. In another case, a former employee at the Ministry of Finance told me that she had found a $350,000 payoff written into a government contract.

At CQ Politics’s SpyTalk, Jeff Stein examines the question of whether the U.S. has run out of patience with the Afghan president. Stein quotes “a former practitioner of U.S. covert action” (that’s a spy) who agreed with Klein’s corruption charges but might also side with Boot’s advice to go easy on Karzai:

“Pushing him out,” agreed the covert action veteran, who spoke only on condition of anonymity because he did not want to attract the attention of his former employer, “won’t solve the corruption problem, and in fact may increase instability.”

At ABC’s The Numbers, Gary Langer, the director of polling at ABC News, has some advice for Holbrooke. The gist, not surprisingly, is to look at the numbers; specifically “a regression analysis suggesting that the root causes of growing discontent in Afghanistan stem from a panoply of issues – not solely security, not just road building or school openings, but a range of security, economic and development concerns.”

Langer concludes: “In short, Holbrooke’s visit to Kabul is a start – but to get the full picture he’ll need to go far more broadly, and far deeper, than a sit-down with the local brass.”



http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/big-picture-in-afghanistan/?ref=opinion

[lequebecfume]

GLOBE ESSAY

Obama's men in Afghanistan

Misconceptions in the new administration could set back progress in the fight against the opium economy


THOMAS SCHWEICH
From Saturday's Globe and Mail
February 14, 2009 at 12:00 AM EST

Earlier this month, the United Nations released a report predicting a decline in opium cultivation in Afghanistan for the second year in a row. Because Afghan heroin funds the insurgency, corrupts the government and interferes with legitimate agricultural programs, this was good news for everyone. Four years ago, farmers grew poppies in all 34 of Afghanistan's provinces. Three years ago there were six poppy-free provinces; two years ago, there were 13; last year, there were 18; and experts predict that 22 of the 34 will likely be poppy-free this year. Nationwide, poppy cultivation was down 19 per cent last year, and it will likely fall even more this year, prompting the top UN diplomat in Afghanistan to say a few days ago, "This year could be a turning point" in the war against Afghan heroin.

As one of the U.S officials who developed and co-ordinated the counternarcotics strategy currently in effect, I felt heartened, but only a little. We — the international community and the Afghans — should have done a lot better. We have not delivered an effective counternarcotics campaign in two insurgency-ridden southern provinces — Helmand and Kandahar — the source of more than three-quarters of the heroin produced on Earth. The principal culprits are the Taliban, who protect their fields aggressively (killing dozens of Afghan narcotics police each year), and corrupt Afghan officials, many of whom come from these two provinces, and need the support of powerful drug lords in upcoming elections.

Outside Afghanistan, there are, regrettably, two other reasons we could not make inroads in Helmand and Kandahar: Ambassador Richard Holbrooke and Lieutenant-General Karl Eikenberry. U.S. President Barack Obama has just chosen Mr. Holbrooke, a former Clinton administration official, as his special representative in the region, and Lt.-Gen. Eikenberry as his ambassador to Afghanistan. We all wish them well, but, if they are to succeed, they need to get their facts straight, establish clearer lines of authority, and avoid the increasing militarization of civilian projects.

CARROTS AND STICKS

http://images.theglobeandmail.com/archives/RTGAM/images/20090213/wcoessay0214/0214poppy188.JPG
Hired farm hands pick the last of the poppy crop in an undisclosed field near Kandahar City last year. These seasonal labourers form a pool of potential Taliban fighters every year once the harvest is complete. (CP/Murray Brewster)



In early 2008, Mr. Holbrooke wrote in the Washington Post that the U.S counternarcotics strategy in Afghanistan is "the single most ineffective program in the history of American foreign policy." Almost every salient fact in his piece was wrong. He claimed that the U.S. had a policy that focused on destroying poppy fields; in fact the policy — published on the State Department website — balances incentives such as development assistance and alternative crops with disincentives such as eradication and arrest. The U.S. developed the policy in close co-ordination with its allies, principally Britain and Canada.

Mr. Holbrooke also said that the poppies are grown in "rocky, remote" areas by destitute farmers with no alternatives, when two UN reports have demonstrated that relatively wealthy farmers grow most of the poppies in Helmand, which is the epicentre of world poppy cultivation. Many of them are government officials. Most of them only recently switched from growing wheat or other badly needed food crops to growing poppy. And they grow it on a well-irrigated, flat fertile plain near the major city of Lashkar Gah. These farmers are not poor, they do not live in remote areas, and they have alternatives. Mr. Holbrooke played into the hands of the Taliban and corrupt war lords, who also perpetuate the destitute-farmer myth in order to prevent any serious law enforcement action in that part of the country.

He has claimed that it was "an absolute scandal" that the Afghans and their allies have never arrested a single Afghan drug lord. In fact, four Afghan drug lords are in jail in the United States: Haji Bashir Noorzai, Mohammed Essa, Khan Mohammed and, most recently, Haji Juma Khan, aka HJK, probably the biggest drug lord in Afghan history. Afghan and international agents arranged for his arrest in October, and have since transported him to the U.S., where he will soon stand trial in open court.

I met Karl Eikenberry at the end of 2005, during his tour as commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, when he briefed the drug-enforcement bureau at the U.S. State Department. He told us point-blank that the military would not get seriously involved in the drug trade in Afghanistan; it was not their mission. Drug experts warned him that the Taliban were likely to re-enter the trade to raise money, but Lt.-Gen. Eikenberry ignored the warning.

As a result, we did not get serious U.S. or NATO military support for counternarcotics development and enforcement activity in Helmand and Kandahar. Because those provinces are volatile the program cannot succeed without some sort of force protection for both humanitarian and law-enforcement efforts there. We never asked the military to destroy poppy fields or even arrest traffickers, but rather to enable Afghan counternarcotics authorities, and their international mentors, to execute a balanced plan of incentives and disincentives, including, but not limited to, eradication of the fields of wealthy farmers. Lt.-Gen. Eikenberry did nothing to help. Now, by UN estimates, the Taliban raise up to $300-million a year from the drug trade, and use it to kill Americans and Canadians.


Lt.-Gen. Eikenberry was also the architect of what another American general told me was the "flimsy and under-resourced" initial plan to train the Afghan police. So we could not count on the Afghan National Police for force protection either.

The misinformed statements of Mr. Holbrooke and Lt.-Gen. Eikenberry have greatly hindered our efforts to build a consensus in the international community on the drug issue. Yet even so, we have had two relatively successful years.

MILITARIZATION

Equally disturbing is the continued militarization of the civilian effort in Afghanistan. The Pentagon has already taken over police training in Afghanistan. Their latest plan is to arm Afghan militias, a scheme that U.S. allies, including Canada, have roundly and rightly criticized. And now Mr. Obama — in an unprecedented move — intends to appoint Lt.-Gen. Eikenberry — a three-star general — to be the U.S. ambassador there. So the U.S. National Security Adviser, the Director of National Intelligence and the ambassador to Afghanistan will have 11 stars among them. Civilians, mainly seasoned foreign service officers, once held all those posts. This is a dangerous trend if we want to build confidence among Afghans, who are weary of civilian casualties.


Hired farm hands pick the last of the poppy crop in an undisclosed field near Kandahar City last year. These seasonal labourers form a pool of potential Taliban fighters every year once the harvest is complete. (CP/Murray Brewster)



In the drug arena, some NATO officials have been looking into the often discussed "silver bullet" of legalizing the opium trade. This is another example of what happens when military personnel get into areas outside of their expertise, advocating simplistic schemes that would have no chance of success.

First, the price for legal opium is much lower than the price of illegal opium, so farmers would have no incentive to switch to legal opium and would continue to sell to the illegal market under the convenient cover of legality.

Second, only about 15 per cent of the Afghan people grow heroin, so if you subsidize a legal opium program, everyone will grow it. Finally, Afghanistan is facing a serious food shortage; the last thing it needs is more opium. Maybe if the starving Afghans are all high on heroin, they won't notice … We have had two years of successful cultivation reduction; we need to build on that, not reverse course.

It is unclear who is running Afghan policy in the Obama administration. In recent weeks, we have seen Vice-President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Defence Secretary Robert Gates, and General James Jones, the National Security Adviser travel to the region and to Europe, or testify to Congress about the need for change in Afghanistan. Now we have Mr. Holbrooke, a sometimes difficult personality, with the title "special representative," an unclear term, usually used in the context of the United Nations, not the United States.

According to press reports, Mr. Holbrooke does not report to Secretary Clinton. It is not clear if he has authority over the Pentagon, or if the Pentagon would recognize his authority. And his relationship to Gen. Jones — whose job is to co-ordinate among the relevant U.S. agencies — is equally ill-defined.

A couple of weeks ago, someone in this convoluted hierarchy anonymously leaked word that Mr. Obama might withdraw support for President Hamid Karzai. Though I am one of Mr. Karzai's harshest critics, I was astounded that a government official would make such an irresponsible statement to a media organization, instead of discussing these concerns directly with Mr. Karzai. In the past, when making huge policy shifts, we spoke on the record. And we never advocated regime change in Afghanistan, just regime reform. Afghanistan is a democracy and a sovereign state. The U.S. can ask for change, but we have no right to announce, anonymously or on the record, that it needs a new president.

This statement had everyone reeling both in Washington and inside the Karzai government. No one knew where it came from. This is what you get with an unclear chain of command.

President Obama promised the U.S. and the world a renewed focus on Afghanistan, and that is needed. But he will not improve things unless the he shows the international community that he has a clear leader for that effort: someone who knows the facts, accepts a larger civilian role and can bring discipline to the process.

Thomas Schweich is a visiting professor at Washington University in St. Louis. He has been U.S. ambassador for counternarcotics in Afghanistan, deputy assistant secretary of state for international law enforcement, and chief of staff of the U.S. mission to the United Nations.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090213.wcoessay0214/BNStory/specialComment/home

[lequebecfume]

Raids seize £50m of Afghan heroin

The raids also seized weapons and ammunition

Hundreds of British and Afghan troops have seized heroin and drug-making chemicals in Afghanistan with a street value of more than £50m ($71m).

Defence Secretary John Hutton praised the troops' bravery and said the seizures in Helmand province would starve the Taleban of funding.

The raids on four drug factories, involving 700 troops, would also stop the drugs reaching UK streets, he said.

Mr Hutton said there was now more "security and governance" in Helmand.

News of the raids came as the BBC obtained emails from a UK official working in Helmand estimating that 60% of Afghan police in the province use drugs.

'Starve Taleban funding'

Operation Diesel, which took place between 6 February and 11 February, also disrupted facilities making improvised bombs.
Mr Hutton said: "Our dedicated and professional forces have once again taken the fight to the enemy.

"Their bravery, coupled with the size and sophistication of our firepower, has cleared the enemy from large areas of Helmand bringing security and governance to more of the province.

The success of the operation is a significant boost to the Afghan authorities in their fight against the drugs trade
Brig Gordon Messenger

Afghan police 'on drugs'

"The seizure of £50m worth of narcotics will starve the Taleban of crucial funding, preventing the proliferation of drugs and terror on the UK's streets."

Troops destroyed 1,295kg of wet opium, estimated to have a street value of more than £6m as heroin.

Also found were chemicals used in the manufacture of heroin - ammonium chloride, acetic anhydride, sodium chloride and calcium hydroxide - in sufficient quantities for the production of drugs with an estimated street value of more than £50m.

Troops also seized weapons and ammunition, including rifles, machine guns, three rocket launchers with additional warheads, and a motorbike modified for use in a suicide attack.

The commander of Task Force Helmand, Brig Gordon Messenger of the Royal Marines, said: "The links between the Taleban and the drugs trade are well proven and we know that the revenue from narcotics production directly funds the insurgency.
"Operation Diesel was a clinical precision strike, supported by strong intelligence, which has had a powerful disruptive effect on known insurgent and narcotics networks in the area.
"The success of the operation is a significant boost to the Afghan authorities in their fight against the drugs trade."
Operation Diesel involved Afghan Security Forces and British troops from 45 Commando Royal Marines, 42 Commando Group Royal Marines, 3 Commando Brigade's Reconnaissance Force, 1st Battalion The Princess of Wales Royal Regiment and the Armoured Support Group.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7896151.stm



http://m1.2mdn.net/2142781/BBC_persia_newspaper_300x250_random.swf?clickTag=h ttp%3A%2F%2Fad.doubleclick.net%2Fclick%253Bh%3Dv8% 2F37d8%2F3%2F0%2F%252a%2Fb%253B211751979%253B0-0%253B0%253B19196833%253B4307-300%2F250%253B29907298%2F29925175%2F1%253B%253B%25 7Eokv%253D%253Bsectn%253Dnews%253Bctype%253Dconten t%253Bnews%253Duk%253Bslot%253Dmpu%253Bsz%253D300x 250%253Btile%253D4%253B%257Esscs%253D%253fhttp%3A% 2F%2Fwww.bbc.co.uk%2Fpersian%2Ftv%2F


newshawk: Smoking Moose

[DoobieDuck]

Lequebecfume and Binky..a big thanks to both of you for posting stories such as this. Your efforts to inform are appriciated greatly by me and I believe others as well..DD

[lequebecfume]

US commander: Troops 'stalemated' in Afghanistan

By LARA JAKES –


WASHINGTON (AP) — The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan offered a grim view Wednesday of military efforts in southern Afghanistan, warning that 17,000 new troops will take on emboldened Taliban insurgents who have "stalemated" U.S. and allied forces.

Army Gen. David McKiernan also predicted that the bolstered numbers of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan — about 55,000 in all — will remain near those levels for up to five years.

Still, McKiernan said, that is only about two-thirds of the number of troops he has requested to secure the war-torn nation.

McKiernan told reporters at the Pentagon on Wednesday that the extra Army and Marine forces will be in place by the summer, primed for counterinsurgency operations against the Taliban but also ready to conduct training with Afghan police forces.

McKiernan said what the surge "allows us to do is change the dynamics of the security situation, predominantly in southern Afghanistan, where we are, at best, stalemated.

"I'm not here to tell you that there's not an increased level of violence, because there is," he said.

The 17,000 additional troops, which President Barack Obama approved Tuesday to begin deploying this spring, will join an estimated 38,000 already in Afghanistan.

Another 10,000 U.S. soldiers could be headed to Afghanistan in the future as the Obama administration decides how to balance its troop levels with those from other nations and the Afghan army. The White House has said it will not make further decisions about its next moves in Afghanistan until it has completed a strategic review of the war, in tandem with the Afghan government.

Richard Holbrooke, the U.S. envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan, said Wednesday that the foreign ministers of those countries will travel to Washington next week to meet with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and other officials as the U.S. formulates a policy review.

Appearing on "The NewsHour" on PBS, Holbrooke was asked how the Obama administration sees victory in Afghanistan. "First of all, the victory, as defined in purely military terms, is not achievable, and I cannot stress that too highly," he said. "What we're looking for is the definition of our vital national security interests."

Holbrooke described his recent trip to the region and the delegations coming to Washington as "a manifestation of a new, intense, engaged diplomacy designed to put Afghanistan and Pakistan into a larger regional context and move forward to engage other countries in the effort to stabilize this incredibly volatile region."

Whatever the outcome of the review, McKiernan said, "we know we need additional means in Afghanistan, whether they are security or governance-related or socioeconomic-related."
The estimated level of 55,000 troops needs "to be sustained for some period of time," he said, adding that could be as long as three to five years.

Some of the 17,000 U.S. troops soon headed overseas will be training Afghanistan police while battling insurgents as the nation's August elections approach. They include an Army combat brigade from Washington state and a Marine expeditionary brigade made up of troops from Camp Lejune in North Carolina and Camp Pendleton in southern California.

McKiernan said they would be sufficient for what he believes needs to be done through summer, when the fighting tends to be heaviest.

With the added ground troops, McKiernan said it's possible the military will scale back airstrikes that have been blamed for civilian casualties and angered the Afghan population.

The Taliban insurgents, some of whom have worked in concert with al-Qaida and other terrorist groups, have increasingly focused on what McKiernan described as small-scale attacks on government targets, police and official convoys. Last week militants launched a bold strike on government buildings in downtown Kabul.

McKiernan said the number of insurgents has not grown, but they are "very resilient" and "they have continuously adapted their tactics."

"We're not going to run out of people that either international forces or Afghan forces have to kill or capture," McKiernan said.
Ultimately, the conflict will be solved not by military force — but through the political will of the Afghan people, the general said.

"The insurgency is not going to win in Afghanistan," McKiernan insisted. "The vast majority of the people that live in Afghanistan reject the Taliban or other militant insurgent groups. They have nothing to offer them. They do not bring any hope for a better future."

Robert H. Scales, a retired Army two-star general who visited southern Afghanistan last October as a military adviser, said in a telephone interview Wednesday that he agrees there is essentially a stalemate in that area, which is a traditional stronghold for the Taliban movement. But he said that does not mean U.S. and allies forces are losing.

"It's reached the point where neither side has gained an advantage," Scales said, adding that he believes the south — particularly in the opium-producing Helmand Province — is the area with the greatest potential for U.S. gains against the Taliban, especially with more U.S. forces due to deploy there.
The rising violence in Afghanistan is conducted by militants who operate out of sanctuaries in Pakistan tribal regions along the border of the two nations. McKiernan called the stability of both countries "a regional challenge" and credited Pakistan with trying harder to secure the border.

"It's not enough; we need to do more," McKiernan said. "But it is a start."

He called it "in our vital national security interest to succeed" in Afghanistan.

"It's a country that is absolutely worth our commitment," McKiernan said. "And it's a region that is absolutely worth the commitment of the international community to ensure that it's stable at the end of this."

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iWxiu65iLP4CvDJ7BEsBOx-u_vdwD96EBG200

[lequebecfume]

Salvaging Afghanistan


Published: February 19, 2009

President Obama and his aides haven’t completed their policy review for Afghanistan — one of the most dangerous of the many foreign policy disasters George W. Bush so blithely left behind. But the situation is unraveling so quickly that aides say that the president decided that he had no choice but to send another 17,000 troops while commanders and diplomats try to come up with a strategy to stop the bloodletting and to try to block the Taliban from recapturing the country. There isn’t a lot of time.

In coming weeks, Mr. Obama will have to grapple with a series of very difficult questions starting with how he will define success in Afghanistan. The president will have to consider whether to keep supporting a central government in Kabul or focus more on cultivating local leaders. The rampant corruption of President Hamid Karzai’s government has driven far too many Afghans back to the extremists.

During the campaign, Mr. Obama said that he was open to talks with some Afghan militants. In recent weeks, American commanders said they are expanding contacts with so-called moderate members of the Taliban. At this point, there may be no other choice.

But we are deeply skeptical that there is any deal to be cut with Taliban leaders who gave sanctuary to Al Qaeda before 9/11 and would undoubtedly insist on reimposing their repressive, medieval ways, including denying education and medical care to women.

Mr. Obama and his team also must quickly come up with a plan to more effectively expand and train the Afghan Army (which eventually must replace American and NATO troops) and police force, curb a $720 million Afghan opium industry that finances the Taliban and encourage development along the Afghan-Pakistan border.

Mr. Obama will have to figure out a way to persuade NATO allies to send more troops — with orders to fight — and more money. Along with the United States, Britain, Canada and the Netherlands have been carrying nearly all of the burden. The new American president has rock star ratings in Europe. He needs to leverage some of that to get leaders there to finally ante up.

Mr. Obama’s biggest challenge will be trying to figure out how to persuade Pakistan that the fight against extremism is not a favor to the Americans. It is essential to Pakistan’s own survival.

The nuclear-armed country faces terrifying problems: political and economic instability, home-grown extremists who are far too cozy with Pakistan’s intelligence services, a lawless border region used by the Taliban to execute bloody attacks on Afghanistan. This week the government effectively ceded the Swat Valley — which is in the border region but just 100 miles from Islamabad — to militants in a misguided bid for a false peace.

The White House’s decision to bring senior Pakistani and Afghan officials into the policy discussion — they visit Washington next week — is very welcome. Saudi Arabia, Iran and India must also be involved.

Mr. Obama goes to Europe the first week of April for a NATO summit. He has told aides to come up with a strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan before then. Given how fast things are coming apart in Afghanistan — the Taliban have now moved into peaceful areas near Kabul — they may have to decide even faster.

More Articles in Opinion »A version of this article appeared in print on February 20, 2009, on page A30 of the New York edition.



(http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/20/opinion/20fri1.html)

[lequebecfume]

Taliban Earns $300mn From Opium Trade: U.N.

2/19/2009 10:20 PM ET


(RTTNews) - The United Nations Thursday said that the Taliban is earning $200 to $300 million annually from a surcharge it levies on illegal trade of opium in that country despite a fall in opium harvest last year, media reports say.

Linking prevailing security scenario with illicit opium cultivation in Afghanistan, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) estimates that "the Taliban have an annual revenue of between $200-300 million from a surcharge levied on illicit drug trade".

International Narcotics Control Board in its report for the year 2008 released Thursday said security is "weak" in southern provinces of Afghanistan and an "overwhelming" majority of villages are involved in illegal opium poppy cultivation.

It, however, said while the area under cultivation was reduced by a fifth following international efforts to persuade farmers to switch crops, better yields meant production dropped only 6 percent to 7,700 tons--the second biggest on record,-- after a record 8,200 tons in 2007.

The illegal opium cultivation has dropped by 19 per cent from its record level of 0.193 million hectares in 2007 to 0.157 million hectares last year. Despite this, more than seven years after the U.S.-led invasion the country accounts for 90 per cent of illegal opium in the world.

The eradication efforts in Afghanistan are being "hampered" by lack of security, poor planning, corruption and inadequate equipment and funding, the report said.

by RTT Staff Writer


http://www.rttnews.com/ArticleView.aspx?Id=860344&SMap=1

[lequebecfume]

The war in Afghanistan

February 21, 8:16 PM
by Ryan Quattro, Detroit Independent Examiner


When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An' go to your Gawd like a soldier.
Go, go, go like a soldier,
Go, go, go like a soldier,
Go, go, go like a soldier,
So-oldier ~of~ the Queen!

Rudyard Kipling

President Barack Obama has okayed the deployment of an additional 17,000 US troops to Afghanistan in order to break what General David McKiernan has labeled a "stalemate". General McKiernan, who is the commander of the International Security Assistence Force(ISAF) and U.S. Forces Afghanistan(USFOR-A), also indicated that the US will need as many as 60,000 troops altogether in Afghanistan , up from the current 38,000 troops who are currently deployed in Afghanistan.(source: yahoo!news)

But this substantial increase in US troops presence will not provide an immediate tonic to the war torn region "I have to tell you that 2009 is going to be a tough year. This is not a temporary force uplift.." says McKiernan.

According to McKiernan, the US needs the troops to patrol and watch the border with eastern Pakistan where insurgents are crossing over from camps where they learn guerrilla warfare tactics, prepare suicide bombers, and receive weapons training. In addition, the US military needs better surveillance and intelligence equipment as well as specialized troops for training Afghan army members.(source: politco.com)

Such news is disturbing, but hardly surprising. In war, there will be swings between the fortunes of the combatants.But it is even less surprising in this war considering how much effort and attention has gone into the war in Iraq and how little was given to Afghanistan. Former President George W. Bush's decision to take on a large project like Iraq before he had even settled the Afghanistan, was prehaps his biggest mistake.

A percursory review of the past 200 years of Afghanistan's history would have told Bush and his compatriots that any war in Afghanistan would long, difficult, and fraught with potential pitfalls.Alas, President Bush blithely decided to expand the 'War on Terror" without heeding the lessons of history.

President Bush would have been wise to give thought to George Santayana's famous aphorism "those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it". How different things might have been.

Afghanistan is still the mountainous, water deprived, "country" that so bedeviled Her Majesties troops in three separate wars--1838-1842, 1878-1880, and in 1919.It still is the extremely effective place to wage unending guerrila warfare with its innumerable crevices, valleys, and an whole assortment of geographical features that make it easier to conduct hit-and-run and raids upon large, well armed, invaders.The Soviet Union found this out the hard way in the Soviet-Afghan War(1979-1989).

What is makes Bush's decision even more mystifying is that President Bush is of the generation that saw United States lose a protracted conflict vs a similiarly poorly armed, rag tag, force to that what the the British and Soviets faced in Afghanistan.One would have thought that a person coming of age in that period of time would have been keenly aware of the dangers of taking such an adversary lightly.

But all that is now in the past. What we now face is a growing insurgency that could wreck any progress Afghanistan has made towards becoming a modern society.This war can no longer be about punishing those who sheltered or were part of Al Queda, but making sure that the United States leaves Afghanistan better than when they arrived.The truth is that Afghanistan is probably going to always be infected by groups like the Taliban.The geography alone makes it attractive for groups looking for a hideout to furtively plan attacks upon a selected target.

But we should and I believe, we are planning on giving the Afghan people the tools in which they can attempt at least to build a modern,structured society.The construction of a government and all its accountrements such as a treasury, armed forces, police, and internal revenue.is a start. Now they have to find a way to develop an economy that is not dependent on the opium industry.

Failing to provide even something as basic as this would mean that all the blood and treasury we have spilt means nothing. We simply cannot permit this to happen. We mustn't shirk the responsiblity we took on when we invaded Afghanistan for political expediency or out of some warped sense of morality. We must finish what we started.


http://www.examiner.com/x-3588-Detroit-Independent-Examiner~y2009m2d21-The-war-in-Afghanistan

[lequebecfume]

In the north, Afghans fight hunger, not the Taliban

Mon Feb 23, 2009 7:21pm EST
By Jonathon Burch

SANG-I-KHEL, Afghanistan (Reuters) - The United States' decision to send thousands more troops to Afghanistan will mean little to the people of northern Sang-i-Khel village whose fight is not against Taliban insurgents but against hunger.

Last week, U.S. President Barack Obama ordered 17,000 additional U.S. soldiers to Afghanistan to tackle an intensifying insurgency across the south and east of the country.

Yet in the relatively peaceful north, Afghans face a different struggle. Severe drought and soaring food prices have left hundreds of thousands of people facing a daily battle to survive the winter.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) says some 280,000 Afghans in the north of the country are suffering from the drought, the worst in a decade, and are unable to meet their basic food needs.

Although not normally part of its mandate, the ICRC has distributed food with the Afghan Red Crescent to some of the worst affected areas, reflecting not only the scale of the crisis but also the lack of aid in this part of the country.

"The ICRC got involved because the need was so great. This is affecting thousands and thousands of people," said Azim Noorani, an ICRC delegate in northern Afghanistan.

THE "RICH" GET RICHER

While Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries in the world, dependent on billions of dollars in foreign aid every year, poverty varies by region. Some areas are much better off than others.

Southern Helmand province, where more than two-thirds of the country's illicit opium is produced and where the insurgency is strongest, is among the top three richest provinces by most indicators, according to a 2008 report by the United Nations.

Helmand has the highest rate of car ownership in the entire country.

Yet southern provinces such as Helmand get most of the aid despite their relative affluence and their role as the center of Afghanistan's estimated $3 billion illicit drugs trade industry.

The U.S. international development agency (USAID) is by far the biggest aid donor in Afghanistan and has pumped millions of dollars into Helmand. If Helmand were a country it would be the fifth largest recipient of USAID funding.

Helmand was pledged $403 per person in aid between 2007-2008 compared to $153 in Balkh, aid agencies said. Neighboring Sari-i-Pol and Kunduz provinces fared much worse with $53 and $55 per person.

For the people in Sang-i-Khel and surrounding Chemtal district in Balkh province, hundreds of kilometres north of Helmand, life has remained virtually unchanged for hundreds of years. Contact with the outside world is rare and help even rarer.

"We haven't had any government assistance. They promised us they were going to give us food but they didn't," said Mohammad Rafi, 25, at an ICRC food distribution site in Sang-i-Khel.


Although the NATO-led military force has a presence in Balkh, international soldiers are rarely seen in Chemtal, said Rafi, and then only to inquire about security.

Rafi, along with hundreds of other Afghans from the surrounding area, came to Sang-i-Khel last week, some traveling for hours on foot, to collect emergency food rations of rice, beans, oil and tea, donated by the ICRC.

VICIOUS CIRCLE

The ICRC is distributing food to some 30,000 people across three northern provinces where last year's harvest failed.

"Life is not good. There was nothing last year. No water. No wheat. If there is no water this year, I will have to leave and go to the city. I will become a migrant," said Habibullah, 45, a farmer in Sang-i-Khel and father of 10.

His face weathered by a lifetime of hardship, Habibullah tells his story while waiting patiently to receive food handouts. Behind him lie fields where the furrows from last year's plowing are still visible as nothing grew there.

Afghans have survived drought and famines for centuries. But without long-term development, millions of Afghans are unlikely to break the cycle of poverty and could be susceptible to militant groups that exploit the discontent of poor Afghanis.

The people of Chemtal are locked in a vicious circle. No water means no harvest which means no seeds for planting the following year. Many have left to find work in the city or have either killed or sold what little livestock they had left.

"If we didn't have this food (handout), I would die," said Chari, 35, making a cutting gesture across his neck with his finger.

(Editing by Megan Goldin)


http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSTRE51N03T20090224

[lequebecfume]

Hope, change and T.W.A.T.

Daniel Foster
Issue date: 2/24/09


The War Against Terrorism (T.W.A.T) is taking a predictable yet nevertheless frightening direction as Obama recently announced an increase of 17,000 troops to be deployed to Afghanistan. We are led to believe that the surge is the practical strategy of punishing the real terrorists who attacked us on 9/11, which the previous administration failed to accomplish due to the distraction of the Iraq War. We are also meant to believe that the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan will lead to the further liberation of women. In reality, the motives are fundamentally similar to the reasons for occupying Iraq: strategic and economic domination of the Middle East.

To understand U.S. interests in Afghanistan requires knowledge the basic history of U.S. intervention in the region. During the 1980s the U.S. financially and militarily funded the mujahideen, who Ronald Reagan praised as "freedom fighters," in order to oppose the Soviet Union. After the fall of the Soviet Union many members of the mujahideen later joined Al-Qaeda or the Taliban, which are two very distinct groups with different goals. The Taliban gained control by overpowering the other warlord tribes during the civil war, which was due to the heavy intervention of Russia and the U.S. during the 80s. Many people preferred the Taliban to the warlords because the warlords forced people to pay high taxes in exchange for the use of roads. When the Taliban came to power they removed the roadblocks, which lowered prices and benefited the people.

During the Afghan civil war the U.S. and the American oil company Unocal hoped for stabilization, in order to build a pipeline which would bypass Iran and Russia. The Taliban failed to fully control key locations of the country, ending any short term hopes of building a pipeline. Osama bin Laden returned after being forced out of Sudan but Al-Qaeda's relationship with the Taliban didn't extend far beyond uniting against the Northern Alliance warlords. From the U.S. perspective the Taliban was housing a known international terrorist. But according to David Whitehouse, an editor for the International Socialist Review: "Before the fall of 2001, it's not clear that the Taliban considered the U.S. to be its enemy. Already under U.S. sanctions since the African embassy bombings, the Taliban didn't want to face the same kind of isolation that the Sudanese regime had faced. In fact, the Taliban saw benefits of collaborating with the U.S. as late as 2000-01. After the Taliban imposed a ban on opium poppies in 2000, Bush's State Department announced in May 2001 that the U.S. would reciprocate with a $43 million grant."

Thus, when the post-9/11 Bush administration refused to negotiate with the Taliban after their offer to give bin Laden to the U.S. in exchange for the cessation of military hostilities, the U.S. created its own worst enemy in Afghanistan. But since Iraq was always the main target for establishing U.S. dominance, Afghanistan soon became buried in the middle of newspapers and a footnote in the Bush administration. The U.S. nevertheless continues routine air strikes that kill thousands of innocents, and the U.S. supports the Northern Alliance warlords which oppress women with equal harshness to the Taliban. According to a prominent women's rights group based in Afghanistan, "The U.S. "War on terrorism" removed the Taliban regime in October 2001, but it has not removed religious fundamentalism which is the main cause of all our miseries. In fact, by reinstalling the warlords in power in Afghanistan, the U.S. administration is replacing one fundamentalist regime with another. The U.S. government and Mr. Karzai mostly rely on Northern Alliance criminal leaders who are as brutal and misogynist as the Taliban."

The reinforcement of a strong central government in Afghanistan is the new administrations main goal, as long as that regime supports the interests of the United States. President Obama is supposedly leading the liberal's war of hope and change, but using the same language of increasing troop levels and developing the economy for stabilization as the previous administration. Furthermore, there is concern that the spilling of U.S. violence into Pakistan and the recent discovery of U.S. drones in a Pakistani base will lead to the spread of war into the neighboring country. Make no mistake: the war on Afghanistan is not about catching terrorists or liberating the people, but rather about establishing a permanent U.S. presence in the region. T.W.A.T is neither hopeful nor about change.


http://media.www.carolinianonline.com/media/storage/paper301/news/2009/02/24/Opinions/Hope-Change.And.T.w.a.t-3646482.shtml

[lequebecfume]

The military alone cannot defeat Taliban insurgency

LONDON: Nobody I talked to in Afghanistan last week wants a return to Taliban rule. Afghans cherish the opportunity to live a life of their own choosing and the chance to govern themselves.

But Afghans fear an enduring stalemate. The Taliban are too weak to fight Afghan and coalition forces in conventional confrontation. But Afghan institutions are not yet sufficiently rooted to drive out the Taliban’s guerrilla warfare.

It is in this context that we welcome President Obama’s decision to deploy a further 17,000 troops to Afghanistan. The threat of terrorist attack on our soil remains real. Afghanistan was terrorism’s incubator of choice in the 1990s and its borders with Pakistan remains so today. Al Qaeda is still hiding on these borders, co-opting the Taliban and tribesmen.
The US commitment, alongside us and forty other nations, is an important signal of their long term determination
Our armed forces, diplomats and aid workers, operating in extraordinarily difficult terrain, continue to make a huge difference. Their unflinching courage and professionalism is a credit to this country.

Over the past year in Helmand, they’ve helped double the number of districts under Afghan government control. Opium cultivation is down, the legal Afghan economy is growing, and many more people have access to basic healthcare and schools.
But as we have long argued, there is no purely military solution to the insurgency. Unless it is aligned with a clear political and economic strategy, military might will only force the Taliban further underground, or encourage them to play a waiting game.

Defeating the insurgency means understanding it, and being clearer about the forms it takes. The insurgency is not drawn from a single organisation, nor is it fighting for a single cause. There are ideological Taliban, $10 a day Taliban, fighters from beyond the region, criminals, narco-traffickers, warlords and wannabe powerbrokers.

And all of them rely to some extent on the acquiescence of some ordinary citizens, who despite dreading the Taliban’s return, doubt the capacity of the state to protect them, so hedge their bets.

Our strategy is to help the Afghan government divide the insurgency, and co-opt those prepared to renounce Al Qaeda, give up violence, and accept the Afghan Constitution. This means countering the full spectrum of insurgents in a range of different ways.

If we want ordinary Afghans to deny the Taliban support and sanctuary, we need to give them confidence that their state will protect them. That is why we must build the capacity of the Afghan state – especially the National Army, the police and the judiciary – and help the government provide for its people.
When it comes to those who have aligned themselves with the Taliban not for safety and lack of choice, but rather for power and influence, we need stronger incentives and sanctions.

They need to know that if they renounce violence and accept the rule of law, there are opportunities for them to exercise influence through the legitimate political process. But if they do not accept the Afghan constitution, they will be pursued relentlessly by military forces.

Then of course there are the more extreme elements of the insurgency; the hard-line ideologues who are determined to reject the authority of the legitimate state, and prepared to fight to the bitter end. And there are the small numbers of foreign fighters.

For both these groups, the only response is confrontation and the power of force, of the coalition and increasingly the Afghan forces. There has in the last year been significant attrition in these groups’ ranks on both sides of the border.

Last Wednesday I went to the Khyber Pass. The ease with which insurgents can move across the 2,400km border between Afghanistan and Pakistan is a massive problem. American determination to look at Afghanistan and Pakistan together is a great step forward.

With intimate connections between the insurgency in Kunar and the militancy in Waziristan, between the criminals, spoilers and terrorists in Lashkar Gah and Quetta, in Peshawar and Nangahar, Afghanistan can never be safe unless the Pakistani government successfully addresses the militancy in Pakistan.

Out of the loss of life to terrorism in Pakistan, the danger of spreading Talibanisation, the summary executions and the school demolitions, is emerging a growing acceptance within Pakistan’s elite that violent extremism is the greatest threat the country faces.

We need to support the democratically-elected government and its military forces in rooting out the extremism on its soil and developing a joint approach with the Afghan authorities.
Afghanistan is a test of the resolve of Nato and the broader international alliance. More troops will never be enough to enforce stability across the whole country. But by pressuring those who refuse to co-operate with the Afghan state, and protecting those who do, military force can directly support a political solution.

This is the only way to build a safe and secure Afghanistan. And it is the best way to ensure that the Taliban do not return to power, and that the country cannot, once again, become a haven for those who seek to do us harm.

*** David Miliband is Britain’s foreign secretary.


http://www.gulf-times.com/site/topics/article.asp?cu_no=2&item_no=275505&version=1&template_id=48&parent_id=28

[lequebecfume]

LOSING AT THE DRUG WAR

US policy has stirred Afghan opium trade

February 26, 2009

Feb. 17 editorial "Wrong front for the drug war," you wrote that the US and Afghan governments have made southern Afghanistan a major front in the fight against drugs.

Yet the rebirth of the opium trade has happened under the watchful eye of the US military, and has led to the empowerment of brutal drug lords and a general lack of security, leaving women with ever fewer rights.


At least part of the problem is that our military has been making our foreign policy decisions in Afghanistan for decades, and it seldom, if ever, cooperates with other organizations or government agencies in the process. Advice from elders and scholars in Pakistan and Afghanistan has been largely ignored. For example, the basic need to rebuild the irrigation system has been unmet. Without water, few crops can grow except for opium and marijuana.

Even in Kabul infrastructure has been so grossly mismanaged that electricity and sanitation function only erratically. Meanwhile, outside of Kabul the Taliban pay twice the salary of the Afghan army - no wonder they control three-fourths of the countryside.

If our government really wants to glean insight about what to do in Afghanistan, it may want to at least consult Afghan parliamentarians, such as Malalai Joya, who dare to stand up to these corrupt warlords. But we'd better act soon. People who speak out get shot unless they have their own army. After winning several landslide elections, Joya has survived four assassination attempts for her troubles. She's anxious, desperate, to talk to America. When will Richard Holbrooke listen?

Rachel Williams
Groveland
The writer is East Coast contact for the Afghan Women's Mission.

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/letters/articles/2009/02/26/us_policy_has_stirred_afghan_opium_trade/

[lequebecfume]

US 'not winning in Afghanistan'

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/45545000/jpg/_45545819_006982868-1.jpg
President Obama is reviewing US strategy on Afghanistan

US President Barack Obama has said the US is not winning in Afghanistan, saying it is more complex than Iraq.

In an interview with the New York Times, he said reaching out to the Taleban could be an option, in the same way outreach had worked in Iraq.

However, the "fierce independence among tribes" in Afghanistan presented different challenges, he said.

A month into his presidency, Mr Obama authorised the deployment of up to 17,000 extra US troops to Afghanistan.
Asked if the US was winning in Afghanistan, Mr Obama replied: "No."
Mr Obama and his advisors are reviewing the US strategy on Afghanistan, and have looked at what has worked in Iraq.


Those tribes are multiple and sometimes operate at cross purposes, and so figuring all that out is going to be much more of a challenge President Obama

"There may be some comparable opportunities in Afghanistan and in the Pakistani region," he said on board Air Force One.
Mr Obama, referring to the US policy in Iraq, said: "If you talk to General [David] Petraeus, I think he would argue that part of the success in Iraq involved reaching out to people that we would consider to be Islamic fundamentalists, but who were willing to work with us because they had been completely alienated by the tactics of al-Qaeda in Iraq."

However, Afghanistan could be a different situation.

"The situation in Afghanistan is, if anything, more complex," he told the newspaper.

"You have a less governed region, a history of fierce independence among tribes.

"Those tribes are multiple and sometimes operate at cross purposes, and so figuring all that out is going to be much more of a challenge."

Terror suspects

He also discussed what the US would do if a terror suspect appeared in a country without an extradition arrangement with the US.

"There could be situations - and I emphasise 'could be' because we haven't made a determination yet - where, let's say that we have a well-known al-Qaeda operative that doesn't surface very often, appears in a third country with whom we don't have an extradition relationship or would not be willing to prosecute, but we think is a very dangerous person," he said.

"I think we still have to think about how do we deal with that kind of scenario," he added.



http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7930865.stm




--LEQ
visitors over :D

[lequebecfume]

WASHINGTON POST WRITERS GROUP
Shot in the Arm
by Alvaro Vargas Llosa

What has the Drug War done for you lately?
Post Date Wednesday, March 11, 2009



WASHINGTON--A decade ago, the U.N. General Assembly set an objective of "eliminating or significantly reducing" narcotics cultivation and trafficking "by the year 2008." According to the data of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, the effort has been an unmitigated disaster. Opium and cannabis production has doubled, while cocaine has slightly increased. The same proportion of adults--5 percent--consumes drugs today, mostly marijuana, as in 1998.

As officials from around the world gather in Vienna this week to chart the next decade of the anti-drug effort, it may be time to rethink the entire approach.

Echoing the Prohibition era in the United States, illegality has engendered organized crime empires that, in order to supply narcotics, undermine the peace and institutions of many countries. The latest example is Mexico, where President Felipe Calderon has unleashed the wrath of the state against the drug lords. The war between the state and the cartels, and among the mafias themselves, has mostly taken place in northern cities such as Ciudad Juarez, Tijuana and Culiacan. Ten thousand people have been killed and drug-related corruption has been exposed at the highest levels, including the attorney general's office.

The anti-drug budget worldwide is staggering: The United States alone devotes more than $40 billion yearly to the effort. Yet whenever attempts to limit supply manage to raise street prices in one country, prices go down in other countries: In Europe, the price of cocaine has dropped by half since 1990. But the crackdown has reduced the purity of the drug, increasing the harm to people's health. According to the police, in Britain the purity has decreased from 60 percent to 30 percent in a decade.

Not to mention the consequences to individual liberty. Those who banned alcohol in 1920 felt compelled to amend the Constitution before they could pass Prohibition. No such amendment was ever presented to legitimize what Richard Nixon first called the "war on drugs" in 1971. The excesses committed in its name have created all sorts of social stigmas--including the fact that about 30 percent of black males in America spend some time in jail in large part due to drug-related offenses.

Three Latin American former presidents--Brazil's Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Mexico's Ernesto Zedillo and Colombia's Cesar Gaviria--recently put out a report condemning the war on drugs as a counterproductive failure, advocating a public health-based approach instead of repression. In anticipation of the meeting in Vienna, the latest issue of The Economist magazine, the bible of many current and aspiring enforcers of the law, devoted its cover, a survey and an editorial to making the case for legalization. For years, conservative publications such as The Wall Street Journal have run articles expressing the same view, including those by its expert on Latin America, Mary O'Grady. Leaders on the right (Henry Kissinger) and organizations of the center-left (George Soros' Open Society Institute) have also spoken out on the issue.


No one knows exactly how drug use would be impacted by its legalization or its decriminalization. In countries where it is severely punished, consumption is high, which might mean that it would stabilize or even drop. Many European countries--Spain, Portugal, Italy, several Swiss cantons--have extremely lenient drug policies; consumption in those countries (except for Spain) is not very high. But even assuming a moderate increase in consumption, decriminalization or legalization would eliminate or substantially diminish the horrific side effects of the current war.

A movement in favor of legalization has existed in the United States for years. Because it is associated with the cultural war that has raged since the 1960s, its impact has been small. But the debate goes on. In many states the police do not go after personal possession of marijuana, and California is considering a bill that would make it legal. The vestiges of Puritan dogmatism--which H.L. Mencken memorably called the "inferior man's hatred of the man who is having a better time"--have made it difficult to open a serious debate nationwide.

Today we regard the Opium Wars of the 19th century--by which the British retaliated against China for clamping down on opium imports--as crazy. One and a half centuries from now, people will read in total amazement that so much blood and treasure was wasted in the failed pursuit of a private vice that a relatively small percentage of the world population was not ready to give up.

Alvaro Vargas Llosa is a senior fellow at the Independent Institute and the editor of Lessons from the Poor.


http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=8c6683c9-996a-494a-b0f6-b314fcbd5b45

[lequebecfume]

U.S. should buy Afghanistan's opium supply

Article Last Updated; Sunday, March 15, 2009

We will not win the war in Afghanistan with military action. Afghanistan, unlike Iraq, has a very weak economy, and any further action there will only hurt efforts to help keep the government in Pakistan in control of their nuclear weapons. We cannot afford the loss of more lives or the financial loss that will result from our current course of action.



Winning the war there only requires understanding the fact that Afghanistan produces 90 percent of the world's opium. That is about 8,000 tons grown in all 34 provinces of the country, and sold for between $3-4 billion. A large part of that money ends up in the hands of the Taliban. The USA could buy all the opium for $6 billion. We will not pay them with money that would flow back to the Taliban. We will pay with food, medical supplies, equipment, and other goods and services needed by the people of that country.

Leaders in the 34 provinces would bring crops to the capitol and return home with goods and services in hand or ordered for delivery. Aside from increasing our GNP by $6 billion and creating more jobs for people in our country, we would be increasing Afghanistan's GNP. The cost of this economic war would be much less than that of the 17,000 additional troops we sent to Afghanistan this week. We will still need a small military presence to provide government security and oversee business transactions and flow of goods. The Taliban would have lost a major funding source and some desire to have a large military presence. We would have 90 percent of the world's opium, which could be destroyed or converted and sold as medical-related products. If the Afghan people want to double their crop production, we will buy it all. A few extra billion is a good thing for both countries' GNPs.

I look forward to consulting with President Obama about my idea. In the unlikely event that he decides not to call me, I hope he understands that my first sentence is a fact.

Robb Heady, Durango


http://durangoherald.com/sections/Opinion/letters_to_the_editor/2009/03/15/US_should_buy_Afghanistans_opium_supply/

--LEQ
and again...! there is still a glut of medical opium on the world market, time is of the essence

[lequebecfume]

US Envoy Holbrooke Blasts Wasteful Anti-Opium Efforts in Afghanistan

Monday, March 23, 2009

http://www.allgov.com/Images/eouploader.d89febcf-da8a-44fc-9a05-185f04b65528.1.data.jpg
US Marine in a field of opium poppies

The United States appears to be losing yet another war (on drugs), this time in Afghanistan, as Richard Holbrooke recently announced that the $800 million a year spent by the US on counter-narcotics would be better allocated helping Afghan farmers.

Holbrooke, who was appointed by President Obama as special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, stated that efforts to eliminate opium poppy crops had failed to hinder the Taliban insurgents’ ability to raise money from the drug trade. “It is the most wasteful and ineffective program I have seen in 40 years,” he said. Holbrooke believes much of the money should instead be used to help Afghanistan’s expanding agricultural sector, which would in turn create many jobs.

Despite the U.S. government statement last month that poppy cultivation was reduced by 19% last year, the UN estimates that Afghanistan accounts for 90% of the world’s illegal heroin supply.

Holbrooke noted the inadequacies and corruption of the Afghan national police, and stressed the need to fix these problems in order to help strengthen local security. He also stated that the real threat to NATO in Afghanistan actually comes from western Pakistan, where the Taliban have significant support.

-Aaron Wallechinsky

http://www.allgov.com/ViewNews/US_Envoy_Holbrooke_Blasts_Wasteful_Anti_Opium_Effo rts_in_Afghanistan_90323

[lequebecfume]

Crisis in Afghanistan

Oren Ipp
Wednesday, March 25, 2009

In the coming days, the Obama administration will release its strategic review of policy to Afghanistan. The new strategy must recognize one fundamental truth: the underlying cause of the crisis in Afghanistan is not the strength of the Taliban - but rather, the weakness of the Afghan state.

For every Afghan civilian killed by the war in 2008, 20 died from poverty and hunger. The government's inability to provide even the most basic services, and to maintain some semblance of peace and stability, has left a vacuum - and the Taliban is filling it, one village at a time.

I have watched efforts to (re)construct Afghanistan since my first trip to Kabul in 2002. Since then, billions of aid dollars have come into the country, yet signs of progress remain scarce. Kabul still does not have adequate or consistent city-powered electricity, and open sewers take the place of sidewalks. Schools are built around the country, but there is no money for books or teacher salaries. The justice system is dysfunctional, and a culture of impunity eclipses the rule of law.

After almost a decade of support, donors and Afghans alike still do not trust President Harmid Karzai's administration: Indeed, the Afghan government's capacity is so low - and corruption so high - that more than half of the international aid dollars bypass its coffers completely. According to recent polls, public support for the government is at a three-year low, down to less than 50 percent. Taliban ranks are swelling with young Afghan men desperate for a way to support their families. They are farmers and unemployed day laborers fighting for survival rather than religious fundamentalism. There are no jobs in their towns and villages, and the only government presence is often a corrupt official who, in the absence of a bribe, eradicates the only crop that the soil can support - opium poppy. Of those lucky enough to have a job, almost half make less than $1 per day. Against this backdrop it is not difficult to see that a $200 per month paycheck from the Taliban is an offer these young men - or their families - cannot refuse. The Taliban does not have to work as hard to gain support, they merely have to be in the vicinity. That is, in Pakistan.

For these reasons, the Obama administration's new strategy toward Afghanistan must be informed by the reality of almost complete state failure. Additional troops is one element of a renewed commitment to ending the conflict in Afghanistan, but the bulk of U.S. involvement must be aimed at buttressing and building the state. What does this mean?

First, investing in relatively cheap, realistic and highly visible standard-of-living projects is necessary to win back the hearts and minds of the Afghan people. Paving roads and digging wells can do wonders to public opinion in a country that scores fifth from the bottom on the United Nations Development Program Human Development index.

Second, capitalize on signs of success. In 2007, the governor of Bamyan Province only half jokingly suggested to me that the only way she might get the attention of the central government was to set off explosions in her province. Her frustration reveals a fundamental flaw of the current assistance scheme - its almost exclusive focus on the most insecure parts of the country. A renewed engagement must reward success with money and assistance.

Third, prioritize assistance to the Afghan National Army and the Afghan National Police. The formation of well-trained national security forces is imperative to lasting peace and stability in Afghanistan, as reliance on foreign troops takes a toll on the public's patience.

Finally, the Afghan government must extend its reach beyond the capital. Securing the support and buy-in of local communities and tribal populations around the country is crucial. The goal should be to help gradually connect local community councils and village elders to the formal governing structures, not seek to replace them.

Like nature, politics abhors a vacuum. Therefore, the void left behind by the withering Afghan state is necessarily temporary. State failure has turned large swathes of Afghanistan into a breeding ground for Taliban extremism. The Afghan government - with support from the Obama administration and the international community - must act quickly to reverse the trend.

Oren Ipp, a Truman National Security Fellow, has been working in Afghanistan for the the last two years.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/03/25/EDO216M8E1.DTL

This article appeared on page A - 19 of the San Francisco Chronicle

[lequebecfume]

A new strategy

| 2009-03-29 |
La Opinión

The war in Afghanistan has been going on for more than eight years and the prospects are not good. It is estimated that Taliban forces, toppled by the 2001 U.S.invasion, can be found in 70% of Afghan territory and their influence is growing rapidly.

Given this outlook, the Obama administration properly
refocused attention on this country, which had been relegated to the background by the previous administration’s preoccupation with Iraq. The war on terror started in Afghanistan and still continues there.

Islamic extremist ideology, represented by groups like Al-Qaeda, is a destabilizing force in the region and it is gaining strength in neighboring Pakistan, a nuclear power. The situation is so urgent that something new must be tried.

Sending more troops to Afghanistan is a positive sign of the new emphasis President Obama is placing on the conflict. The 4,000 new troops—who will join the 17,000 with orders to deploy and the 38,000 already there—will have the mission of training the Afghani police and military.

The White House’s goal of "restoring basic security in Afghanistan" is more realistic than George W. Bush’s goal of imposing Western democratic values.

Nevertheless, the challenge of rebuilding the economy is very similar. The military effort will be accompanied by efforts to promote crop alternatives to the poppy from which opium is derived and other economic measures to shore up stability.
The new strategy also faces the difficult mission of regaining the support of the Afghan population, which has been gradually eroded by the U.S. bombings that have killed many innocent civilians.

History shows that without this support, it will be difficult to prevail, but the region’s security and those outside the region, is at stake and there are few alternatives.



http://www.impre.com/laopinion/opinion/2009/3/29/a-new-strategy-116750-1.html

[lequebecfume]

The War on Opium

By The Globalist | Wednesday, April 01, 2009

Attention is increasingly being focused on two of the world’s apparently insoluble yet related problems, Afghanistan and illicit drugs. War-torn Afghanistan currently produces over 90% of the world’s heroin, which provides funding for the Taliban insurgency. We wonder: In which of the following countries does the largest share of the population use opiates?


Answers:
A. Afghanistan
B. United States
C. Russia
D. Iran


A. Afghanistan is not correct.

While Afghanistan is the world’s largest producer of opiates, Afghanistan has only an estimated 200,000 opiate users, or 1.4% of the population aged 15-64 (as of 2005, the latest year for which data are available).

While opium has historically been a vice indulged in primarily by the elderly, the current lack of economic and physical security, a war-traumatized population in search of relief, and the ready availability of opiates all mean that Afghanistan is at great risk of developing an endemic domestic drug problem.

B. United States is not correct.

In the United States, 1.2 million people — or 0.6% of the 15-64 year-old population — use opiates. This is slightly above the global average of 0.4%.

Worldwide, an estimated 16.5 million people use opiates. Of these, 9.3 million, or 57%, live in Asia. Europe ranks second, with 22% of the world’s opiate users — or 0.7% of the continent’s 15-64 population.

C. Russia is incorrect.

Although it does not have the highest rate of opiate use in the world, the Russian Federation has a significant problem with the drug. About 1.6% of the 15-64 year-old population uses the substance.

Russia’s drug problem has been compounded by the implosion of its public health system after the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. In addition, the treatment of drug users in sub-standard facilities has contributed to a serious outbreak of drug-resistant tuberculosis that threatens the population at large.

D. Iran is correct.

As a percentage of the population, Iran has the largest problem with opiates, with 2.8% of the population between the ages of 15-64 estimated to be using them (according to the United Nations). As supply creates its own demand, this is no doubt the result of Iran’s proximity to Afghanistan, the world’s largest producer of opiates.

As the most important immediate destinations for opiates leaving Afghanistan, both Iran and Pakistan function as both transit points and end points. The UN Office on Drugs and Crime estimates that in 2006, 53% of all opiates left Afghanistan via Iran, 33% via Pakistan and 15% via the Central Asian republics, mainly Tajikistan.



http://www.theglobalist.com/StoryId.aspx?StoryId=7638


--LEQ
shopital day....

[lequebecfume]

Afghanistan's poppies pose dilemma

http://i.usatoday.net/news/_photos/2009/03/30/poppytopper.jpg


By Ken Dilanian, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — President Obama's new strategy for Afghanistan calls for continuing the destruction of poppy fields, although experts and his top envoy to the region have called the practice counterproductive.

Richard Holbrooke, the administration's coordinator of Afghanistan policy, said this month that eradicating the opium poppy fields is "wasteful and ineffective" and has been "pushing farmers into the Taliban's hands" because it destroys farmers' livelihoods and leaves them with few alternatives.

AID: U.S. pledging $40M for Afghan elections
ARMY GEAR: Equipment gets tailored for Afghan mission
"Eradication has been a disaster," said another expert, Vanda Felbab-Brown of Georgetown University. "It has really antagonized the population."

Barnett Rubin, a New York University professor and Holbrooke adviser, told Congress last year that eradication usually fuels the Taliban-led insurgency.

FIND MORE STORIES IN: George W. Bush | Congress | White House | Afghanistan | al-Qaeda | United Nations | Washington Post | Brussels | New York University | Taliban-led | Army War College | Holbrooke
However, the white paper on Afghanistan released Friday by the White House says the new strategy will spend more on "crop substitution and alternative livelihood programs" while continuing the practice of "targeting those who grow the poppy."

Holbrooke said after the release of the Afghanistan strategy that "you can't eliminate the whole eradication program. But you've got to put more emphasis on agricultural job creation."

The dilemma of Afghanistan's poppy production has long bedeviled civilian and military strategists. The crop makes up 90% of the world's opium, which is used to make heroin, and a third of the nation's gross domestic product, according to the United Nations. Opium profits fuel the insurgency, but so does destroying the poppy crops of poor farmers, says Lt. Col. John Glaze, whose 2007 report for the Army War College argued against eradication.

Poppy production has skyrocketed since the 2001 U.S. invasion. President Bush proposed chemical spraying to kill poppy fields, but the Afghan government and European countries resisted that step as too harsh. In the past two years, the Bush administration pursued a strategy that combined limited poppy-plant eradication by hand and relatively modest programs to help farmers grow alternative crops.

The military also began targeting opium traffickers, as opposed to growers. Former Afghanistan counternarcotics coordinator Thomas Schweich says that formula succeeded in driving down opium production by 6% last year, and the number of acres under cultivation dropped 19%. Other experts, including Felbab-Brown, attribute that decline to market saturation and drought.

Holbrooke criticized the Bush strategy in a column in TheWashington Post last year. "Even without aerial eradication," he wrote, "the program, which costs around $1 billion a year, may be the single most ineffective program in the history of American foreign policy. It's not just a waste of money. It actually strengthens the Taliban and al-Qaeda."

Holbrooke repeated that view March 22 at a public forum in Brussels.

"We have gotten nothing out of it — nothing," he said. "It is true that some … opium crop has been destroyed, but it hasn't hurt the Taliban one iota. We're often pushing farmers into the Taliban hands."

http://armytimes.gannett.content.mms.mavenapps.net/thumb__619063.jpg

Felbab-Brown said providing wheat seeds to farmers in exchange for not growing opium won't work.

"Afghan farmers can buy wheat seeds, that's not the problem," she said. "The problem is that they can't make sufficient living on it or get access to credit and land. Wheat is also much less labor-intensive so it won't be able to absorb the same amount of farmers as opium poppy can."

Obama said Friday that officials will monitor the growth of illegal opium production in Afghanistan as one measure of progress in the nation.

In an e-mail to USA TODAY, Holbrooke said the opium strategy was not fully formulated.

"In the time available we could not design an all new program but there was unanimity that there was significant flaws in the current program," he said. "Now that the Strategic Review is done, we will turn our attention towards agriculture sector job creation and alternative livelihoods while at the same time the government has to go after the drug lords."

Contributing: David Jackson


http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2009-03-30-poppy-fields_N.htm

[lequebecfume]

How to help Obama in Afghanistan

April 05, 2009
HAROON SIDDIQUI

Jason Kenney plays Mike Harris-style wedge politics. In fact, his may be more dangerous.

He imports a fractious foreign conflict into Canada and pits one set of Canadians against another.

While Canadian Jewish and Muslim/Arab groups rise above their differences on the Middle East to work together, his outbursts and misuse of ministerial power make their job that much more difficult.

He obviously operates with the backing of Stephen Harper. While both are busy playing dirty domestic politics, big changes are afoot abroad that can affect Canada, and there's no evidence that their government is clued in, or even cares.

Barack Obama is ending George W. Bush's pax-Americana. He is practising multilateralism on a range of fronts, from the economy to foreign conflicts. He's also intensifying the Afghan war.

Whether one agrees or disagrees with the latter, he deserves credit for trying to end the farce that the NATO mission has become: thousands of troops and billions of dollars failing to stop the Taliban.

Obama will supply the troops and ask the allies only to help build roads, schools, hospitals, etc.

Shouldn't Canada be offering reconstruction teams and experts on justice, education, elections, census taking, gender equity? Shouldn't we be lining up idealistic youth to spend an academic term or two there in return for school credits?

Such work would advance our cause in Washington more than several bilateral trade yak-fests.

We should also be lending a diplomatic hand to Obama's regional approach to the Afghan crisis (long urged in this space).

Afghanistan cannot be stabilized without stabilizing Pakistan. That cannot be done without reducing tensions with India. The poppy problem cannot be controlled without disrupting opium traffic through Pakistan and Iran.

Iran is ready to help, and also with stabilizing Afghanistan. It, too, does not want the return of the Taliban. In fact, the Iranian delegate to the UN conference on Afghanistan at The Hague Tuesday said Iran agrees that "the buildup of Afghan security capacity is the surest and least costly way" to beat the Taliban.

The moral is that it helps to talk to one's adversaries. But Harper is stuck in the Bush mould of demonizing Iran and the Taliban, both of whom Obama wants to talk to.

Sensible as all this is, Canada should be warning him about America's blind spots:

Even with more troops, there won't be as many as called for by NATO commanders. Overreliance on bombing would mean continued civilian deaths, the biggest source of public anger in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. That must cease.

There are problems in Pakistan because there are problems in Afghanistan, not the other way around. Al Qaeda and the Taliban were driven into Pakistan. Bombing them there pushes them further south, turning the urban areas of Pakistan into a tinderbox.

Violating Pakistani sovereignty with air raids only fuels anti-Americanism and weakens Pakistan's fragile democratic government. That, too, must cease. Besides, targeted assassinations are not in keeping with the rule of law Obama has promised.

Reconstruction cannot wait for full security. If we took half the risks doing development work that we expose our troops to in combat missions, both Afghanistan and NATO would be better off. A primitive economy means overreliance on drug money, banditry, turf wars and a steady revenue for militants, just as the narco-trade was for Shining Path guerrillas in Peru and others in Colombia.

Hamid Karzai agreed to a bad sharia law for Shiite women for the same reason that Pakistan's Asif Zardari made a deal for sharia law in the Swat valley: both lead weak governments, made weaker by unpopular American actions (see above).
Karzai tolerates corruption not because he's on the take but because that's how he buys the support of the warlords put in place by the Americans in 2001-02 as a counterweight to the Taliban. Karzai, or his replacement, won't be able to shake off the warlords until Kabul gets a grip on the economy, the countryside and includes proper representation for the Pushtuns, the largest ethnic group.

Obama's is a smart way to weaken the Taliban/Al Qaeda, and fortify Afghanistan and Pakistan with the help of India and Iran – before eventually getting out.


Haroon Siddiqui is the Star's editorial page editor emeritus. His column appears Thursday and Sunday. hsiddiq@thestar.ca



http://www.thestar.com/comment/article/613747

[lequebecfume]

Seven Reasons: Why Obama is Wrong on Afghanistan
Written by Jack Random
Monday, 06 April 2009 18:13


Recently, the Center for American Progress published “Seven Reasons Why We Need to Engage in Afghanistan.” Sounding eerily like a Neocon Brain Trust from the Bush era, it was an argument defending the president’s policy of escalation in and prolonged occupation of Afghanistan.

http://www.pacificfreepress.com/images/stories/new2/black%20five.jpg

The argument came in anticipation of Obama’s first international tour as president of the United States. He appealed to the members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization for greater commitment to the American Afghan adventure and while the hosts made pleasant sounds in appreciation of our president’s dilemma, their commitments were little more than those they gave the Bush administration.

Could it be the Europeans have learned something the Americans are still struggling with: that Afghanistan is a hopeless mission, a money pit, a sinking hole that will inevitably drag down anyone who becomes ensnared in its tangled web?



JAZZMAN CHRONICLES. DISSEMINATE FREELY.



To state the obvious: We have been ensnared in the Afghan web for seven and a half years. We have lost over eleven hundred coalition soldiers, including 674 Americans at last count. While estimates of civilian casualties, Taliban casualties and Al Qaeda casualties are impossible to nail down, it is safe to say tens of thousands have lost their lives as a direct result of the invasion and occupation and tens of thousands more have been seriously wounded.

At a time when America is confronting a worldwide recession that could become a global depression if not effectively addressed, the cost of the Afghan portion of the war on terror in September 2008 was estimated at $120 billion by the Congressional Budget Office. The same source estimates that the combined cost of the Iraq-Afghanistan wars will reach $2.4 trillion over the next decade.

These are the costs of war as represented by numbers on a tally sheet. They do not begin to reveal the human costs. They do not reveal the terror in the hearts of common people living with war on a daily basis. They do not reveal the deep sense of loss and the concomitant vows of revenge they inspire against those they believe are responsible for this carnage, waste and destruction. After years of occupation, they do not account for the change in the hearts and minds of a long-suffering people.

The Center for American Progress does not address the costs of war. Instead, it focuses on potential consequences of withdrawal. They have framed the debate on their terms. They have planted the staff firmly on pro-war grounds and yet their argument fails to hold water.

Reason 1: The Al Qaeda Threat

The Center declares that AQ and its “affiliates” have regained a strategic safe haven in Pakistan and Afghanistan but of course that may depend on how you define “affiliates.” That is the trouble with a nebulous enemy. That is how wars are expanded without the approval of congress. It is the stuff of war propaganda to conflate the original enemy with those who share some common trait. That is how the war in Vietnam became the war in Southeast Asia. That is how Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Syria, Lebanon and Palestine came to be targets in the war on terror campaign.

It is time to end this kind of smokescreen politics. Those who engage in the practice have tipped their hand; their intent is to obscure the truth, not to reveal it. Whatever the AQ threat is it is by no means the pre-eminent threat of our troubled times. Whatever the threat, common sense tells us and unbiased intelligence confirms that our actions in Afghanistan and Iraq have increased it exponentially and our withdrawal would do more to minimize the threat than any military action our generals can devise.

Reason 2: A failed Afghanistan is a threat to Pakistan

The Center’s reasoning conveniently ignores the obvious fact that the Afghan war and occupation are largely responsible for the deterioration of security in Pakistan. This was a predictable outcome yet the White House warlords in the Bush administration ignored it. As the Soviets learned before us, a foreign occupation provides stimulus to violent extremism and every missile, bomb or drone attack, killing innocent civilians and enemies alike with seeming impunity, further fuels the fires of hatred.

As a nuclear power, Pakistan is a critically important nation but escalating the war in Afghanistan to support a weak Pakistani government is like injecting malignant cells into a cancer patient. The war is the disease; it is not the cure.

Reason 3: Regional Stability

They argue that a power vacuum in the wake of an American withdrawal, like that following the Soviet occupation, would empower local warlords and holy warriors, leading to regional destabilization. Here is a creative rewriting of history. First, the warlords of Afghanistan predate the Soviet occupation by centuries. Second, we implanted, financed and armed the Mujahideen (including AQ and Osama bin Laden) and our actions over the last seven and a half years have only buttressed their influence. Third, after the Soviet withdrawal the Taliban imposed order and stability with quiet support from its neighbors and the United States. We disrupted that stability with our actions and we continue to be the most destabilizing force in the region today.

Reason 4: The Rise of the Taliban

Yes, the Taliban is resurgent and yes, its imposition of fundamentalist Islamic law is inhumane but recall that the Taliban was allowed to seize power with our blessings before this war precisely for the reason cited above: regional stability. It is important to understand that the Taliban is indigenous and we are not. Radical Islam cannot be defeated by military means. One of the most encouraging developments in President Obama’s statements on the Afghan War is that when he speaks of the enemy he speaks of Al Qaeda – not the Taliban. Engaging the Taliban – particularly the more moderate elements – in diplomacy is far more promising than continuing the war.

Reason 5: Increased opium production finances terrorism and crime

This is not a rational reason for continuing the war and occupation. Rather, it is an argument for handing the government over to the oppressive government of the Taliban – the only Afghan government that has been successful in reducing that nation’s reliance on opium.

Conflating the war on terror with the war on drugs may make sense as a war propaganda tool but it rings true in an unintended sense: Both are “wars” that cannot be won. A more enlightened world would legalize, regulate and control opium production but for that we will have to wait. Envisioning an Afghan government that will eradicate opium production and watch its people starve is simply a fantasy.

Reason 6: Afghanistan is critical to the advance of NATO

Respectfully, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization has no rightful place outside its sphere of governance. The engagement of NATO in the aftermath of September 11, 2001, was an emotionally charged decision that many Europeans have come to regret. Advancing the cause of NATO should never be a cause for war and no nation (including Afghanistan) should ever be employed as a training ground for military coordination and operations.

Reason 7: Afghanistan is among the least developed nations in the world

Now here is a strange argument. It seems to say: The greater the challenge, the greater the victory. Should we also invade and occupy other poor nations? Should the poor nations of the world fill out their applications to be “liberated” by the wealthier nations of the world? Yes, Afghanistan is needy and will continue to need assistance for a very long time. Nevertheless, the best we can do for them now is to end the occupation and let them get on with their own lives, their development and their own government.

In their “Seven Reasons for War” the Center for American Progress sounds more and more like the Neocon Project for the New American Century. My great fear now is that these militaristic Neoliberals from the Clinton administration have formed a circle of influence surrounding our new president, locking out all voices of dissent. Absent from Obama’s foreign policy team are any real antiwar voices.

I fear that the Bush Doctrine was not buried in the last election as we hoped but rather is being refined with new language and new slogans but the same old arguments to continue the policies of war.

The Neocon warlords who sent us to war behind a policy of conquest and military domination belittled anyone who dared to suggest that the appropriate response to terrorism was police action. Politicians on both sides of the traditional divide cowered before them and joined the call to war. Yet a coordinated international police action, buffered by intelligence agencies and special forces, supported by international diplomacy, was precisely what was called for then and it is precisely what is called for now.

I hope the president awakens to what is happening around him or he may soon awaken to the realization that he has become America’s new War President. It is not a title to which any leader should aspire and it is certainly not one that is inevitable.

Jazz.



“Seven Reasons Why We Need to Engage in Afghanistan”
by the Center for American Progress,
March 26, 2009 (www.americanprogress.org).

http://www.pacificfreepress.com/news/1/3985-seven-reasons-why-obama-is-wrong-on-afghanistan.html

[lequebecfume]

Editorial: Rethinking Canada's responsibilities in Afghanistan

Posted: April 07, 2009, 8:00 AM by NP Editor


Since deploying our military to Afghanistan, Canada has had two interests in Afghanistan: stabilizing the country’s democratically elected government and enhancing our own security by undermining the Taliban’s and al-Qaeda’s ability to plot attacks on Western targets from Afghan bases. But given the increasingly evident reality that the country’s corrupt and incompetent government isn’t worth supporting — acting as the Taliban-lite by enacting laws that make women the property of their husbands and male relatives — the argument for our continued presence in Afghanistan now rests solely on our own security needs.

That means we should be open to a negotiated political solution in Afghanistan that would allow us to leave the country in the hands of any stable government committed to preventing the country from being used as a platform for international terrorism — even if such a government included elements from the Taliban.

On Sunday, Afghan Foreign Minister Rangin Dadfar Spanta told Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister, Lawrence Cannon, that the controversial Shia Personal Status Law, passed in secret several weeks ago, would be amended. The law, as approved by Afghan President Hami Karzai, would permit husbands to force themselves on their wives every fourth night, and to decide if their wives and daughters may go to school, seek medical treatment, work outside the home or even go to public places.

We are skeptical about how seriously the law should be taken. The legislation was a political sop to Afghanistan’s Shia minority, who make up 15% of the electorate. And it is questionable, in any case, whether Afghanistan’s rural peasantry care one way or another what Kabul says about how they brutalize their women. Nevertheless, the government of President Karzai clearly was aware how offensive Afghanistan’s foreign defenders would find the legislation, because it kept the bill concealed from NATO, the United Nations and the media.

This cynical approach mirrors Mr. Karzai’s relationship with the West on all sorts of issues. He has claimed to be cleaning up corruption, even though his government is full of senior officials on the take. He also has claimed to be on board with the war against drugs, even though his administration is propped up by notorious narco-traffickers. Mr. Karzai’s own family is alleged to be part of the drug industry.

Nor is this the first time Afghan lawmakers have passed extremist Islamic motions.

In 2006, Abdur Rahman, a convert from Islam to Christianity, was sentenced to death for his apostasy. Afghanistan’s religious courts and imams — as well as many legislators — called for his blood. The best the Karzai government could do was spirit Mr. Rahman out of the country to exile in Italy.

That same year, the Kabul government briefly held captive 1,200 Korean Christians who had come to hold a peace festival in Afghanistan. After some talk of trying the evangelists for defiling Islam by raising the possibility of proselytizing (although not actually seeking to make converts to Christianity), NATO and the UN persuaded Afghan officials merely to deport the Koreans.

On at least two occasions, too — although thankfully not for the past two years — Afghan legislators have flirted with the idea of reviving the Ministry of Vice and Virtues. That was the government department that, during the years of Taliban rule, patrolled the country’s streets arresting or assaulting women whose dress they deemed immodest. They also closed movies theatres, girls’ schools and any organization promoting equality of women. Such episodes remind us that extremism, misogyny, intolerance and shocking backwardness are never far below the surface in Afghanistan.

It is too early to say Canada and NATO absolutely should leave in June 2011, when the current mission runs out. But if, in the intervening two years, Kabul does not do more to clean up corruption and contain radical Islamism, then we should look at any exit strategy that permits us to leave Afghanistan in a manner that does not compromise the security interests of Canada and its allies.



http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2009/04/07/editorial-rethinking-canada-s-responsibilities-in-afghanistan.aspx

[lequebecfume]

Afghan spokesman: Marital law is under review

By JASON STRAZIUSO and FISNIK ABRASHI –

KABUL (AP) — A new law that critics say legalizes marital rape will face a thorough review, the president's spokesman said Tuesday, and a State Department spokesman said the U.S. was glad to hear it.

The law, quietly passed and signed last month, has stirred international outcry over women's rights. The law says a husband can have sex with his wife every four days unless she is ill, and it regulates when and for what reasons a wife may leave the house by herself. The law would apply only to the country's Shiite population, between 10 percent and 20 percent of Afghanistan's 30 million people.

"Women have had an unfortunate and a very sad history in Afghanistan," State Department spokesman Robert Wood told reporters in Washington. "This type of a law shouldn't have been enacted without regard to changing some of these provisions that send a very negative signal to the international community about where Afghanistan is going."

Critics have said the legislation undermines hard-won rights for women enacted after the fall of the Taliban's strict Islamist regime in 2001. The regime banned women from appearing in public without a body-covering burqa and a male escort from her family.

Much has improved. Millions of girls now attend school, and many women own businesses. Of 351 parliamentarians, 89 are women.

But in this conservative country, critics fear those gains could easily be reversed.

Wood said the U.S. was "glad" that President Hamid Karzai has agreed to review the law.

Karzai's spokesman, Humayun Hamidzada, said the president has consulted with Afghanistan's leading clerics and his Cabinet over the law, and that it has been sent to the Ministry of Justice for review.

"The president is committed to upholding our constitution that provides equal rights for men and women, and he's committed to the rights of minorities and all rights and privileges provided in our constitution to our citizens," Hamidzada said.

The Justice Ministry has said the law, which has not been published in the official registry, is not being enforced while it is under review.

Also Tuesday, a Romanian officer was killed in a roadside blast in southern Afghanistan. The Romanian vehicle patrol was hit by a roadside bomb northeast of Qalat, the capital of southern Zabul province, killing the officer and wounding four other troops, the Romanian Defense Ministry said in a statement.
In neighboring Uruzgan province Monday, insurgents fired rockets at the Dutch main base, killing a soldier and wounding five others, said Gen. Peter van Uhm, the Dutch defense chief.
Southern Afghanistan is the center of the Taliban-led insurgency, where thousands of new U.S. troops were ordered by President Barack Obama to try to reverse militant gains of the last three years.

Australia's Foreign Minister Stephen Smith said Tuesday his country was considering sending more military trainers in addition to 1,100 troops already in Afghanistan.

Coalition troops, meanwhile, killed four suspected Taliban militants and detained two others following a raid on a bomb-making cell in Kandahar province Monday, the U.S.-led coalition said in a statement.

The latest violence comes as the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David McKiernan, said that despite the arrival of 21,000 new U.S. troops this year, it will be years before Afghan forces can be in charge of security.

McKiernan also said his troops had increased targeting of drug operations eight- to 10-fold in the past four months, specifically for drug lords or operations that could be tied to insurgents and insurgent funding.

Afghanistan is the world's largest producer of opium, the main ingredient in heroin. The Afghan drug trade accounts for 90 percent of worldwide production. The U.N. estimated last year that up to $500 million from the illegal drug trade flows to Taliban fighters and criminal groups.

--AP

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hvWEqwq3CrRvaQCmt21MfoYhjZJQD97DPCM00

[lequebecfume]

Top US general meets tribes ahead of Afghan surge

By JASON STRAZIUSO

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AP) — The top U.S. general in Afghanistan reached out to influential Afghan tribesmen in regions where U.S. troops will soon deploy, apologizing for past mistakes and saying he is now studying the Quran, the Muslim holy book.

Gen. David McKiernan met with villagers in Helmand and Kandahar — two of Afghanistan's most violent provinces — in an attempt to foster good will ahead of the U.S. troop surge that will send 21,000 more forces here this summer to stem an increasingly violent Taliban insurgency.

McKiernan said he wanted to show respect to tribal elders by traveling to Kandahar on Wednesday to explain some of the mistakes U.S. forces have made in the past — such as arresting people based on information taken from one side in a tribal fight, or killing civilians during operations.

"I'm trying to connect to the local population in a bottom-up way and try to explain what the new U.S. strategy means and why they're going to see an increased force presence where they live," McKiernan said during the trip to Kandahar aboard the seven passenger jet he flies in.

McKiernan for the first time disclosed precise locations where the combat troops arriving this summer will deploy. The 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade, expected to arrive in May or June, will deploy in eastern Farah province and from Lashkar Gah — the capital of Helmand province, the world's largest opium producing region — south toward Garmser.

An Army Stryker brigade from Fort Lewis in Washington state expected in July and August will deploy in Kandahar province, in the eastern districts around Spin Boldak and northern regions around Arghandab, Khakrez and Shah Wali Kot, he said.
Some 250 tribesmen traveled to a sparkling new Afghan army base just outside the main NATO base in Kandahar for two separates sessions with the four-star general on Wednesday.
McKiernan explained to elders from Spin Boldak how the U.S. is training the Afghan army and police so that U.S. troops can one day leave, apologized for past mistakes committed by U.S. soldiers and said the Iraq war had diverted resources from Afghanistan that were needed to fight the Taliban.

"Until (militant) safe havens are eliminated across the border in Pakistan, there cannot be peace in Afghanistan," he said, generating enthusiastic applause from the elders.

U.S. and Afghan officials say that Taliban militants use lawless areas in northwest Pakistan as safehavens to train, arm and rest. Insurgents then travel back over the Afghan-Pakistan border to launch attacks.

Afterward, several Afghan elders spoke. One picked up on McKiernan's Pakistan message.

"When you come here and the Taliban is pushed out, why doesn't the violence stop? Destroy their safe havens," the Afghan said.

McKiernan told the Afghans that President Barack Obama's new strategy is to combat instability in the Pakistan-Afghanistan region as a whole. He said that in the future, Afghan forces will enter villagers' homes if necessary, a pledge that brought another round of applause. He then said he was studying the Muslim holy book.

"I'm reading a very good book now about this part of the world. It's written in English, but it's all about you — it's the Quran," McKiernan said to applause. Moments later an Afghan man stood up and gave McKiernan a bright purple, red and green cloth in which to wrap the translated version of holy book.

Government leaders from Kandahar province were not invited to the meeting. McKiernan said he wanted to talk straight to the tribal leaders in the hope their words weren't influenced by the presence of possibly corrupt government officials. Government leaders were invited to a similar session in Helmand last week.
During a second session with Afghans from Arghandab, Khakrez and Shah Wali Kot, which has seen more violence than the Spin Boldak region, McKiernan faced a tougher audience.

No one applauded during his speech. Afterward, Haji Saran Wal praised McKiernan for admitting past U.S. mistakes and for saying the Iraq war depleted resources. Then he asked McKiernan to prohibit house searches by U.S. forces.

Back in Kabul, while driving to NATO's headquarters, McKiernan called the day "pretty positive."

"I think it was a good give-and-take session," he said.


[URL="Top US general meets tribes ahead of Afghan surge
By JASON STRAZIUSO – 51 minutes ago
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AP) — The top U.S. general in Afghanistan reached out to influential Afghan tribesmen in regions where U.S. troops will soon deploy, apologizing for past mistakes and saying he is now studying the Quran, the Muslim holy book.
Gen. David McKiernan met with villagers in Helmand and Kandahar — two of Afghanistan's most violent provinces — in an attempt to foster good will ahead of the U.S. troop surge that will send 21,000 more forces here this summer to stem an increasingly violent Taliban insurgency.
McKiernan said he wanted to show respect to tribal elders by traveling to Kandahar on Wednesday to explain some of the mistakes U.S. forces have made in the past — such as arresting people based on information taken from one side in a tribal fight, or killing civilians during operations.
"I'm trying to connect to the local population in a bottom-up way and try to explain what the new U.S. strategy means and why they're going to see an increased force presence where they live," McKiernan said during the trip to Kandahar aboard the seven passenger jet he flies in.
McKiernan for the first time disclosed precise locations where the combat troops arriving this summer will deploy. The 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade, expected to arrive in May or June, will deploy in eastern Farah province and from Lashkar Gah — the capital of Helmand province, the world's largest opium producing region — south toward Garmser.
An Army Stryker brigade from Fort Lewis in Washington state expected in July and August will deploy in Kandahar province, in the eastern districts around Spin Boldak and northern regions around Arghandab, Khakrez and Shah Wali Kot, he said.
Some 250 tribesmen traveled to a sparkling new Afghan army base just outside the main NATO base in Kandahar for two separates sessions with the four-star general on Wednesday.
McKiernan explained to elders from Spin Boldak how the U.S. is training the Afghan army and police so that U.S. troops can one day leave, apologized for past mistakes committed by U.S. soldiers and said the Iraq war had diverted resources from Afghanistan that were needed to fight the Taliban.
"Until (militant) safe havens are eliminated across the border in Pakistan, there cannot be peace in Afghanistan," he said, generating enthusiastic applause from the elders.
U.S. and Afghan officials say that Taliban militants use lawless areas in northwest Pakistan as safehavens to train, arm and rest. Insurgents then travel back over the Afghan-Pakistan border to launch attacks.

Afterward, several Afghan elders spoke. One picked up on McKiernan's Pakistan message.

"When you come here and the Taliban is pushed out, why doesn't the violence stop? Destroy their safe havens," the Afghan said.

McKiernan told the Afghans that President Barack Obama's new strategy is to combat instability in the Pakistan-Afghanistan region as a whole. He said that in the future, Afghan forces will enter villagers' homes if necessary, a pledge that brought another round of applause. He then said he was studying the Muslim holy book.

"I'm reading a very good book now about this part of the world. It's written in English, but it's all about you — it's the Quran," McKiernan said to applause. Moments later an Afghan man stood up and gave McKiernan a bright purple, red and green cloth in which to wrap the translated version of holy book.

Government leaders from Kandahar province were not invited to the meeting. McKiernan said he wanted to talk straight to the tribal leaders in the hope their words weren't influenced by the presence of possibly corrupt government officials. Government leaders were invited to a similar session in Helmand last week.
During a second session with Afghans from Arghandab, Khakrez and Shah Wali Kot, which has seen more violence than the Spin Boldak region, McKiernan faced a tougher audience.
No one applauded during his speech. Afterward, Haji Saran Wal praised McKiernan for admitting past U.S. mistakes and for saying the Iraq war depleted resources. Then he asked McKiernan to prohibit house searches by U.S. forces.

Back in Kabul, while driving to NATO's headquarters, McKiernan called the day "pretty positive."
"I think it was a good give-and-take session," he said."

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gunkSrMK4ibAEoKo01Dl4GQlykOAD97FEVGG0

[lequebecfume]

Afghans step up effort to destroy opium fields

Some GIs skeptical of eradication plan, say alternatives should be provided

By Drew Brown , Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Saturday, April 11, 2009

Michael Gisick/Stars and Stripes

Dozens of men sit inside a smoke-filled room while using drugs in Kabul. Addicts said it costs about 120 Afghanis, or roughly $2.50, to buy a fix.

http://www.stripes.com/photos/61958_41015828.jpg
Ronny Hunt, 27, of St. Pauls, N.C., and other soldiers from 3rd Platoon, Commanche Company, 2nd Battalion, 2nd Infantry Regiment patrol Sunday through an opium poppy field in the village of Mazar’eh in Maiwand district, Kandahar province, Afghanistan. The Taliban is estimated to skim at least $100 million a year from the opium trade.

HUTAL, Afghanistan — At the end of a recent patrol in the nearby village of Mowshaq, soldiers from Company B, 2nd Battalion, 2nd Infantry Regiment were headed back to their trucks when they passed an Afghan man and two boys drying mud bricks in the sun.

The soldiers were nearing the farmer’s poppy field, when suddenly the man called out to them. The patrol’s leader, 2nd Lt. Jason Schlachter, asked his translator what the man said.

"He says, ‘Don’t walk through my poppy fields,’ " said the translator. The soldiers did anyway. It was the shortest way to get back to their trucks.

The man did not protest. But the importance that Afghan farmers place on their opium fields cannot be underestimated. Although growing poppy is illegal, it’s how most people in rural southern Afghanistan, including here in Maiwand district, about 45 miles north of Kandahar, make a living.

The farmer’s warning to the soldiers could be interpreted as a warning to anyone who tries to interfere with Afghanistan’s biggest cash crop. Now U.S. troops in Maiwand could be facing their biggest security challenge yet because of the drug.

Haji Noor Muhammad Akhund, the government-appointed leader for Maiwand, informed U.S. military officers Friday that he’s been directed to eradicate one-quarter of the district’s poppy fields this year.

"I talked to the governor yesterday," said Akhund, also known as Mullah Masood, during a meeting with officers from 2nd Battalion, 2nd Infantry Regiment, which oversees security for the area. "He said to destroy the poppies in Maiwand district."

According to Akhund, the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai issued the directive to Tooryalai Wesa, the Kandahar governor, and other provincial leaders last week.

Much about the plan remains unclear. Akhund said he would meet with tribal elders from around Maiwand in the coming days to persuade them to cooperate.

"I think they will accept this," he said. "The government doesn’t want to destroy all of the areas."

Lt. Col. Dan Hurlbut, commander of 2nd Battalion, 2nd Infantry, said the policy of U.S. and NATO troops is to support whatever plan of action regarding poppy crops that the government of Afghanistan and the provincial government decide upon. But the provincial government has not fully articulated one until now, Hurlbut said.

Still, he cautioned that any eradication effort would probably take weeks to implement, since further coordination must occur between Afghan government officials and NATO military authorities.

"Whatever we do has to be the same across the province," Hurlbut said. He suggested that if eradication went forward, U.S. troops would provide outer security for Afghan forces that would actually handle destruction of the fields.

Afghanistan produces more than 90 percent of the world’s opium, the base ingredient for heroin. The United Nations estimates the drug is worth $3 billion a year to the Afghan economy. The Taliban is believed to skim at least $100 million off the trade, most by taxing production and transport.

No one knows for sure how much opium is under cultivation in Maiwand. But there are dozens of villages spread across the district, and immense poppy fields dot the landscape. Many of the bulbs have already flowered into vibrant shades of white, pink and purple, signaling that the crop is just about ready to harvest.

Local villagers in Maiwand have told U.S. troops that they expect to start the monthlong harvest in about two to three weeks.

Some officers have expressed unease and skepticism about plans to eradicate the crop.

"Maiwand is not ready for eradication," said Capt. Trevor Voelkel, commander of the battalion’s Company C, whose troops oversee security in the center of the district. "We don’t have anything else to help the farmers with in terms of providing alternatives."

"We want to stop opium and substitute other crops," he said. "But there are still a lot of systems that need to be set up in place first."

Maj. Chris Brooke, the police mentor team chief for Maiwand district, said that without viable alternatives eradication efforts would likely provoke a backlash among local villagers.

"If you take away their opium, it gives them no choice but to turn to the Taliban," he said.

Both Voelkel and Brooke were interviewed before the eradication plan was an nounced Friday.

Akhund said that the provincial government had promised 120 tons of wheat seed as a substitute for poppy. But how that will alleviate the loss of income from this year’s crop or possible hunger in the coming months is also unclear.

Skepticism over eradication has been voiced by U.S. policymakers at the highest levels. The United States spends about $800 million a year to eliminate opium and other drugs in Afghanistan, an effort which Richard Holbrooke, the U.S. special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, described recently as "the most wasteful and ineffective program I have seen in 40 years."

President Barack Obama’s new strategy for Afghanistan calls for U.S. and NATO forces to support Afghan counternarcotics teams in targeting drug traffickers, processing labs and storage facilities.

"Targeting those who grow the poppy will continue, but focus will shift to higher-level drug lords," the White House said in a strategy paper released last month.

The United Nations says that half of the provinces in Afghanistan are now free of opium, but five provinces in the south — Helmand, Kandahar, Uruzgan, Nimruz and Farah — still account for 98 percent of percent of all production.

Akhund, the district leader, said he believes the amount of land under poppy cultivation in Maiwand is down by 40 percent from last year.

The Afghan government announced last week that eradication had begun with the backing of NATO forces in neighboring Helmand province, which alone accounts for more than half of opium production in the country.

But fighting in the province has also flared. The Associated Press reported Friday that five people were killed and 17 wounded after a Taliban suicide bomber struck a counternarcotics police unit in Lashkar Gah.

Last year, more than 100 Afghan police officers were killed during opium-eradication operations in Kandahar province, according to Akhund, the district leader. The Taliban killed 35 police officers in Maiwand district alone, according to Canadian officers posted here.

Corruption was also a problem. Both Akhund’s predecessor and the previous police chief for Maiwand were fired for taking payoffs to spare certain fields, according to several U.S. officers.

Akhund said he intended to involve tribal elders in the process of selecting which fields would be destroyed. He said he had warned them in a meeting earlier this week not to attack Afghan or NATO units involved in the effort.

But the Taliban have reportedly been demanding money from villagers in Maiwand to protect the poppy fields.

"It’s going to get very interesting over the next couple of weeks," said Hurlbut.

""mmmmmmmm



(http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=61958à)

[lequebecfume]

U.S. in Afghanistan for decades?

By Lee Davidson

Deseret News

Published: Friday, April 10, 2009 11:13 p.m. MDT

While the Obama administration is trying to make an exit within 19 months from Iraq, its policies in Afghanistan could keep U.S. troops there for decades, Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, said Friday after a visit to both nations.

"I understand the need to fight al-Qaida and the Taliban wherever they are. … But we're pursuing a policy of nation-building (in Afghanistan) that I still have serious questions and reservations about," Chaffetz said in a telephone interview on Friday from Dubai after leaving Afghanistan.

"I think it's decades of work and financial commitment, not something that can be turned around in 36 months," he added.
Chaffetz said Afghanistan is a country where 70 percent of the people are illiterate; it has a weak central government; tribes controlling much of the country have battled for years; most areas have no dependable electricity; it has few marketable products; and the U.S. is trying to eradicate its opium poppies, which has been a major industry.

"But what can you replace it (the opium trade) with? Well, pomegranates end up being part of the answer. The problem is it takes five years for a pomegranate tree to grow to the point it will generate a pomegranate," Chaffetz said.

"So you've got our good men and women out there trying to deal with these highly illiterate people that have no natural markets for the talents that they offer," he said, and the United States may be making commitments that will require troops there for decades.

Chaffetz said briefings by commanders in Afghanistan led him to believe that the United States faces a problem with two components there: chasing enemies, and improving conditions in the country so its people will not turn to terrorist groups for help.

"First, there's the military component of rooting out the bad guys, and I'm convinced we're doing everything we can and should," he said. "It's where the terrorists are, and we've got to go after them. They say they're going to kill us. We better get after them first."

He is less supportive of how the administration is addressing nation-building there. "In order to make sure that al-Qaida and the Taliban do not have a safe haven in Afghanistan, that is not an equation we have yet solved. Right now the solution is 50,000-plus U.S. troops. I think that's not sustainable."
Chaffetz added, "I am not fully sold on our U.S. policy in Afghanistan. … I don't know that we should be in the business of nation-building. That's the direction we're headed."

Chaffetz was among six members of Congress who toured U.S. facilities in Kabul and Kandahar for two days, after visiting Iraq earlier in the week.

"It feels a lot less secure in Afghanistan than it does in Baghdad. We're in the midst of the military build-up (in Afghanistan). And consequently, they don't have near the infrastructure as in Baghdad," Chaffetz said.

He said, for example, he was surprised while traveling in Kabul at night that it appeared the city has little or no electricity. "I have traveled extensively throughout my career. I've been in many Third World countries. This is a very, very difficult situation" in Afghanistan, and it is as poor and needy as anywhere he has ever seen.

Likewise, he says Iraq has resources that could more easily allow it to function well soon without U.S. troops. "Iraq has a natural resource in oil. They have an ability to rapidly generate revenue, and Afghanistan does not. … You can solve a lot of problems when you have a lot of oil."

Chaffetz said chasing terrorists in Afghanistan is also complicated by U.S. relations with Pakistan. "We respect the borders, but al-Qaida doesn't really care" and will retreat into Pakistan for protection. "That complicates the ability to chase the enemy."

He added, "In many ways, it's a much more complicated and difficult situation (in Afghanistan) than in Iraq."

Overall, he said, "I'm very supportive with the direction the president is going, with the exception of whether should we be in the business of nation-building. … That is a huge, huge, job."

E-mail: lee@desnews.com

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/1,5143,705296582,00.html

[lequebecfume]

Heroin And Terrorism

April 13, 2009: Heroin and opium addiction is becoming a major, and growing, problem in Afghanistan and surrounding countries. This has been an issue for over twenty years, ever since heroin production got started in Pakistan.

In the 1990s, the Pakistanis drove most of the drug lords out, and the heroin trade just moved across the border into Afghanistan. By the late 1990s, there were five million heroin addicts in Pakistan, three million in Iran, and one million in the Xinjiang province of western China. Opium and other drugs were also popular, and Pakistan estimated that five percent of adult Pakistanis were addicted. But the Taliban punished drug users in Afghanistan, and kept the number of addicts down. When Taliban were driven from power, the Pushtun drug lords began selling opium and heroin to fellow Afghans on a larger scale. There are now over a million addicts in Afghanistan, and the number in neighboring countries has increased as well.

Ten years ago, Taliban run Afghanistan was the world's largest producer of heroin, at least according to the UN. Back then, Afghanistan produced over 70 percent of the world's opium, with 96 percent of that coming from Taliban-controlled areas. Northern Afghanistan was never conquered by the Taliban, and managed to prevent the heroin production from getting established in the north.

The Taliban encouraged the heroin business, even setting up model farms in Heart. Farmers from throughout the south were brought in to show them the best way to cultivate the poppies whose sap was turned into opium, and then heroin. The Taliban collected a 20 percent tax on all opium and heroin sales. The same kind of tax was collected in the north, but the drug production was controlled, not encouraged, up there. Since the Taliban were driven out of power in 2001, the heroin trade was practically wiped out in the north.

While the Taliban were in power, the only real banking system in Afghanistan was the one that the drug gangs operated to lend farmers money to produce their next crop of poppies. Al Qaeda got a share of the heroin income, in return for their assistance in keeping the Taliban in power. Al Qaeda formed a brigade of gunmen who were used as enforcers for the Taliban. This was done because the Taliban had a hard time getting tribesmen to fight other tribesmen. The Taliban were mainly from some of the Pushtun tribes around Kandahar, and most of the territory they controlled in Afghanistan was controlled by other Pushtun tribes (who account for 40 percent of Afghanistan's population.) Letting the largely foreign al Qaeda gunmen discipline troublesome Pushtun tribes, the Taliban avoided starting long lasting blood feuds between Pushtun tribes. Al Qaeda used their cut of the heroin taxes to finance terrorism outside the country. One could say that the September 11, 2001 attacks were paid for with drug money. The al Qaeda drug money also financed Islamic terrorism in Central Asia, western China (where most of the population is Moslem), India (Kashmir) and Pakistan.

In Afghanistan, and surrounding countries, opium and heroin addiction is seen as a curse and a growing problem. The addicts become economically useless, and turn to crime to feed their habit. These nations cannot afford to jail or treat all these addicts, but do know that if they can eliminate the source of the drugs in Afghanistan, the number of addicts will decline. It's a simple matter of economics. Coming from nearby Afghanistan, the drugs are much cheaper, costing less than a tenth what addicts in Western nations pay. If the source of most of the world's heroin were farther away, the cost to local addicts would increase to the point where most could not afford it. That was the situation before the 1980s, and such addiction was restricted to a small proportion of the wealthier classes. It's got nothing to do with religion, except in the sense that the Moslem clergy condemns the addiction. Many clergy who back Islamic radicalism are increasingly hostile to the Taliban and al Qaeda, because those two groups encourage the drug production and profit from it. The Pushtun tribes in southern Afghanistan now produce 90 percent of the worlds heroin, and most of it is produced in the Taliban heartland, particularly Helmand province. While there is a terrorism problem in Afghanistan, it's become mostly a drug problem.


http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htterr/articles/20090413.aspx

[lequebecfume]

Obama flirting with policy of change?

http://www.presstv.ir/photo/20090421/torabi20090421215346359.jpg
US President Barack Obama (R) escorts Jordan's King Abdullah II from the Oval Office toward the circle drive at the White House.

http://www.presstv.ir/images/photo_bullet2.gifvar images=new Array();images[0]='http://www.treatingyourself.com/vbulletin/
US President Barack Obama (R) escorts Jordan's King Abdullah II from the Oval Office toward the circle drive at the White House.
';


Tue, 21 Apr 2009 17:33:14 GMT
US President Barack Obama's 'change' policy seems to be wearing off as he refuses to take all options concerning Iran off the table.

Speaking to reporters after a meeting with Jordan's King Abdullah at the White House, Obama said he was still in favor of direct talks with Iran.

"We will continue to pursue the possibility of improved relations and a resolution to some of the critical issues in which there have been differences," he stated.

The democrat, however, said possible talks should be "tough" and should be held "without taking a whole host of other options off the table."

The phrase widely used during the eight-year term of Obama's predecessor, George W. Bush, is an indirect reference to a possible military attack on the a country with over 70 million population.

Without directly responding to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's denunciation of Israel in a UN sponsored conference on racism, Obama described the comments as "appalling and objectionable."

The Iranian president had on Monday called Israel 'a totally racist government' formed on the back of 'military aggression.'

President Ahmadinejad had also condemned the United States for its unwavering support of Israel and the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.

"Was the motive behind the invasion of Iraq anything other than the arrogance of the then US administration and the mounting pressure on the part of the possessors of wealth and power to expand their sphere of influence," he added.

President Ahmadinejad continued to say that the Bush era attack on Afghanistan supposedly part of the West's "war on drugs" was a complete failure.

"The United States and its allies not only have failed to contain the production of drugs in Afghanistan, but the cultivation of narcotics has multiplied in the course of their presence. The basic question is that what was the responsibility and the job of the then US administration and its allies?," President Ahmadinejad said.

Eight years after Washington's "Operation Enduring Freedom", Afghanistan is the second biggest opium producer, supplying 90 percent of the world's illegal drug trade, the UN drug monitoring body announced in February.

The UN's International Narcotics Control Board also marked an increase in the cultivation of cannabis in Afghanistan, the most widely used drug in Europe.

"Farmers have been switching from opium poppy cultivation to cannabis cultivation, as cannabis cultivation is becoming increasingly lucrative in Afghanistan and no action has been taken by the government to prevent such cultivation," the body's annual report said.

MT/HGH



http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=92128&sectionid=3510203

[lequebecfume]

UN warns of rise in Afghan hashish production


KABUL (AFP) — Dishevelled and blind in one eye, the 57-year-old hashish dealer has no fear that police might try to stop the trade he conducts from a petrol station on the edge of the dirty Kabul River.

"If you give them 100 afghani (two dollars) and a joint, they would say carry on," said the man who gives his name as Mahtaabudin.

"I am not afraid of anyone," he said gruffly, only agreeing to talk after he has lit a cigarette of heady hashish made from cannabis resin which he shares with some of his customers on the station's verandah.

He admits to some precautions, such as only selling to people he knows, but Mahtaabudin probably does not really need to be too careful.

With authorities concentrating on Afghanistan's substantial trade in opium, officials admit there is not the time, money or inclination to worry as much about the production of hashish, which the United Nations warns is climbing.

And anyway, Afghan security forces, especially the police, are notorious users of the drug.

"I don't know how many but there are people using hashish working with army and other organisations," said deputy counter narcotics minister Mohammad Zafar.

"We have a big problem with opium poppy. This is why we don't have good data as regards hashish," he said.

Afghanistan produces more than 90 percent of the world's opium, most of it refined into heroin inside the country, an enterprise that earns the extremist Taliban millions of dollars a year for their insurgency against the government.

It is also the world's second largest source of cannabis resin, producing 1,603 metric tonnes in 2006 after Morocco's 1,915 tonnes, according to the UN's World Drug Report 2008.

Afghanistan became famous for its hashish during the 1960s and 1970s when hippies trailed in from Europe en route to Asia, stopping in places now off-limits because of the insurgency, like the southern city of Kandahar.

Cannabis was declared illegal here in the early 1970s but it remains the intoxicant of choice for Afghans, favoured over opium and alcohol.

All are forbidden by Islam and widely frowned on by Afghan society.

The latest UN drug survey in 2005 said 2.2 percent of the population, which it put at 23.8 million, use hashish compared to 0.7 percent for alcohol, 0.6 percent for opium and 0.2 percent for heroin.

The numbers are believed to be considerably higher today with officials regularly warning of growing drug use.

"It was Eid, and we were seven or eight young boys. We went to see an old man in our village who prepared the shisha with hash," recalled a 51-year-old labourer who has been smoking for 35 years. "We laughed so much."

Now the sallow-faced man, who gives his name as Abdul Latif, says he cannot cope without hashish.

"I have to smoke. If I don't, I get a headache and stomach pains," he said, adding that without hashish he cannot sleep.
Latif said he realised at the age of 25 that he had a problem. "I was losing money, my nerves and my position in society."
But like many other smokers in Afghanistan, he believes there may be health benefits, including controlling diabetes and lowering cholesterol.

He is also among those who believe smokers are more pious and well-behaved, saying: "If I smoke hash, I know I will not steal, quarrel or be sexually violent."

But non-users say smokers are moody, short-tempered and violent.

"His eyes were turning red and no one could speak to him," recalled a woman named only Arifa, in her 50s, referring to an addicted brother-in-law.

"Everyone, small or big, was terrified by him. He was beating his wife so much that she would be unconscious."

This man first bought his hash but later planted his own, she said, and it was up to his wife to care for the plants.

Most of Afghanistan's cannabis is grown in the largely lawless south, also the main opium-growing area, where authorities are battling to assert control.

In 2007 the area under cannabis cultivation (70,000 hectares/173,00 acres) was equal to more than a third of the area planted with opium poppies, both following similar routes to foreign markets, according to the UN.

With Morocco's production dropping, Afghanistan could take the world's top spot for cannabis resin supply, the World Drug Report 2008 says.

"There is thought to be vast over-supply of opiates, and prices could fall further any time, prompting a shift to cannabis cultivation," it says, referring to Afghanistan.

"In addition, there is a functioning illicit drugs market in existence which may be able to accommodate another product efficiently."

The resin is extracted by rubbing the plant and is pressed in the palm of the hands with water or tea to form small balls or slabs which are transported for sale. Less scrupulous producers are said to add soil or chemicals.

Mahtaabudin said he buys a kilogramme of processed hash for 5,500 afghani (110 dollars) and sells it for 8,000 afghani (160 dollars), most often in small chunks that cost 20 afghani each.
"I sell it to people I know. People send their children. Police buy it," he said on the verandah, adding of the merits of hashish: "It can make a person generous and honest."


http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5ioY8Z7udcLudcxMl4QyXi_zoLR0g

[lequebecfume]

Gretchen Peters's blog

The criminals running the Af-Pak border

Thu, 04/23/2009 - 5:50pm

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/images/090423_poppies.jpg

Want to defeat al Qaeda and the Taliban? Stop thinking of them as terrorists.

By Gretchen Peters

The Obama administration has promised "a new way of thinking about the challenges" facing the United States in Afghanistan and Pakistan. But it's also high time it starts thinking in a new way about America's enemies themselves. The Taliban and al Qaeda have long portrayed themselves as holy warriors, battling under the flag of Islam. Most people in the West have accepted this characterization, imagining them as long-bearded fanatics, while Washington constantly refers to them as "terrorists" and "extremists." No doubt they are. But, having studied their operations at the village level in Afghanistan and Pakistan for more than three years, another descriptor also seems useful to me: criminal. When you examine the day-to-day activities keeping their networks financially afloat and probe how they interact with local communities in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the Taliban and al Qaeda start to look a lot more mafiosi than mujahideen.

In the last eight years, the Afghan Taliban have greatly expanded their illicit activities, morphing into a force more violent and ruthless than when they were in power from 1996 to 2001 and building up an economic empire worth almost half a billion dollars. Their activities are diverse: In some parts of the south, they collaborate with drug traffickers to dictate poppy output. They provide armed protection for opium convoys leaving Afghanistan's farm areas and protect heroin labs along the Pakistan border. In addition, they work with kidnapping rings that have snared diplomats, journalists, U.S. contractors, and wealthy local businessmen. They cooperate with gunrunners, human traffickers, and the smuggling gangs that illegally export millions of dollars worth of Afghan antiquities.

They also extort monthly payments from legal Afghan businesses, terrorizing village shopkeepers and even nationwide cellphone providers, attacking their homes and premises if they don't comply. District-level Taliban commanders collect fees as high as $250 per truck passing through their control zones from import-export firms and trucking companies, even "taxing" the tankers carrying jet fuel to NATO air bases in Kandahar and Bagram.

The Afghan Taliban aren't the only ones using criminal proceeds to finance their operations. Thieves recently looted a money market in Pakistan's southern city of Karachi, later delivering the cash to Baitullah Mehsud, who leads the Pakistani Taliban. There are also indications that al Qaeda operatives help move shipments of refined heroin as they leave the Afghan border area and head toward Central Asia and Europe, precisely where one stands to profit most.

Viewing the Taliban and al Qaeda as criminals doesn't mean ignoring the threat they pose to the West. In fact, criminal activity makes them even more dangerous overseas. Opium profits help pay for weapons and explosives used to kill U.S. soldiers on the Afghan battlefield. Criminal proceeds could help fund future 9/11-style attacks, making it imperative to degrade these sources of funding.

But the new paradigm could offer some extraordinary opportunities for fighting this thriving underground economy. When President Barack Obama speaks of confronting "a common enemy" that threatens the United States, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, his condemnation of extremism doesn't always resonate in the border areas where the insurgents and terrorists rule.

With the help of local researchers, I have interviewed hundreds of Afghans and Pakistanis who live along the frontier. In these deeply conservative Muslim communities, where religious leaders hold tremendous authority, few dared speak out against people who define themselves as "holy warriors." But when we framed the insurgents as criminals, they opened up, describing in clear detail how the militants' illicit activities directly and adversely affect their lives. Speaking in terms the people there can understand will improve America's ability to win local support for the critical task of cutting off terrorist leaders from their illicit profits. In Islam, there is no one more reviled than a thief.

Gretchen Peters is the author of the forthcoming Seeds of Terror: How Heroin Is Bankrolling the Taliban and al Qaeda.

Photo: John Moore/Getty Images



http://experts.foreignpolicy.com/blog/6391

[lequebecfume]

Destroying Afghan opium crop: But does it help?


Sat Apr 25, 2009 11:16am BST
By Golnar Motevalli

SHEWAN, Afghanistan, April 25 (Reuters) - Big red tractors plough through lush fields, ripping up white and pink opium poppy blossoms alongside a stretch of highway in western Afghanistan guarded by U.S. and Afghan troops.

Eradicating poppy crops is one of the main planks of Afghan government and U.S. military policy in Afghanistan, which they say will help rid Taliban insurgents of a major source of income and prevent the war-weary country becoming a failed narco-state.

But Major Cedric Burden, who is mentoring the Afghan police team running the operation in Afghanistan's western Farah province, wonders if the eradication mission is playing into the enemy's hands.

"(The farmers) are doing something wrong, but they're making money and feeding their family. In his mind his doesn't think he's doing wrong, he thinks he's doing right," Burden said. "So will (eradication) turn him against the government? Sure."

Afghanistan produces more than 90 percent of the world's opium, used to make heroin, and Farah, a vast desert near the Iranian border, is the country's third-biggest poppy-producing province, having cultivated more than 15,000 hectares (37,070 acres) in 2008, according to the United Nations.

Farmers whose crops are destroyed are given no compensation for losing their harvest, but are supplied wheat seed and fertiliser and urged to replace poppy with the grain, which is the most abundant crop in the area.

"You can knock all the fields down, but you've got to give them something else because now you'll just turn them against you. You just took food out their kid's mouth ... most of these people are pretty poor," Burden added.

LINKS IN A CHAIN

Supporters of the eradication policy say destroying the smaller fields of opium and replacing them with wheat is necessary in order to break the link between local people and powerful drug lords or insurgents.

"Terrorists, Al Qaeda, the Taliban, drug lords and some farmers are dependent on each other like links in a chain," said Lieutenant Commander Khalil Nehmatullah, commander of the Afghan battalion that helped stand guard as tractors crushed the crop.

Nehmatullah said that most of the people of Farah understand that poppy farming funds the insurgency and fuels drug addiction and that they could be persuaded to turn their backs on the crop.

"My perception is that people are generally against poppy cultivation. People see its side effects, their families become addicted, they become dependent on the drug lords, on the Taliban and the terrorists," Nehmatullah said.

Locals say they agree. A few metres away from where the tractors bumped along through the fields, goatherd Abdul Ghani walked his son to school accompanied by his animals.

"This is haram," he said, using an Arabic word meaning something that is forbidden in Islam to refer to the poppies growing in field behind. "It's not right, it's good for nobody. It has to go. It turns people desperate."

But Burden said the small farms along the highway that his team was helping destroy may not be the most effective target of the operation.

Much larger fields far from the highway edge, which were also targeted in the operation, probably belonged to powerful landowners who maintain isolated irrigation systems in remote desert plains away from the road.

"These fields belong probably to officials somewhere, the reason why you can tell is because they are in the middle of the desert, there is no water out there, there's not even a house," Burden said. "They may not be Taliban but they are crooked or they are trying to get more money out of drugs." (Editing by Alex Richardson

http://uk.reuters.com/article/featuredCrisis/idUKISL430862

[lequebecfume]

Afghan officials burn 6.5 tons of drugs, chemicals

By RAHIM FAIEZ –

KABUL (AP) — Afghan counter-drug officials destroyed 6.5 tons (6 metric tons) of drugs and precursor chemicals in a raging bonfire Sunday they said symbolized recent successes in Afghanistan's fight against opium poppies and heroin.

The drugs, which were burned in a large pile on a sloping mountainside on the outskirts of Kabul, were confiscated by authorities over the last three to four months, said Gen. Khodaidad, the country's counternarcotics minister.

"This is a big success against terrorism, against people who are producing poppies," said Khodaidad, who like many Afghans goes by one name. "Poppy mainly supports the insurgency in Afghanistan."


The Taliban and other warlords may have earned almost a half billion dollars from Afghanistan's 2008 opium trade, the head of the U.N.'s Office on Drugs and Crime has said. Afghan officials have also been implicated in the trade.

Khodaidad acknowledged that the 6.5 tons of drugs — including heroin, opium, hashish and chemicals used to turn opium into heroin — was only a symbolic drop in the bucket. A U.N. report last year said Afghan farmers produced 7,700 tons (7,000 metric tons) of opium in 2008 with an export value estimated at $3.4 billion.

Gen. Dawood Dawood, the top counternarcotics officer in the Interior Ministry, said officials hoped to increase the number of poppy-free provinces from 18 last year to 26 this year. Khodaidad, perhaps providing a more realistic assessment, said he hoped the number increased to 22 or 23 this year.

Dawood said Sunday's drug burn was a "big achievement" for the country's counternarcotics police.

"If we do not burn the drugs, thousands of others will become drug addicts," he said. "By burning this amount of opium and narcotics we show the people we are committed to the fight against drugs."

In the country's latest violence, police on Sunday said a roadside bomb in the eastern province of Khost on Saturday killed three border police. Three police were also wounded in the attack.


http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hvWEqwq3CrRvaQCmt21MfoYhjZJQD97Q2T600

[lequebecfume]

U.S. Sets Fight in the Poppies to Stop Taliban

Lynsey Addario for The New York Times

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2009/04/29/world/29afghan2_600.JPG
American troops patrolled poppy fields in southern Afghanistan on Monday minutes before being ambushed by the Taliban.

By DEXTER FILKINS
Published: April 28, 2009

ZANGABAD, Afghanistan — American commanders are planning to cut off the Taliban’s main source of money, the country’s multimillion-dollar opium crop, by pouring thousands of troops into the three provinces that bankroll much of the group’s operations.

The plan to send 20,000 Marines and soldiers into Helmand, Kandahar and Zabul Provinces this summer promises weeks and perhaps months of heavy fighting, since American officers expect the Taliban to vigorously defend what makes up the economic engine for the insurgency. The additional troops, the centerpiece of President Obama’s effort to reverse the course of the seven-year war, will roughly double the number already in southern Afghanistan. The troops already fighting there are universally seen as overwhelmed. In many cases, the Americans will be pushing into areas where few or no troops have been before.

Through extortion and taxation, the Taliban are believed to reap as much as $300 million a year from Afghanistan’s opium trade, which now makes up 90 percent of the world’s total. That is enough, the Americans say, to sustain all of the Taliban’s military operations in southern Afghanistan for an entire year.

“Opium is their financial engine,” said Brig. Gen. John Nicholson, the deputy commander of NATO forces in southern Afghanistan. “That is why we think he will fight for these areas.”

The Americans say that their main goal this summer will be to provide security for the Afghan population, and thereby isolate the insurgents.

But because the opium is tilled in heavily populated areas, and because the Taliban are spread among the people, the Americans say they will have to break the group’s hold on poppy cultivation to be successful.

No one here thinks that is going to be easy.

Only 10 minutes inside the tiny village of Zangabad, 20 miles southwest of Kandahar, a platoon of American soldiers stepped into a poppy field in full bloom on Monday. Taliban fighters opened fire from three sides.

“From the north!” one of the soldiers yelled, spinning and firing.

“West!” another screamed, turning and firing, too.

An hour passed and a thousand bullets whipped through the air. Ammunition was running low. The Taliban were circling.

Then the gunships arrived, swooping in, their bullet casings showering the ground beneath them, their rockets streaking and destroying. Behind a barrage of artillery, the soldiers shot their way out of Zangabad and moved into the cover of the vineyards.

“When are you going drop the bomb?” Capt. Chris Brawley said into his radio over the clatter of machine-gun fire. “I’m in a grape field.”

The bomb came, and after a time the shooting stopped.

The firefight offered a preview of the Americans’ summer in southern Afghanistan. By all accounts, it is going to be bloody.

Like the guerrillas they are, Taliban fighters often fade away when confronted by a conventional army. But in Afghanistan, as they did in Zangabad, the Taliban will probably stand and fight.

Among the ways the Taliban are believed to make money from the opium trade is by charging farmers for protection; if the Americans and British attack, the Taliban will be expected to make good on their side of that bargain.

Indeed, Taliban fighters have begun to fight any efforts by the Americans or the British to move into areas where poppy grows and opium is produced. Last month, a force of British marines moved into a district called Nad Ali in Helmand Province, the center of the country’s poppy cultivation. The Taliban were waiting. In a five-day battle, the British killed 120 Taliban fighters and wounded 150. Only one British soldier was wounded.

Many of the new American soldiers will fan out along southern Afghanistan’s largely unguarded 550-mile-long border with Pakistan. Among them will be soldiers deployed in the Stryker, a relatively quick, nimble armored vehicle that can roam across the vast areas that span the frontier.

All of the new troops are supposed to be in place by Aug. 20, in order to provide security for Afghanistan’s presidential election.

The presence of poppy and opium here has injected a huge measure of uncertainly into the war. Under NATO rules of engagement, American or other forces are prohibited from attacking targets or people related only to narcotics production. Those people are not considered combatants.

But American and other forces are allowed to attack drug smugglers or facilities that are assisting the Taliban. In an interview, General Nicholson said that opium production and the Taliban are so often intertwined that the rules do not usually inhibit American operations.

“We often come across a compound that has opium and I.E.D. materials side by side, and opium and explosive materials and weapons,” General Nicholson said, referring to improvised explosive devices. “It’s very common — more common than not.”

But the prospect of heavy fighting in populated areas could further alienate the Afghan population. In the firefight in Zangabad, the Americans covered their exit with a barrage of 20 155 millimeter high-explosive artillery shells — necessary to shield them from the Taliban, but also enough to inflict serious damage on people and property. A local Afghan interviewed by telephone after the firefight said that four homes had been damaged by the artillery strikes.

Then there is the problem of weaning poppy farmers from poppy farming — a task that has proved intractable in many countries, like Colombia, where the American government has tried to curtail poppy production. It is by far the most lucrative crop an Afghan can farm. The opium trade now makes up nearly 60 percent of Afghanistan’s gross domestic product, American officials say. The country’s opium traffickers typically offer incentives that no Afghan government official can: they can guarantee a farmer a minimum price for the crop as well as taking it to market, despite the horrendous condition of most of Afghanistan’s roads.

“The people don’t like to cultivate poppy, but they are desperate,” Mohammed Ashraf Naseri, the governor of Zabul Province, told a group of visitors this month.

To offer an alternative to poppy farming, the American military is setting aside $250 million for agriculture projects like irrigation improvements and wheat cultivation. General Nicholson said that a $200 million plan for infrastructure improvements, much of it for roads to help get crops to market, was also being prepared. The vision, General Nicholson said, is to try to restore the agricultural economy that flourished in Afghanistan in the 1970s. That, more than military force, will defeat the Taliban, he said.

“There is a significant portion of the enemy that we believe we can peel off with incentives,” the general said. “We can hire away many of these young men.”

Even if the Americans are able to cut production, shortages could drive up prices and not make a significant dent in the Taliban’s profits.

The foray into Zangabad suggested the difficulties that lie ahead. The terrain is a guerrilla’s dream. In addition to acres of shoulder-high poppy plants, rows and rows of hard-packed mud walls, used to stand up grape vines, offer ideal places for ambushes and defense.

But the trickiest thing will be winning over the Afghans themselves. The Taliban are entrenched in the villages and river valleys of southern Afghanistan. The locals, caught between the foes, seem, at best, to be waiting to see who prevails.

On their way to Zangabad, the soldiers stopped in a wheat field to talk to a local farmer. His name was Ahmetullah. The Americans spoke through a Pashto interpreter.

“I’m very happy to see you,” the farmer told the Americans.

“Really?” one of the soldiers asked.

“Yes,” the farmer said.

The interpreter sighed, and spoke in English.

“He’s a liar.”



http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/29/world/asia/29afghan.html

[lequebecfume]

Afghan surge aims to break poppy trade
Published: April 29, 2009 at 8:29 AM

KABUL, Afghanistan, April 29 (UPI) -- One of the top goals of U.S. troops in Afghanistan this summer will be to break the Taliban's hold on the opium trade, military officials say.

With more troops being sent to the country by U.S. President Barack Obama, commanders will pour resources into Helmand, Kandahar and Zabul provinces, the heart of the insurgents' poppy-growing areas, The New York Times reported Wednesday.

Officials estimate the militants collect as much as $300 million per year from Afghanistan's opium trade, supplying an estimated 90 percent of the world's total.

"Opium is their financial engine," Brig. Gen. John Nicholson, the deputy commander of NATO forces in southern Afghanistan, told the Times. "That is why we think (they) will fight for these areas."

The push will likely result in heavy fighting, as 20,000 additional U.S. soldiers will move into parts of Afghanistan where Western troops have never penetrated. Because the poppy fields are located in heavily populated areas and insurgents mix with the general population, U.S. officials said the effort will be complicated.

Nicholson told the Times the United States will spend $250 million on infrastructure improvements meant to help the development of traditional crops to replace poppy cultivation.


http://www.upi.com/Top_News/2009/04/29/Afghan-surge-aims-to-break-poppy-trade/UPI-40031241008160/

[lequebecfume]

Western forces face "bloody summer" in Afghanistan

Fri May 1, 2009 6:59am BST
By Jonathon Burch

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Western forces face a bloody summer as thousands of new U.S. troops deploy in southern Afghanistan, but hope to reach a "pivot point" this year reclaiming territory back from the Taliban, a commander said.

"We've been very clear that we are expecting a spike in fighting ... where we're expecting to take significant casualties," British Brigadier David Hook, deputy commander of the NATO-led force in the south of the country, told Reuters.

"There is going to be a fight this summer, and where there's a fight, you take casualties. It's going to be a bloody summer," Hook said in an interview at the alliance's southern headquarters in Kandahar.

Violence in Afghanistan is already at its highest levels since the Taliban were driven from power in late 2001. Insurgent attacks in the first three months of this year were 73 percent higher than the same period a year ago, NATO statistics show.

The coming weeks will see the arrival of a wave of U.S. reinforcements, with 17,000 soldiers and marines joining a NATO force in the country's south, heartland of the Taliban and the opium crop that provides most of the world's heroin.

Violence would rise, Hook said, because the thousands of new U.S. troops are going to move into areas currently under control of insurgents who have been able to prepare for the fight.

But by the end of the summer, the traditional fighting season in the mountainous country, international forces would be able to provide a "degree" of security to over 90 percent of the population in the south, up from 60 percent now, he said.

"That is the pivot point. That is the point where we will have created the humanitarian space to allow the agencies to come in behind and do the reconstruction and development," he said.

STALEMATE

The new U.S. troops will bolster British, Canadian, Dutch and other NATO troops fighting a resurgent Taliban in the south of the country, where senior U.S. officials have said foreign and Afghan forces had reached a stalemate with the militants.

The additional U.S. forces for the south are the biggest wave of an increase that will see overall U.S. troop numbers in Afghanistan more than double from 32,000 at the start of this year to a projected 68,000 by year's end. About 32,000 other Western troops are in the country, increasing by a few thousand.

"We have reached a point in the south where we can go no further because of the limited number of troops. That is why we are having the additional 17,000," Hook said.

The biggest immediate challenge is preparing the ground for the expansion of the force, Hook said. The new troops will nearly double the size of the force in the south in a matter of weeks.

Camp Bastion, the main British base built in the desert of Helmand province, is undergoing expansion to house more than 8,000 U.S. Marines. Four new bases, as well as several air strips, are being constructed across the south of the country.

"Logistics are highly complex. If one part goes wrong it could throw the whole plan," Hook said.

He said the term "stalemate," used to describe the situation at present, could be misunderstood.

"It gives the perception of the First World War, where you've got two equal sides. Absolutely not the case here. They never have a chance and cannot be this conventional. As long as we have the patience to stay they can never defeat us," he said.

"The key issue is whether or not we are willing to stay long enough."


http://uk.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUKTRE5401KU20090501

[lequebecfume]

Heroin, The Taliban And The 'Seeds Of Terror'

Listen Now [26 min 4 sec]
http://www.npr.org/templates/player/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=103957098&m=104027718

Gretchen Peters has covered Pakistan and Afghanistan for more than a decade.

Fresh Air from WHYY, May 11, 2009 · Journalist Gretchen Peters spent five years traveling the border areas between Pakistan and Afghanistan to research and write her new book Seeds of Terror: How Heroin is Bankrolling the Taliban and al Qaeda.

Peters says that the rejuvenated Taliban gets 70 percent of its funds from opium, and that there is overwhelming circumstantial evidence of Osama bin Laden's involvement in the drug trade.

Peters covered Pakistan and Afghanistan for more than a decade, first for The Associated Press and later as a reporter for ABC News.

Fresh Air guest host Dave Davies conducts this interview.


http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103957098

[lequebecfume]

How to Save Afghanistan
By RORY STEWART / KABUL Thursday, Jul. 17, 2008


A LITTLE HELP FROM FRIENDS: Kabul residents cross an incomplete bridge. Infrastructure projects are the best way for the West to make a difference in the lives of Afghans
Photograph by Zalma

It is summer now in Kabul, the snow has largely melted from the 15,000-ft. (4,600 m) peaks, and I am sitting with my friends Hussein, Nabi and Zia in the garden of a 19th century fort.

Nearby, 10 carpenters who work with my nongovernmental organization (NGO) are creating a library for a buyer in Tokyo. They're fitting slivers of wood into a delicate lattice and carving flowers into the walnut shutters. They work fast and smile often. But Nabi, a gentle-voiced 66-year-old cook, is not smiling. He is pessimistic about his country. "We have been promised progress by every government since 1973," he growls, "but it is getting worse and worse."


McCain and Lieberman on Afghanistan

Nabi's pessimism is very common now in Afghanistan. There has been a dramatic series of recent attacks by the Taliban: a mass assault on a jail freed hundreds of prisoners, and a suicide bombing outside the Indian embassy on July 7 killed 40 and injured over 100. Many of these assaults are planned and supported from safe havens across the border in the tribal areas of Pakistan. Western troop casualties are climbing; the last two months exceeded the monthly death toll in Iraq. On July 13, nine U.S. soldiers were killed when Taliban fighters swarmed over their base in the eastern province of Kunar — the worst attack in three years.

But terrorism and insurgency are only part of what's going wrong in Afghanistan. In 2002, I walked safely along the length of the road between Herat and Obey in western Afghanistan. Recently aid workers were carjacked on that road, and it is now considered too dangerous for aid agencies, effectively closing the main access to the central regions of the country. In provinces close to Kabul, such as Wardak, Ghazni and Logar, which were easy to visit two years ago, foreigners are regularly attacked and girls' schools burned at will. Afghanistan produces 92% of the world's opium (used to make heroin) and 35% of its cannabis and has a flourishing trade in looted antiquities. In a vicious cycle, narcotics, corruption and the absence of law and order are rotting the heart of the government and crippling the economy. Despite massive Western investment, Afghanistan is close to being a failed state.

What should we do about it? Many policymakers want to throw more money and troops at the problem. Both Barack Obama and John McCain say that as President, they would send additional combat brigades — from 7,000 to 15,000 troops — to tame the insurgency in Afghanistan. At a June conference in Paris, Western governments committed an additional $20 billion in aid, in the hope that this would finally bring success in counterinsurgency, counternarcotics, rule of law, governance and state-building — and eventually allow us to withdraw from Afghanistan with honor.

But just because Afghanistan has problems that need to be solved does not mean that the West can solve them all. My experience suggests that those pushing for an expansion of our military presence there are wrong. We don't need bold new plans and billions more in aid. Instead, we need less investment — but a greater focus on what we know how to do.

What We've Done Right

When I walked across Afghanistan, shortly after the U.S.-led invasion had toppled the Taliban regime, there was no electricity in the 400 miles (640 km) between Herat and Kabul. The villages along the route were led by tribal chiefs, mullahs or guerrilla commanders who had little to do with their neighbors, let alone with the central government. Most districts that I visited had no schools or clinics. As a civil servant — I was on leave from my job in Britain's Foreign Office — I was surprised by how poor Afghanistan was and how ungoverned.

In 2006, after 11 months as a regional administrator in southern Iraq, I returned to Afghanistan to set up an NGO called the Turquoise Mountain to restore part of the old bazaar of Kabul and support traditional crafts. The garbage was then 7 ft. (2 m) deep in the streets, 200 yd. (180 m) from the presidential palace; there was no drainage, sewerage or water supply. Once famous traditional buildings were collapsing, and the craft-masters of ceramics, woodwork and jewelry were dying without passing on their skills. Most of the children in the area were not in school, most people were unemployed, few women were literate, and most of their children died before their first birthday.

The past six years, however, have made me optimistic about many aspects of Afghanistan. The community with which I work in the old city is hardworking, decisive and determined. In less than two years, we have cleared mountains of garbage, established clinics and primary schools, created jobs, restored the buildings and shops of the bazaar and attracted visitors and customers back into the area. I have been impressed also by the flexible and imaginative support that we began to receive from private philanthropists around the world and from Canadian and American development agencies.

There has been dramatic progress in many other parts of the country. Since 2001, 6.4 million children have been educated, and there has been a massive increase in access to basic health care. Western funding and assistance have helped create an efficient central bank, a stable currency, an elected parliament, telecommunications and infrastructure projects and a credible army. Some foreign aid goes directly into the hands of elected councils in over 20,000 villages, allowing them to initiate their own rural-development projects. Many of the villages I visited six years ago now have electricity and access to clinics and schools.

What's Gone Wrong

For all those improvements, however, it's clear why my friend Nabi is so pessimistic. The government has not established its authority or credibility. Civil servants lack the most basic education and skills. Perhaps a quarter of teachers are illiterate, and the majority are educated only one grade level above their students (if they are teaching second grade, they have a third-grade education). Many civil servants are corrupt. The police are notoriously predatory and violent. In much of the center and the north of the country, communities have benefited from small amounts of investment in development, health and education, but their contact with civil servants is minimal, and people remain very poor. In the south and the east, along the Pakistani border, the vacuum of government has become an opportunity for gangsters and the Taliban. These are the areas where almost all the world's opium is produced and where Western forces are fighting a costly counterinsurgency campaign.

Many of these problems cannot be solved by the West, however many billions we spend or thousands of troops we deploy. Our money and expertise, which have helped make the central bank and the Afghan National Army professional and competent, cannot prevent the widespread corruption in the police and legal system. A central bank is relatively small, dealing with narrow issues such as currency and interest rates on which international economists can offer practical, technical advice. An army is able to develop its esprit de corps and drills in barracks, isolated from the broader society. But policemen and judges are much more connected to society and much more exposed to local politics and corruption. This is why most developing countries have relatively effective central banks and armies but corrupt and despised police forces. It's also why everyone finds it easier to build roads than to create rule of law, easier to build a school than a state. Afghans deal with most crimes outside the court system, using a traditional leader as an arbitrator. No amount of legal training can help a judge faced with drug lords who are prepared to kill his family. It is almost impossible for outsiders to reform this kind of system.

Fighting the Taliban is equally problematic. Western troops can win any conventional battle against ill-armed extremists, but both history and the latest doctrine on counterinsurgency suggest that ultimate victory will require control of Afghanistan's borders, hundreds of thousands of troops and a much stronger and more legitimate Afghan state, which could take Afghans decades to build. The West does not have the resources to match our ambitions in counterinsurgency, and we never will.

In any case, the preoccupations of the West — fighting terrorism and narcotics — are not the priorities of Afghans like Nabi, Zia and Hussein. Their major concerns are the state of the economy and basic services. Nabi has to keep working in a guesthouse kitchen at the age of 66 to feed his family. Like most other Afghans, he can barely afford bread: the price of flour has tripled in the past year as a result of a surge in global commodity prices. Unpredictable and uncontrollable events such as this may prove much more important than any international policy for the survival of the Afghan state. As Nabi says, "We are fed up with war. I am supporting five unemployed sons. Why can the government not create jobs?"

Getting Out of the Way

So what exactly should we do about Afghanistan now? First, the West should not increase troop numbers. In time, NATO allies, such as Germany and Holland, will probably want to draw down their numbers, and they should be allowed to do so. We face pressing challenges elsewhere. If we are worried about terrorism, Pakistan is more important than Afghanistan; if we are worried about regional stability, then Egypt, Iran or even Lebanon is more important; if we are worried about poverty, Africa is more important. A troop increase is likely to inflame Afghan nationalism because Afghans are more anti-foreign than we acknowledge and the support for our presence in the insurgency areas is declining. The Taliban, which was a largely discredited and backward movement, gains support by portraying itself as fighting for Islam and Afghanistan against a foreign military occupation.

Nor should we increase our involvement in government and the economy. The more responsibility we take in Afghanistan, the more we undermine the credibility and responsibility of the Afghan government and encourage it to act irresponsibly. Our claims that Afghanistan is the "front line in the war on terror" and that "failure is not an option" have convinced the Afghan government that we need it more than it needs us. The worse things become, the more assistance it seems to receive. This is not an incentive to reform. Increasing our commitment to Afghanistan gives us no leverage over the government.

Afghans increasingly blame us for the problems in the country: the evening news is dominated by stories of wasted development aid. The government claims that in 2007, $1.3 billion out of $3.5 billion of aid was spent on international consultants, some of whom received more than $1,000 a day and whose policy papers are often ignored by Afghan civil servants and are invisible to the population. Our lack of success despite our wealth and technology convinces ordinary Afghans to believe in conspiracy theories. Well-educated people have told me that the West is secretly backing the Taliban and that the U.S.'s main objective was to steal Afghanistan's emeralds, antiquities and uranium — and that we knew where Osama bin Laden was but had decided not to catch him.

Playing to Our Strengths

A smarter strategy would focus on two elements: more effective aid and a more limited military objective. We should target development assistance in provinces where we have a track record of success. Our investment goes further in stable and welcoming places like Hazarajat than it can in hostile, insurgency-dominated areas like Kandahar and Helmand, where we have to spend millions on security and the locals do not contribute to the project and will not sustain it after our departure. We should focus on meeting the Afghan government's request for more investment in agricultural irrigation, energy and roads. And we should increase our support to the most effective departments, such as education, health and rural development; they are good for the reputation of the Afghan state and the West. Creating more educated, healthier women and men and better transport, communications and electrical infrastructure may be only part of the story, but they are essential for Afghanistan's economic future.

Our efforts in nation-building, governance and counternarcotics should be smaller and more creative. This is not because these issues are unimportant; they are vital for Afghanistan's future. But only the Afghan government has the legitimacy, the knowledge and the power to build a nation. The West's supporting role is at best limited and uncertain. The recent elimination of the opium crop in Nangarhar, for instance, was driven by the will and charisma of a local governor and owed little to Western-funded "capacity-building" seminars. The greatest recent improvements in local government have come about through the replacement of local governors rather than through hundred-million-dollar training programs. Since these successes are often difficult to predict, we should invest in numerous smaller opportunities rather than bet all our chips on a few large programs.

Our military strategy, meanwhile, should focus on counterterrorism — not counterinsurgency.

Our presence has so far prevented al-Qaeda from establishing training camps in Afghanistan. We must continue to prevent it from doing so. But our troops should not try to hold territory or chase the Taliban around rural areas. We should also use our presence to steer Afghanistan away from civil war and provide some opportunity for the Afghans themselves to create a more humane, well-governed and prosperous country. This policy would require far fewer troops over the next 20 years, and they would probably be predominantly special forces and intelligence operatives.

This strategy is far from ideal. But it's the best option we've got. It might not allow us to build an Afghan nation. It would involve a very long-term policy of containment and management, and it may never lead to a clear victory or exit. But unlike abandoning Afghanistan entirely, as we did in 1990, it would not leave a vacuum filled by dangerous neighbors. And unlike a policy of troop increases, this strategy would be less costly, more popular with voters, more sustainable in the long term, less of a distraction from other global priorities and less likely to alienate Afghan nationalists and undermine the Afghan state.

Transforming a nation of 32 million people is a task not for the West but for Afghans. Creating a narrative of national identity is not a technical engineering problem but more a question of mythmaking. Afghanistan's future must combine elders like Nabi with the aspirations of 5 million refugees, recently returned from Pakistan and Iran. And it will be influenced by even larger forces: the eddies of local ideologies, charisma, the fundamentals of population growth and natural resources, global commodity prices and the nation's relations with its neighbors, from Iran and Pakistan to China. It will draw on government bureaucracies and opaque tribal structures, on old constitutions and new cultures, on religion and luck. Afghans have the energy, the pride and the competence to lead that process. The West, however, does not. It should not waste its money, its lives and its reputation trying to do the impossible. It should invest in what it does well. We do not have a moral obligation to do what we cannot do.

Stewart lives in Kabul and is the author of The Places in Between and Prince of the Marshes. He was recently appointed the Ryan Professor and the director of the Carr Center for Human Rights at Harvard University


http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1823753-1,00.html

[lequebecfume]

U.S. and Afghan Forces Seize Biggest Drug Cache to Date

By SABRINA TAVERNISE
Published: May 23, 2009
KABUL, Afghanistan — American and Afghan forces seized what the American military called the single largest drug cache to date in a four-day operation that began Tuesday in the south of the country.

The seizure by Afghan Army commandos and American forces took place in Marjeh, a town in Helmand Province, the American military said in a statement on Saturday. In all, soldiers found more than 101 tons of narcotics, including heroin, poppy seeds, opium and hashish. Large amounts of heroin processing materials were also confiscated, the military said.

Heroin is a major source of income for the Taliban in Afghanistan, and the American military has said it would be a major focus of future operations as more troops are moved into Afghanistan this summer under President Obama’s plan.

The drugs were taken in a central market area in the town. A battle ensued in which, according to the American military, 60 insurgents were killed. An American military spokesman said the allies met a surprising level of resistance, fighting the militants for four days in gun battles and by aerial strikes.

The military said that commandos also found bomb-making materials, including 30 tons of ammonium nitrate, pressure plate triggers, military grade explosives and ammunition vests.

The spokesman for the American forces, Col. Greg Julian, said the operation had “severely disrupted,” one of the main narcotics hubs in southern Afghanistan.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/24/world/asia/24afghan.html?ref=global-home

[lequebecfume]

Karzai in Iran for terror, drugs summit


KABUL (AFP) — Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai flew to Tehran for a summit with Iran and Pakistan on beating the threats of Islamic extremism and drugs, the Afghan government said.

Karzai headed out with a high-ranking delegation that included Foreign Minister Rangin Dadfar Spanta, the national intelligence chief, his security adviser and other senior government officials, the president's office said.

He was due on Sunday to meet Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari, who arrived in Tehran on Saturday.

The summit follows Afghanistan's largest-ever drugs seizure, after troops killed 60 militants in an operation ending Saturday in a Taliban stronghold and opium-production centre in southern Afghanistan.

Announcing the visit late Saturday, Afghanistan's foreign ministry said the summit aimed to create a "mechanism" for regular high-level consultation between the three Islamic governments.

This would underscore commitment to "eradicating extremism, terrorism and drugs which run counter to Islamic beliefs and morals, and the culture and traditions of the three Islamic countries", it said in a statement.

The governments also want to build regional cooperation in the fields of agriculture, commerce, transit, health and energy, it said.

Karzai would stay on in Tehran Monday for a separate meeting with Ahmadinejad, the foreign ministry said. He was also due to meet Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei during his trip.

Pakistan state media said Zardari, his Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi, Interior Minister Rehman Malik and other officials arrived in Iran for the summit to discuss issues "including terrorism and militancy".

Ahmadinejad, Karzai and Zardari met less than three months ago in Tehran for a regional economic summit, along with leaders of other neighbouring states, that pledged to help rebuild war-shattered Afghanistan.

Kabul relies on US help to defeat an Islamist insurgency led by the Taliban and rebuild after decades of war.

The support of Pakistan and Iran is less obvious, with Western and Afghan officials charging that militants and weapons enter Afghanistan through these neighbours.

Afghanistan is the source of 90 percent of the world's opium, most of which is converted into heroin inside the country and smuggled out through Pakistan and Iran, where drug use is growing.

The Afghan military announced Saturday it had used air strikes to destroy 92 tonnes of drugs, heroin-processing chemicals and bomb-making materials in the southern province of Helmand.
It said troops had "seized the single-largest drug cache by Afghan-led forces in Afghanistan to date during a four day operation" in Marja.


http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5j5rcpzXA_0U8fwsxHbwCMxfdArLg

[lequebecfume]

UN wants 'flood of drugs' in Afghanistan to devalue opium

Officials believe that in stopping smuggling across borders, the price will fall as the market is saturated internally

Jon Boone in Herat
guardian.co.uk, Monday 25 May 2009 22.10 BST


United Nations officials in Afghanistan are attempting to create a "flood of drugs" in the country intended to destroy the value of opium and force poppy farmers to switch to legal crops such as wheat.

After the failure to destroy fields of the scarlet flowers in Afghanistan's volatile south, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime says the answer is to stop the drugs from leaving the country in the first place.

"Manual eradication is incompetent and inefficient," UNODC chief Antonio Maria Costa said during a visit to the western Afghan province of Herat. "So we want to see more efforts to stop the flow of drugs across Afghanistan's borders and the hitting of high-value targets to create a market disruption.

"We want to create a flood of drugs within Afghanistan. There will be so much opium inside Afghanistan unable to go out that the price will go down."

Officials admit that the plan is a second-best solution to intensive eradication campaigns. Last year the Afghan government succeeded in destroying only 3.5% of Afghanistan's 157,000 hectares of poppy because eradication teams were either attacked or bought off by local drug lords. But the attempt to use brute economics to tackle the country's $4bn (£2.5bn) narcotics industry instead is fraught with problems – not least Afghanistan's thousands of miles of porous borders.

Costa got a first-hand view of that issue this month from the porthole of a UN helicopter chartered to fly along a portion of the 580-mile border that separates Afghanistan from Iran.

The vast swaths of desert are thinly populated with a scattering of mud brick villages, and there is little to stop smugglers crossing the border.

While the Iranians, fed up with the problems created by the country's 1 million heroin addicts, have taken steps to build ditches and walls along the frontier, the Afghans lack even a fraction of those resources.

On the Afghan side of the border, Costa visited one of 24 squalid border checkpoints supported by a sprinkling of EU money, where the commanding officer told the UNODC chief that his men needed heavy weapons to defend themselves against the much better armed smugglers who race through the huge gaps in the border.

The task of beefing up Afghanistan's defences on this vast stretch of border is supported by just two UNODC officials, and they say that while their Afghan colleagues have been ready for months to start joint border patrols with their Iranian counterparts, progress has stalled because of bureaucratic infighting between ministries in Kabul.

Their efforts have been further undermined by a recent decree by President Hamid Karzai to close down small cross-border markets which had been a source of economic activity in an otherwise barren wilderness.

The local UNODC officials say the decision by Karzai, apparently taken to protect customs revenues, is "killing the villages".

The governor of Herat province, Ahmad Yusef Nuristani, said young people in the border areas had no choice but to join the drug smugglers to survive. "They were trading areas that kept people busy with legitimate businesses so they would not be tempted into employment by the drug traffickers," Nuristani said.

Even without attempts to disrupt the flow of drugs out of the country, Afghanistan is doing a good job of destroying the value of its main export. Huge overproduction, which by some estimates twice outstrips world demand, has led to a steady fall in the value of opium. A kilogram is now worth less than one fifth of what it was in 2001. The slump in opium values, combined with last year's soaring worldwide price of wheat, fuelled hopes that farmers would switch crops. However, wheat has fallen by 30% since October and humanitarian handouts of imported wheat last winter also helped to keep prices in Afghanistan low.

Costa said his request that the World Food Programme buy only Afghan wheat had been rejected by "free market ayatollahs who think political stability is less important than free market principles".

The UNODC country chief, Jean-Luc Lemahieu, also warned that the strategy of capitalising on falling opium prices could be torpedoed by Chinese drug dealers looking to Afghanistan to supply China's growing army of heroin addicts. "I think we have a two-year window before the Chinese pick up on the Afghan market. Currently the Chinese dealers source their heroin from the Golden Triangle. The networks have not yet been established."


http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/may/25/drugs-united-nations-afghanistan

[lequebecfume]

Opium A 'Low-Risk Product For A High-Risk Environment'

http://gdb.rferl.org/E08232C3-7487-4FB0-A508-C65A4D59997D_w393_s.jpg

An Afghan policeman destroys a field of poppies in the southern Helmand Province, where insecurity continues to make opium growing widespread.

May 28, 2009

There is growing recognition that the battle against opium-poppy cultivation in Afghanistan is failing, and has made no serious dent in the country's position as the world's main source of opium.

William Byrd, an adviser to the World Bank on fragile and conflict-affected countries, has spent many years since 2001 in Afghanistan researching the country's economy and the impact of illegal drug production. He spoke to RFE/RL correspondent Abubakar Siddique about Afghanistan's complex opium-eradication challenge.

RFE/RL: The Taliban are sometimes credited with ending poppy cultivation during the last year of their rule. Why then do we see this big poppy-cultivation and drug-trafficking problem in Afghanistan eight years after the fall of the Taliban regime?

William Byrd: Well, I think poppy cultivation is the reflection of the deep poverty in the countryside and also insecurity and corruption. And it's not surprising that the Taliban ban could not be sustained because the Taliban ban in the year 2000 did not affect the underlying factors which were contributing to opium production. So therefore, it bounced back rather quickly.

And the other point I would like to make, the Taliban ban was only on production and not on the trade in opium. So in a way it was a rather limited ban.

RFE/RL: We know that the drug industry in Afghanistan depends on complex arrangements among small formers, drug traffickers, and transnational drug mafias. But what essentially fuels the industry within Afghanistan?

Byrd: Well it is a very challenging problem. And there has been some progress in that the production of opium has now been increasingly limited to a few parts of the country. But still the amount of production remains large.

I think the lessons that have been learned from analysis of opium poppy and field work is that basically, this crop thrives in an insecure environment. The danger with the drug industry is not associated particularly with individual farmers growing the opium. It is with the large amounts of money and the risk of high-level corruption and insecurity that is associated with the drug industry.

Security, Development Needed

RFE/RL: Clearly the strategy of eradicating poppy cultivation has not worked, and is even seen as fueling the Taliban insurgency. What mix of policies do you think can help?

Byrd: What's very important and this is in the [Afghan] government's national counternarcotic strategy, is that there need to be some kind of sustainable alternative livelihoods. And another pillar which is very important is what's called sometimes interdiction, which is law-enforcement efforts against the larger traders or the processing labs.

But in the long run, unless there is a shift to labor-intensive cash crops that achieve value, of which there are many in Afghanistan but they need to reach market. Whether its pomegranates or melons or grapes or almonds or even the livestock, which generates wool for carpets, there is a range of activities that needs to be developed. And the problem is that these activities are often harder to develop when there is insecurity. Whereas sometimes opium is called "a low-risk product for a high-risk environment."

RFE/RL: In some regions, such as the eastern Nangarhar Province, farmers voluntarily gave up poppy cultivation but promises of development assistance were never fully met. What incentives need to be on the table to dissuade Afghan formers from poppy cultivation?

Byrd: My impression is that if farmers can have a safe and reasonable environment and a livelihood where they can sell their other products, farmers will quite willingly shift away from opium poppy. The problem is that when they try to sell tomatoes and potatoes and they carry them along the road and they have to pay a bribe at a checkpoint. This starts discouraging farmers from growing these crops.

Long-Term Process

RFE/RL: Afghanistan is essentially the supply side of the global drug problem, but unless you do something about the global drug demand, the problem will not be resolved. What's your take on this?

Byrd: There are examples where individual countries have succeeded to phase out or eliminate opium or other illicit narcotics and that's irrespective of the world environment. So I can't comment on what would happen if, for example, Afghanistan was able to eliminate opium production. What would happen then to the opium industry if there are no changes on the world-demand side?

But I think the more important point is that it is possible but it takes time and it requires a smart strategy. Thailand was able to eliminate the problem but it took two decades. Pakistan made a lot of progress but again it took rather long time. I think there needs to be recognition in Afghanistan also that this is a long-term process of easing the country away from dependence on opium production.

RFE/RL: So when do you see an Afghanistan that's not the center of global opium production and trafficking?

Byrd: It is hard to give an exact timeline. And we have to remember not to measure opium production or cultivation in any one year as an indicator. One needs to see what happens over three, five years.

As I said there is already significant progress in reducing the number of provinces that are cultivating opium and the remaining provinces that are cultivating are tending to be the most insecure provinces so these will actually be more difficult and probably take longer than some of the provinces like Nangarhar.


http://www.rferl.org/content/Opium_A_LowRisk_Product_For_A_HighRisk_Environment/1741437.html

[lequebecfume]

70 percent Taliban’s funding comes from opium trade’

May 31st, 2009 - 2:32 pm ICT by ANI -

http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal/images/Taliban-117324.jpg

Lahore, May 31 (ANI): The Taliban is utilizing the funds generated from the opium trade to carry out its nefarious activities in Pakistan and other region of the world, American author Gretchen Peters has said.

In an interview to the Voice of America, Peters said the Taliban gets more than 70 percent of their funds from opium.

She also claimed that there are evidences which prove that Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden is also directly involved in the drug trade.

“While the insurgents earn some money from collecting taxes from the farmers, the bulk of the earnings come from protecting the trade, protecting the convoys and protecting the refineries and taxing the refineries and yet we are not going after that element of it,” The Daily Times quoted Peters, as saying.

Meanwhile, Pakistan Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani has said that the Taliban were being funded from abroad.

Gilani also said the drug mafia was also involved in the funding of the extremists.

He expressed fears that a surge in the presence of US troops in Afghanistan may have a detrimental effect on Pakistan’s security, as the Taliban could once sneak into the country. (ANI)


http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal/south-asia/70-percent-talibans-funding-comes-from-opium-trade_100198984.html

[lequebecfume]

Dexter Filkins: The 'Forever War' In Afghanistan

Listen Now (http://www.npr.org/templates/player/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=104802646&m=104804325) [38 min 29 sec]


http://media.npr.org/programs/fa/photos/2009/feb/dexter_filkins_200.jpg
James Hill
Dexter Filkins reports for The New York Times from Afghanistan and Pakistan. Knopf Books


Fresh Air from WHYY, June 2, 2009 · As a foreign correspondent for The New York Times, Dexter Filkins has recently reported on clashes pitting Taliban militants against the Afghan and Pakistani governments.

Filkins reported on the Iraq war from 2003 to 2006, earning a 2004 George Polk award for his coverage on the assault on Falluja. From 2001 to 2002, he covered the war in Afghanistan. Filkins' book The Forever War, about his experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan, is now out in paperback.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=104802646





LEQ
--in excruciating pain inside and out...

[lequebecfume]

Poppy link to Afghan bumper crop

The government is urging farmers to grow wheat rather than opium

The Afghan government has said that the bumper wheat harvest expected this year can be attributed in part to its successful poppy eradication programme.

Officials say the success of the scheme - especially in Nangarhar province - has helped the country to reap its biggest wheat harvest in 30 years.

However officials say the main reason for the bumper harvest is because of increased snow and rainfall.

They say that the country is now almost self-sufficient in wheat.
Improved yields

An official in the ministry of counter-narcotics told the BBC that increased demand for wheat meant that it was selling for a higher price, in contrast to the the relatively low prices currently being paid for opium.

"Most farmers were not prepared to risk cultivating poppies because they were scared that the government would destroy them," he said.

Agriculture Minister Asif Rahimi said that he was expecting the best wheat harvest for 32 years.

The government says that it is determined to eradicate poppy crops

Last year Afghanistan had to import over two million tonnes of wheat to feed it people.

This year's projected yield means the country would only have to import 200,000 tonnes of wheat.

The minister also predicted improved yields of rice and corn.
The main reason for the bumper harvest is increased rainfall, but other factors include more farmland devoted to wheat after last year's high prices for the crop. Improved provision of seeds and fertilisers to farmers has also been cited as a factor.

The BBC's Bilal Sarwary in Kabul says that the government's poppy eradication programme has contributed to better harvests, even if its writ does not extend to areas of the country where the Taliban are active - such as Helmand and Kandahar provinces.

Our correspondent says the construction of better roads has also helped farmers to sell their produce more speedily.

Opium 'remains profitable'

However the opium trade remains a highly profitable enterprise for many farmers and is deeply interwoven with the economic, political and social fabric of the country.

Afghan and international authorities are engaged in a campaign to reverse an unprecedented upsurge of opium poppy cultivation and heroin production, but many commentators say that their efforts so far have been inadequate.

The war in Afghanistan over the last three decades has forced many farmers into exile, with land and irrigation systems destroyed in battle or ruined by neglect.

Agriculture is a development priority for foreign aid agencies working in the country, with about 80% of Afghans estimated to live in rural areas.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8084867.stm

[lequebecfume]

THE AFGHANISTAN DEBATE

Germany Mulls Future as Attacks Surge

By Dirk Kurbjuweit

With girls' schools being closed and attacks on their troops on the rise in Afghanistan, many Germans wonder whether the deployment of their armed forces in the Hinda Kush makes sense anymore. Still, the Taliban cannot be allowed to prevail in the region.

According to Colonel Georg Klein, the kind of yellow plastic containers you can buy at the store currently pose the greatest threat to German soldiers in Afghanistan. The canisters, with a capacity of about 10 liters (2.6 gallons), may have once contained motor oil or pesticide. But then someone filled them with nails and added explosive material and a fuse. The repurposed yellow canisters are now hidden by the roadside, waiting for Germans.



REUTERS
German Bundeswehr army snipers in Kunduz: The Germans would also share some of the blame for the disasters that would unfold in the wake of a German withdrawal from Afghanistan.

The colonel even has a film to illustrate his point. He is sitting with a group of visitors in the darkened conference room at the German field base in Kunduz, Afghanistan. His most important guest is Peter Struck, the head of the center-left Social Democratic Party's parliamentary group in the German Bundestag, who was Germany's defense minister from July 2002 until November 2005. Struck has always been in favor of the deployment of German troops to Afghanistan, and he is the man who famously said that "Germany is also being defended at the Hindu Kush," referring to the Afghani mountain range. It's 2 p.m. on Thursday, June 4, and Struck is now in Afghanistan himself.

The colonel's film depicts one of the Bundeswehr's Fox armored personnel carriers, with a red cross on a white background painted onto its rear. The Fox, driving along an Afghan road, happens to be being filmed by someone in a vehicle traveling behind it. Suddenly a yellow fireball appears to the left of the Fox, the image shifts and the picture goes black.

The explosion was caused by a homemade bomb and, fortunately, no one was hurt this time. Then the colonel moves on to his next topic: gun battles. As chance would have it, a Bundeswehr convoy is being ambushed at roughly the same time, 10 kilometers (six miles) from the German base. Once again, the Germans were lucky and there were no casualties.

Struck is muttering something to himself as the colonel speaks. It is an odd sound, not exactly a "yes," but something between agreement and concern. It is probably his last official trip to Afghanistan, and roughly his 12th. Struck, 66, will not run in the next parliamentary election in September. Last week, he traveled to the places that gave rise to the quotation for which he is best known, spending two days in Kabul, Mazar-e-Sharif and Kunduz.

It is time to take stock of the situation. The question is: Was Struck's statement wrong when he made it? Has it become wrong in the meantime? And why is the German military still in Afghanistan?

According to the most recent survey by the Berlin-based opinion research company Infratest Dimap, only one-third of Germans support the Bundeswehr's Afghanistan mission today. When the mission's mandate was extended in October 2008, 128 members of the Bundestag voted against the measure. Given the current situation in the Kunduz area, more zinc coffins can be expected. Among the latest casualities was German soldier Sergej Motz, killed in a gun battle on April 29.

The Haunting 'Sponge'

Peter Struck is attending a luncheon in his honor at the headquarters of the International Security Assistance Force for Afghanistan (ISAF) in Kabul. When asked what the typical wound is in this war, Matthias Beste, a German military doctor, says the word "sponge." Shots in the stomach, once feared, are no longer as common, thanks to modern bulletproof vests. The "sponge" is a consequence of the plastic canisters. The nails penetrate the soldiers' legs in such a way that blood spurts from dozens of holes. If fellow soldiers are unable to bandage the leg within 10 minutes, the wounded soldier will likely die. If they do bandage the leg in time, it usually has to be amputated.

This is one of the side-effects of war, but hearing about it produces only one reaction: No one should have to be in a place where his leg can turn into a sponge. The word haunts Struck and his group as they travel through Afghanistan.

The next day, in Mazar-e-Sharif, another sentence is uttered that takes getting used to: Today's Bundeswehr hero holds hands with other men. And while that may be hard to believe, it is true.


Early in the morning, Struck flies by helicopter from the German base in Mazar-e-Sharif to a camp known as Mike Spann. Along the way, the passengers are given a brief reminder that they are in a war zone. Suddenly there is a loud noise and a flash near the open tailgate, and the helicopter veers sharply to the side, shifting the contents of the passengers' stomachs. In a situation like this, it helps to glance over at the machine gunners at the side portholes. They seem calm. For them, the situation is nothing new.

The on-board computer has reported a threat, prompting the helicopter to fire so-called "flares," which explains the loud noise and flash coming from the rear. The flares are extremely hot and divert heat-seeking missiles away from the engine. The computer is sensitive and sometimes reports threats that are in fact nothing but reflections, which is what happened this time. But now Struck and his companions know how it feels to be in a helicopter that could be under fire. It isn't a good feeling.

Now it's Major Dietmar M.'s turn. He is a senior mentor, meaning he trains soldiers in the Afghan national army. At Camp Mike Spann, his charges show the visitors what they have learned, which includes repairing cars in accordance with German standards, maintaining weapons and caring for the wounded. The major talks about how difficult it is to build trust.

It is a good sign, he says, when one of his Afghan partners begins taking hold of both hands in greeting, instead of simply shaking hands. It is an even better sign when he rubs his cheek against Major M.'s cheek. And when an Afghan soldier feels truly at ease with Major M., he could very well take his hand and stroll through the camp with him, holding hands. This is the custom in Afghanistan.

The major has no objection. He is a practical man who knows that wars are not just won with gunfire. And he is a man who is prepared to overcome his culturally ingrained opposition to men holding hands so that this war can be brought to an end, both for Afghanistan and for the Germans.

Pinning Future Hopes on Afghan Army

A smart military campaign begins with thinking about how it will end, and with the question of how best to get out. The Germans are pinning their hopes on training the Afghan national army. A Bundeswehr colonel who is also a mentor says: "We eat with them, we sleep next to them, we live with them and we move forward with them."


If all goes well, the national army will be able to provide for security in Afghanistan one day, thereby defending German security at the same time. It will take time, and perhaps it will never quite materialize, but working to achieve this goal is the right thing to do. Thus, Major M.'s willingness to hold hands with other men becomes an argument in favor of this campaign. The Bundeswehr is in fact doing a great deal to make sure that it will not be forced to stay in Afghanistan forever. It has an exit strategy.

There are many briefings during Struck's trip, sessions in dimly lit rooms in which a colonel or a general struggles through a lengthy PowerPoint presentation, putting half of his audience to sleep. The presentations end up as jumbled collections of cards, little flags and arrows, and as an endless series of abbreviations likely to induce a feeling of dizziness in those still awake: CIMIC, TLSR, OMLT, JQRF, OCC-P/R, CJTFG, IED, GIRoA. There are literally hundreds of them, and if this war is lost, it will probably be because an SBCT was mistaken for an IBCT.

But some of the presentations are interesting. Brigadier General Jörg Vollmer, the commander of the Northern Region, reports on a generally calm situation. The city of Mazar-e-Sharif is blossoming, he says, opium production has been stopped, for the most part, and roads and bridges are being built. There is undoubtedly an element of war propaganda to his presentation, but it is undisputed that northern Afghanistan is much quieter than the south and east, areas with majority Pashtun populations.

Northern Afghanistan is home to larger populations of Uzbeks and Tajik, which are not as susceptible to the Taliban's religious and belligerent fanaticism. In addition, the efforts of the Bundeswehr and troops from other countries have prevented the Taliban from spreading widely in the north. This, too, is an argument to support Struck's famous statement.

'It Was Not the Wrong Decision to Go to Afghanistan'

One of the problem areas in the north is Kunduz province, where many Pashtuns live. When Struck lands there on Thursday afternoon, he is asked to put on a bullet-proof vest -- protection against the yellow plastic canisters -- but he wants to smoke a cigarette first, and he drapes the vest loosely around his shoulders as if it were a flag sporting the colors of his favorite football club, Borussia Dortmund. But the soldiers are insistent and emphatically help him don the vest. The combination of the bullet-proof vest and Struck's bald head give the politician an oddly turtle-like appearance.



REUTERS
Afghan girls attend a lesson at a school: Many girls have no better prospects than to become household slaves in Afghanistan.

A short time later, he is sitting in another dimly lit room, watching another PowerPoint presentation. He sees the images of yellow canisters, and of explosions. He listens to the numbers: 31 attacks with firearms against the security forces in Kunduz province this year, 15 rocket attacks, 27 booby traps. These are the worst statistics since the Bundeswehr arrived in Kunduz. And each new attack reinforces German doubts about Germany's mission in Afghanistan.

Colonel Klein, the Bundeswehr commander in Kunduz, says that the intelligence agencies have informed them that Taliban leaders in the north have come under growing pressure this year, as their commanders sourly remind them that they should be doing more. In a typical example of the local Taliban's response to this pressure, groups of fighters drive through the area on motorcycles, wielding bazookas. The Bundeswehr responds by taking up pursuit. At some point, the Taliban fighters jump from the motorcycles and open fire on the Germans, who hold them at bay until Afghan security forces are able to arrive and defeat the Taliban fighters.

Can this be an argument to call for the withdrawal of the Bundeswehr? Should German soldiers be yielding to motorcycles, yellow plastic canisters and small rockets, just because they are now being used with greater frequency? It is horrible to see a leg turned into a sponge, but the Taliban would not interpret a Bundeswehr withdrawal as a sign of peace, but as an opportunity to expand their territory. And an Afghanistan under Islamist control could, in turn, become a safe haven and training ground for terrorists.

If that happens, every German will be at risk, and it is a soldier's supreme duty to prevent harm from being inflicted on civilians, even if this means risking harm to himself.

The Bundeswehr, armed with scruples, has traveled a long way to arrive at a sentence with which a German colonel now says, matter-of-factly, to Struck: "An infantryman's job is to lie down and shoot." This is what the Bundeswehr is doing now, responding robustly to every threat. The mission would only stop making sense if these German troops allowed themselves to be intimidated by attacks.

The Threat to Girl's Schools

After the subject of gun battles has been dealt with, the next PowerPoint presentation in Kunduz is about girls' schools. Once a symbol of the humanitarian character of the German mission, they are the most widely discussed subject during Struck's visit. The presence of the Bundeswehr was meant to ensure, in part, that Pashtun girls in the north could go to school, and they were long able to do so -- until a few weeks ago, when it was reported that a few schools had been closed.

This raised the question of whether the Bundeswehr should condone the change. The discussion now centers on whether Germany's armed forces in Afghanistan should limit their efforts to fighting militant Taliban and militant drug gangs, relegating the subject of human rights and democracy to a secondary status.

In Kunduz, Struck is told that teachers and parents have in fact been intimidated in a few Pashtun villages. Some schools apparently remained closed for days, until the fear of a direct threat had passed. A few schools, Struck is told, have reopened, although the Bundeswehr apparently did not play a significant role.

Is it even conceivable for German soldiers to be overseeing a region where many girls have no better prospects than to become household slaves? This is not the same thing as bringing down a corrupt regime. Indeed, it is the most blatant antithesis to Germany's national and social order.

German armored personnel carriers drive past a group of schoolchildren, and only boys watch them pass, and no one seems to notice. The Taliban, Struck learns, have won the war they believe is the most important one. That, too, is an argument in favor of the German troops staying. The Taliban cannot be allowed to prevail. Besides, the Germans would also share some of the blame for the disasters that would unfold in the wake of a German withdrawal from Afghanistan.


The impression that remains at the end of the short trip is that the Bundeswehr does not do everything right, but it does do many things well. Between holding hands and lying down and shooting, it has developed a suitable strategy for this country. Together with the efforts of German police and aid workers, it is a package that justifies remaining in Afghanistan. It also gives the Germans self-confidence in their dealings with the Americans, who are increasingly seeking to dominate the mission in Afghanistan.

Struck says: "What I said remains correct. It was not the wrong decision to go to Afghanistan, nor is it the wrong decision to stay there."

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan


http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,630090,00.html

[lequebecfume]

Help us or we'll grow opium, say Afghan villagers

Mon Jun 15, 2009 9:15pm EDT

By Jonathon Burch

TALBOZANG, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Fifty-year-old Abdul Wadud walked for two hours across Afghanistan's remote northern mountains to hear a police commander give yet more promises of aid for those who turn their backs on growing opium.

Wadud does not grow drugs. But if no money comes soon, he will.

"The government told us several times they would help us and they didn't," he said, crouching barefoot on the ground in traditional Afghan loose shirt and trousers and explaining he feeds a family of 15 on occasional work as a day laborer.

"If the government or the aid organizations don't help us -- yes we will have to start growing opium," he said.

"If they build us schools and roads we promise never to grow opium."

Wadud and around 30 other village elders from the area had gathered on a hillside deep inside the Hindu Kush mountains, to attend a "shura," or meeting, organized by provincial authorities to dissuade the men from growing the drug.

Their Badakhshan province in remote northern Afghanistan has been a showcase for government efforts to battle the drugs trade, which accounts for nearly all the world's heroin.

Until 2006 Badakhshan was one of the main opium growing areas in Afghanistan, producing the country's second biggest crop.

But last year its output fell by 95 percent, to a mere 200 hectares under cultivation, close to being declared 'poppy free' by the United Nations, which credited government information campaigns and eradication programs for the success there.

The United Nations has warned, however, that last year's improvement may not hold without more aid for poor farmers.

"Badakhshan may bounce back to opium cultivation if the government fails to deliver promises made to farmers for alternative development activities," the U.N. drugs agency said in its opium survey report last August.

"DISGRACE"

Sayed Musqin Wafaqish, a police commander sent in from Kabul to head counter-narcotic efforts in the area, told the bearded men seated on rolled-out plastic carpets that the aid is coming, as long as they do not revert to growing opium.

"We know you are poor and because you are poor you want to grow poppy," he said. "It is bad for Afghanistan. It is a disgrace. It gives a bad name for Afghanistan because we are growing poppy. I promise you in the near future you will get some help. Your village is on the top of the list."

Despite a marginal drop in production, Afghanistan last year still produced more than 90 percent of the world's opium, a thick paste from poppies which is processed to make heroin. But the overall numbers hide wide variations from province to province.

As a result of improvements in areas under government control in recent years, most of the production is now concentrated in southern provinces such as Helmand, in areas partly or wholly controlled by Taliban militants.

Fighters use the trade to fund their insurgency, and it also breeds corrosive government corruption. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said this year Afghanistan was in danger of becoming a failed "narco-state."

The government and its Western backers say the drop in production in northern provinces under their grip, like Badakhshan, is a sign they can fight drugs in areas they control.

Afghan and Western anti-narcotics officials tout "alternative development" projects such as providing wheat seeds to farmers. But locals at the shura say they have yet to see the benefits.

Sayed Amir, 60, an elder from the village of Talbozang, shook his head when asked if he has received any government help.

"No, no, no. Never," he said. "The government promised us seeds but we never received them."

Officials in the peaceful north say they have received far less international aid than in the violent south, where donors spend money to win over hearts and minds from insurgents.

"We hear in radio broadcasts that the international community is helping our country. Where is the help?" said Sayed Ayub, head of Talbozang's development council, as U.S. military and State Department officials who traveled to the shura looked on.

"We are ready for any cooperation with the government. If the government asks us not to grow poppy, they should help us."

(Editing by Peter Graff and Jerry Norton)

http://www.reuters.com/article/vcCandidateFeed1/idUSTRE55F0CD20090616

[lequebecfume]

Afghan Forces Confiscate Opium Cache, Capture Taliban Commander

Office of the Secretary of Defense Public Affairs
Courtesy Story
Date: 06.17.2009
Posted: 06.17.2009 02:38

WASHINGTON - Afghan security forces, assisted by coalition forces, confiscated an opium cache and captured several armed enemy fighters in the southern province of Kandahar today and captured a Taliban commander in an earlier operation, military officials reported.

In the Kandahar engagement, the security forces were attacked in the Chenartu Valley by enemy fighters with small-arms fire. The combined patrol returned fire and called in air support on the enemy positions.

At the site, forces recovered 30 pounds of opium and captured several armed militants.

The combined security forces are in the area conducting multi-day clearing operations, working to disrupt known training camps and capture militant leaders, officials said.

In other news from Afghanistan, military officials in Kabul reported today that Afghan soldiers, assisted by coalition forces, captured Taliban commander Mullah Shah Mohammed on June 12 in the village of Dizak in Farah province.

The Afghan forces and their coalition counterparts found Mohammed while clearing the village to disrupt militant activity. Multiple weapons, homemade explosives and opium were removed from Mohammed's compound during the sweep, officials said.

During a continued search of the area, the combined force was attacked by militant gunfire. After positively identifying the enemy fighting positions, the troops responded with small-arms fire, eliminating several enemy fighters. After the operation was complete, the combined forces met with village elders to explain the purpose of the mission.

No Afghan army, coalition forces or noncombatant casualties were reported.

http://www.dvidshub.net/?script=news/news_show.php&id=35257

[lequebecfume]

Iraq, Afg/Pak, beyond: the global cost of war

Written by Paul Rogers


The toxic phrase "war on terror" has fallen out of use, but the destructive effects of the real thing continue and even escalate in a period of economic crisis.

A major landmark in the in the United States's military presence in Iraq arrives on 30 June 2009, when the army is scheduled to withdraw its combat-troops from the country's cities. The terms of the "status-of-forces agreement" with the Iraqi government will see most of these (currently 133,000) soldiers relocated to a number of major bases in rural areas, though some will join the 30,000 troops that have left Iraq since the peak of the "surge" in mid-2008.

The process is taking place against the background of continuing violence in Iraq, notwithstanding reports of an overall increase in security. Indeed, Iraq's foreign minister Hoshyar Zebari is warning that al-Qaida and Ba'athist militant clusters will seek to escalate the level of violence in advance of the 30 June deadline, in order to take credit for forcing the Americans into a humiliating retreat (see Patrick Cockburn, "US troops ask Syria to thwart al-Qa'ida offensive", Independent, 17 June 2009).
This major event in Iraq is thus surrounded by uncertainties. But it will also reverberate as far as Afghanistan. For the withdrawal of further US contingents means that there is scope for an increase in deployments there, in order to meet the commitment of 17,000 more soldiers made by President Barack Obama in February 2009; by the end of 2009, American troops should make up around two-thirds of the near-100,000 coalition forces in Afghanistan (see Barack Obama and Afghanistan: a closer look", 8 April 2009).

Many of the fresh US forces will be sent units to Helmand and its neighbouring provinces in the south of the country, where the Taliban and other militias are most active. These parts of Afghanistan traditionally see a lull in the fighting in the late spring as the opium-poppy harvest is brought in, to be followed by a summer period of greater violence. This makes the current evolution of these militias even more interesting.

Have PKM, will travel

For at this very moment, there are signs that a number of the paramilitary groups have added considerably to their operating capacities in ways that are surprising the American and British forces. In some recent conflicts with paramilitary units in Zabul province, United States troops have been struck by the sophistication of their opponents (see Sean D Naylor, "A Stronger Enemy?", Defense News, 8 June 2009).

These troops are experienced in facing irregular Taliban or other groups who fight with vigour and who have intimate knowledge of the local area in which they operate, but whose equipment is fairly rudimentary. One US unit, however, found itself in combat with paramilitaries that acted more like regular forces. They were equipped with body-armour and Kevlar protective helmets, used smoke-grenades for cover and had a high level of marksmanship - including an ability to use PKM heavy machine-guns to provide accurate firepower over a range of 800 metres.

The report in Defense News says:


"The insurgents' modern gear and the relative sophistication of their tactics and marksmanship indicated that these were not local guerrillas. The use of body armour, helmets and smoke grenades is ‘fairly rare' anywhere in Afghanistan, and ‘most likely indicates a skilled group [of]... foreign fighters with funding and previous experience [and] training', an Army source in Afghanistan said."

The intercepted of communications between the insurgents revealed that some were speaking Farsi; itself no proof of any Iranian involvement in this trend (and US army sources claimed none), since the language extends across the region and is not confined to Iran. But there is a range of evidence to show that the conflicts in Afghanistan and Pakistan are becoming more transnational as they evolve; this includes a spreading of "expertise" whereby militants with experience in fighting (for example) the Russians in Chechnya and the United States and its coalition partners in Iraq are able to share their knowledge in new environments.

The axis of expertise

The insurgents are not alone. The United States is investing many of its far vaster resources into re-equipping its army and marine corps for wars which are radically different from those envisaged in the cold-war era - and even from those anticipated in the early stages of the Afghanistan and Iraq invasions. Many of the new requirements derive from what are termed "operational needs statements" (ONS) - that is, calls from military commanders in the field for new weapons to counter the insurgents.

A recent ONS, for example, requested fast-tracking for "a precision-guided mortar program to help light infantry units..." (see Kris Osborn & Barbara Opall-Rome, "U.S. Speeds Precision Mortar Capability for Afghanistan", Defense News, 8 June 2009). One candidate for the provision of this system is the result of a partnership between Israeli Military Industries (IMI) and the US company, Raytheon. IMI had begun to develop the project after the war in Lebanon in July-August 2006 war; the US army's engagement in Afghanistan led the company to accelerate it by working with Raytheon. The transfer of Israel's expertise in trying to counter well-trained and well-armed Hizbollah paramilitaries could, it is thought, be very valuable in the US combat with the Taliban (and especially in limiting casualties on its own side).

The link has deeper strategic dimensions too. The US -Israel military relationship has developed over many years, but has become much more salient since 9/11 and the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq (see Between Fallujah and Palestine", 22 April 2004). The "trans nationalism" of one side is thus echoed on the other.

If precision-guided mortars represent one outcome of the drive to develop new generations of counterinsurgency weapons, the experimental 25mm air-burst projectile is another. In technical terms, this is somewhere between a standard rifle-bullet (a direct fire weapon) and a traditional 40mm grenade (indirect and therefore more liable to be indiscriminate in its effects). What is now being developed is a direct-fire exploding projectile that is accurate over a range of 700 metres and delivers high-velocity shrapnel fragments directly over insurgents that are otherwise under cover.

These are but two of many examples of new weapons under development. But they are overshadowed by the biggest development of them all - the rapid development of what is termed "the autonomous future" of pilotless drones possessed of heavy firepower, long range and endurance (with flights lasting scores of hours). The Afghan war has done much to stimulate massive investment in these systems.; while the spillover of this war into western Pakistan has been followed by their greater deployment across the border in operations that have also inflicted many civilian casualties. The effect of the ensuing protest and controversy has reached the highest military levels; but the larger point in this context is that the military development of drones is still in its very early stages (see "Drone wars", 16 April 2009).

In the longer-term, companies are seeking to build solar-powered drones that combine large glider-like wings coated with photovoltaic cells and lightweight batteries to provide the capability of these drones staying aloft almost indefinitely (see Graham Warwick, "Autonomous Futures", Aviation Week, 8 June 2009).

The military spree

The concentrated investment in these new instruments of combat - in response to wars in Afghanistan and Iraq where a few thousand insurgents have been able to tie down over 200,000 western troops - are part of the more general trends in world military spending over the (almost) eight years of the2war on terror" (see Jorn Madslien, Military spending sets new record, BBC News, 8 June 2009).

The latest armaments and disarmament yearbook of the respected Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) - Armaments, Disarmament and International Security (June 2009) - highlights a 4% real-term increase in world military spending in 2007 -08, and a 45% real-term increase in the 1998-2008 period. The US's own expenditure increased by 58% over this decade, in great part due to spending on the wars it has been engaged in since 11 September 2001 (see America‘s politics of defence" , 12 March 2009).

Indeed, it is striking that defence industries are being largely shielded from the global financial crisis that is affecting almost everyone else. Frida Berrigan, an arms and security expert at the New America Foundation, comments: "The only winners from increases in global military spending are [US-based] weapons manufacturers like Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman". Almost every other sector of the economy is affected by the recession, but "thanks to the fact that nations around the world are putting more and more of their precious (and ever more scarce) resources into the coffers of their militaries, the weapons industry continues to report regular profit" (see Thalif Deen, U.N. Big Powers World's Top Military Spenders, IPS/Terra Viva, 9 June 2009).

The "war on terror" has had huge impacts on a small number of key countries, and reverberating effects in many more: the destruction of lives, mass displacements, spreading insecurity and polarisation, and the corruption of states by their involvement in torture (see Jan Egeland & Mariano Aguirre, "Torture: America's policy, Europe's shame", 17 June 2009). The toxic phrase itself may have been dropped from the United States's political-military lexicon, but the commitment to ever-increasing international military spending that it has fuelled remains rampant. This would be notable at any time, but the context of a severe economic downturn makes it look even more like a massive diversion of resources away from the world's poorest people at the very time they most need support.


http://www.australia.to/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=11332:iraq-afpak-beyond-the-global-cost-of-war&catid=88:in-depth&Itemid=204

[lequebecfume]

Afghanistan declares western province poppy-free

22.06.09 12:47

Deputy to Afghanistan's Interior Ministry General Mohammad Daud has announced western Herat province as poppy-free region, a local newspaper reports Monday. "During a visit to Herat province very recently, Mohammad Daud said the people of Herat had refused to plant poppy and now this province is poppy-free," Daily Outlook reported.

It also said Interior Ministry, in effort to encourage more provinces to follow Herat's step, allocated 1 million U.S. dollars as a "good performance award" to the province for carrying out development projects, Xinhua reported.

So far, 18 out of the country's 34 provinces have been recognized as poppy-free and the government, according to officials, is endeavoring to eradicate poppy in three to five more provinces within a few years.

Afghanistan, with an annual output of 8,200 tons of opium poppy, had topped poppy-growing nations in supplying raw material used in manufacturing heroin in the world.


http://news-en.trend.az/world/afghanistan/1491964.html

[lequebecfume]

New Afghan strategy tackles one village at a time.


BY CRAIG PEARSON, CANWEST NEWS SERVICEJUNE 23, 2009


DEH-E-BAGH, Afghanistan - Canada held a coming-out celebration Tuesday of a social experiment in Afghanistan designed to defeat the Taliban one village at a time - by being nice.

The Canadian Forces and civilian organizations have teamed with local Afghans in a mud-hut town south of Kandahar City - in Dand district, Taliban country, near the scene of a suicide bombing just three months ago that killed seven Afghan soldiers.

The idea: show what can happen when security and opportunity meet.

Citizens in Deh-E-Bagh, population 800 to 1,000, have a number of community improvement projects underway. And more coming.

Called Operation Kalay, Canada has contributed money, technical expertise, mentoring - and tonnes of security.

The Afghans - who have contributed wishes, labour and what appears to be strong community spirit - appear to have chosen the future over the Taliban.

``Three things are really important: security, development and good governance,'' said Hamdullah Nazak, the 31-year-old Dand district chief, who believes citizens strongly support this project. ``The Taliban feel discouraged and defeated when they see locals working, and the community progressing. So they are now working with the government here.

``Who ever has the support of the people will be strong. Currently the people are with the government - and this project helps.''

It's too early to know whether the experiment will succeed - much can still go wrong in terms of, say, security and unfulfilled promises - but early indications seem positive.

Dand leaders provided a long wish list Tuesday at a shura, or meeting of local elders, which included Kandahar governor Tooryalai Wesa and the representative of Canada in Kandahar, Ken Lewis.

Lewis declined to provide an estimate of cost, saying only the money would come from Canada's current Afghanistan budget.

One top-ranked source, however, suggested the projects for Deh-E-Bagh might cost tens of thousands of dollars. Cheap by war standards.

Brig.-Gen. Jonathan Vance called the new approach a turning point for Canada in Afghanistan.

``We're trying to go from security at the end of a gun, which is defence, to human security,'' Vance said. ``Broad security means re-establishing the economic, political and social fabric.''

Representatives from the Canadian International Development Agency, the Department of Foreign Affairs and the Canadian Forces began hush-hush meetings with Deh-E-Bagh leaders several months ago. For the last month, Canada has employed about 120 Afghans, who receive 400 Afghanis a day - or about $8, a decent local wage - for work on various projects.

The town without electricity has received some solar-paneled streetlights, improved irrigation and road repair. The plan is also to rejuvenate nine mosques, build a road through a local Kuchi village, and create a grain co- operative.

The adopt-a-village approach is part of a larger provincewide initiative called Operation Kantolo. The American troop surge will allow Canada to focus on the more populated areas, Vance said, providing more help with security, development and governance.

Thomas Johnson, a professor form the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif., who has studied counter-insurgency in Afghanistan for almost three decades, wants the Canadian approach in Deh-E-Bagh expanded.

``The Canadians have adopted a very innovative program at the village level, looking at how you can win the trust and confidence of the people,'' Johnson said earlier after touring the village. ``I think the way we win in Afghanistan is to multiply the Canadian project by about 200.''



http://www.canada.com/Afghan+strategy+tackles+village+time/1725187/story.html

[lequebecfume]

IRAN'S ROLE IN OPIUM


While the debate about illicit narcotics usually focuses on markets in Western countries and production in Afghanistan or Colombia, the UN annual drug report draws attention to other front lines.

For example, most of the heroin and nearly all of the opium intercepted globally was found in Iran. A staggering 84 per cent of 2007 seizures were reported by Iran, where authorities confiscated 427 tonnes. Iran also reported a quarter of the world's heroin seizures, about 16 tonnes.

Located next to Afghanistan, which continues to be the world's largest producer of opium, Iran has up to 1.6 million drug users. The report notes that most of Afghanistan's production is consumed in surrounding nations. But it is in Western countries that the traffic is more lucrative.

Another less-known flashpoint is Saudi Arabia, home of a significant market in amphetamine-type stimulants (ATS) such as ecstasy. Saudis reported 27 per cent of the world's ATS seizures in 2007.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/irans-role-in-opium/article1196202/

[lequebecfume]

The Troubles With Traditions

June 27, 2009: Western military commanders in the south are frustrated by conflicting directives. On the one hand, they are very publically ordered to destroy the Taliban. More discreetly, they are told that keeping casualties (their own troops, and civilians) low is imperative.

The generals are not given much specifics when it comes to casualties, just the understanding that each dead soldier or civilian brings the politicians back home closer to ordering the troops, or some of their commanders, out of Afghanistan. This frustrates commanders, who get no credit for keeping troop and civilian casualties to historically low levels. That means nothing to the politicians and mass media. While Afghanistan is now more dangerous for foreign troops than Iraq, it's still only about half as intense as Iraq was during its most violent (2004-7) period. Moreover, compared to Vietnam or World War II, troops have less than a quarter the chance of being killed or wounded. The foreign troops truly dominate the battlefield more so than foreign troops have here for a long time. It's all about better equipment, training and leadership. The foreign troops are better than their predecessors over the last century, while the local tribal warriors have remained pretty much the same. The new Western way of fighting does give the enemy one advantage. The Western troops now devote a larger portion of their force to defense ("force protection"), and are more cautious on the offense. Some officers, and troops, bridle at this, and insist that more aggressive operations would yield better results, and not that many more casualties.
While the Taliban kill several times more civilians than the foreign troops, and many of the civilians killed by foreign troops are the result of the Taliban deliberately using civilians as human shields, the Western troops are under intense pressure to keep civilian casualties to zero. This is impossible (except to those who ignore how wars are fought), and increasingly complex ROE (Rules of Engagement) imposed on Western troops protects the Taliban, as well as civilians. The Taliban don't care if civilians hate them, and increasingly use terror to get civilians to cooperate (not give information to police or troops). The Taliban are very blunt in their condemnations of democracy, and why it is un-Islamic. As the Taliban are on a mission from God, they do not answer to any earthly power. At the same time, the Taliban are fighting a traditional tribal or warlord battle for money (drug profits) and power (the ability to to extort cash and cooperation from subject peoples). The Taliban are well aware of the ROEs the foreign troops operate under, and take full advantage of it. The biggest advantage the Taliban have is that the foreign troops cannot use the traditional methods of pacifying tribes (killing lots of civilians to impose peace). What worked for the Persians, Alexander the Great and the Mongols, is no longer allowed. Well, not allowed for Western troops, but the Taliban, those champions of traditional values, can do whatever they want. But this does not make the Taliban invulnerable and guaranteed success.

A lot of the "Taliban" violence, isn't caused by the Taliban. What is happening is the normal reaction of rural Afghans to new economic opportunities. Since September 11, 2001, the Afghan economy has been booming, with average annual growth of close to ten percent. This is happening to the poorest country in Asia, where about half the population is considered living below the poverty line, and there is 40 percent unemployment. In response to this, certain tribal traditions (especially among the Pushtun tribes in the south) developed over the centuries. The most popular of these traditions is "grab whatever you can, at any opportunity." Thus "loot" (goodies stolen from someone not belonging to your tribe) is a big deal, and a good thing (for the looter, of course.) The Taliban believe in traditional values, especially those that encourage and justify obtaining loot. So a lot of the gunmen thought to be working for the Taliban, aren't. They are just guys with guns taking advantage of the situation. Many of those civilians killed or kidnapped by the Taliban, were actually done by bandits (some of whom will claim to be Taliban, as that makes them more intimidating.)

With the increased number of troops available, U.S. and NATO commanders are planning many more operations against known targets that, until now, they simply could not hit because they did not have enough troops. Over the last few years, intelligence capabilities have found far more targets than there were troops available to go after. This was one reason for the call, over the last two years, for more armed UAVs. These could be used to attack many targets. But often you wanted troops there as well, to take prisoners and collect documents and other evidence. The enemy is elusive, and basically operating like bandits. The Taliban and drug gangs either buy off or, more usually, terrorize any civilians or police they encounter. But they can't do that with the foreign troops or, usually, the Afghan soldiers. But there are only about 100,000 soldiers (foreign and Afghan) in southern Afghanistan, where all the action is. There they face 10,000-15,000 Taliban, drug gang fighters and bandits. You can't put troops in every one of the thousands of villages or town neighborhoods where some thugs might show up and threaten pain or death to any who do not cooperate. But with more troops, more "clear and hold" operations can be conducted, to clear the gangs and Taliban out of large areas, establish a police and security (local armed volunteers) force to keep the gangs from returning, and moving on. The gangs will resist this, but they are not guaranteed success in fighting against "clear and hold." Most Afghans just want to be left alone, and given decent odds, will fight to achieve that. More foreign troops can even those odds.

The intensity of the fighting is increasing, but Taliban casualties continue to 5-10 times those of the foreign and Afghan forces. The Taliban are still unable to defeat, or even hold their ground, when fighting foreign troops. The Afghan troops are also getting better, and usually win any pitched battles with the Taliban or drug gangs (and you often have to interrogate prisoners or search the bodies before you can identify who you just defeated.) The Taliban and drug gangs are avoiding contact with foreign troops, and shifting their efforts to the use of roadside bombs. But these are also dangerous to use, because the growing number of UAVs and intelligence units are locating the roadside bomb crews, and putting them out of action. As in Iraq, the bomb crews are paid for their work. But it's not too difficult to discover who is making more money in an area, and trace that back to bomb making (rather than drugs, or a relative in the West sending home money). The foreign intelligence troops are often as dangerous as the foreign infantry because of that.

One of the myths about Afghanistan is that "it has never been conquered." Over the centuries, Afghanistan has been conquered many times. Few conquerors bothered to subdue all of what is now Afghanistan. The region is poor, and all the great conquerors have a sense of what is worth fighting for, and what is not. The Afghan tribes were always considered formidable warriors, but they were seen as more of a nuisance than anything else. The Afghan tribes liked to raid their wealthier neighbors, and this often brought savage retribution by more numerous, and equally ferocious fighters. The invaders would kill women and children, burn villages and crops and take herds. With the Afghans more poverty stricken than before, the avenging armies would leave with their loot. Afghans don't like to dwell on this aspect of their military history. The basic truth is that they weren't conquered because they weren't worth conquering. And the only reason foreign troops are again in the country is because Afghans demonstrated, in the 1990s, that they were willing to tolerate the presence of the Taliban (which didn't bother anyone outside Afghanistan) and al Qaeda (which did.) The badlands of Afghanistan (and the tribal areas of neighboring Pakistan) have long been a refuge for criminals and fugitives. The rest of the world doesn't normally care about this, but September 11, 2001 changed all that.

The Western troops are now carrying out the new strategy of "clear and hold", but they are also carrying out raids on lucrative targets (ones that contain lots of drugs, or Taliban gunmen). The attacks on the, previously unhidden, drug markets and processing facilities (where the poppy sap is turned into opium, then heroin) has caused the Taliban a lot of men and money. The Taliban are paid well to provide security for some of these locations, and the guards don't get paid if the place is raided. So the drug gangs are starting to hide the processing and market facilities. This does not make them impossible to find, just more difficult. That's why so many more reconnaissance aircraft have been sent to Afghanistan.

The larger number of raids and patrols has led to an increase in casualties, particularly among the enemy. The Taliban have to move large groups of gunmen around, if only for self-defense from increasingly hostile Afghan villagers. More and more of these Taliban groups (usually no more than 30-40 men) are being detected and attacked. The Taliban have learned that even moving at night provides no protections, since all U.S. recon aircraft and UAV have night vision. Actually, the heat sensors work better at night, and stuff like this severely hampers Taliban operations. In response, Taliban are building more bunkers and tunnels in areas they have settled down in. But when the foreign troops come in, the result is the same. And often the Taliban stay and fight, because they realize that their traditional "slipping away under cover of darkness" tactic no longer works, and is a death sentence if the bombers are overhead.

Herat province was declared "poppy free". Most of Afghanistan is also, and the Afghans have gotten the U.S. to halt the spraying of poppy fields with herbicide. While the spraying has been successful in other parts of the world, in Afghan, local officials have shown that they can persuade farmers to stop planting poppies via a combination of threats and rewards. This policy has worked in the north, but is more difficult to implement in the south because of the large Taliban presence, and the formation of several powerful drug cartels. The latter are your typical warlord operations, but in this case armed with lots of cash (for bribes) as well as gunmen (Taliban contractors, as well as fighters working directly for the drug boss).

The corruption, and government inefficiency, problems are now recognized as the key ones in Afghanistan. These are formidable obstacles, and history shows that these problems are not easily, or quickly, overcome. A major advantage the Taliban have is that the government corruption and inefficiency makes the Taliban seem like a viable alternative. Actually, the economy declined under the Taliban in the 1990s, and the only positive thing the Taliban did was to reduce banditry (by the simple, and traditional expedient of killing lots of the usual suspects.)

But the West has no choice here. Abandon Afghanistan and it quickly goes back to being a sanctuary for terrorists and criminals. That might lead to Pakistan and Iran invading and partitioning the country (something that has happened before, but centuries ago.) Few Western politicians want that either. So the new Western strategy is to demonstrate good government at the grass roots levels by having troops pacify areas, and then implement aid programs that make life better.

http://www.strategypage.com/qnd/afghan/articles/20090627.aspx

[lequebecfume]

U.S. reverses Afghan drug policy, eyes August vote

Sat Jun 27, 2009 9:42am EDT


* U.S. to phase out poppy eradication

* Wants to avoid questions over Afghan vote

* Seeks more aid for Pakistan

(Updates with quotes)

By Phil Stewart and Daniel Flynn

TRIESTE, Italy, June 27 (Reuters) - Washington is to dramatically overhaul its Afghan anti-drug strategy, phasing out opium poppy eradication, the U.S. envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan told allies on Saturday.

Richard Holbrooke, attending a G8 conference on stabilising Afghanistan, also discussed efforts to support its Aug. 20 election. Washington has nearly doubled its troops to combat a growing Taliban insurgency and provide security for the vote.

"The Western policies against the opium crop, the poppy crop, have been a failure. They did not result in any damage to the Taliban, but they put farmers out of work," Holbrooke told Reuters after a series of bilateral meetings in Italy.

"We are not going to support crop eradication. We're going to phase it out," he said. The emphasis would instead be on intercepting drugs and chemicals used to make them, and going after drug lords.

He said some crop eradication may still be allowed, but only in limited areas.

Afghanistan supplies more than 90 percent of the world's heroin.

Despite the millions of dollars spent on counter-narcotics efforts, drug production kept rising dramatically until last year -- U.N. figures indicate Afghanistan's opiate output has risen more than 40-fold since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion.

Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said Holbrooke told delegates the United States planned to cut back funding for eradication while allocating several hundred million dollars to support legal crop cultivation.

The head of the U.N. Office of Drugs and Crime, told Reuters the old U.S. eradication strategy had been "a sad joke".

"Sad because many, many Afghan policemen and soldiers ... have been killed and only about 5,000 hectares were eradicated, about 3 percent of the volume," Antonio Maria Costa said.

Iran declined to attend the event but Antonio Maria Costa, head of the U.N. Office of Drugs and Crime, told Reuters it was strongly committed to a regional effort to tackle trafficking from Afghanistan and had begun joint counter-narcotics operations with Afghan and Pakistani authorities.

"This is very new, it has not happened in the past."

U.S. President Barack Obama has put Afghanistan and Pakistan at the centre of his foreign agenda and launched a new strategy aimed at defeating al Qaeda and stabilising Afghanistan.

The 45 nations and multilateral organisations at the conference issued a statement pledging to look at ways to boost humanitarian aid to Pakistan, where nearly 2 million people have been displaced by fighting.

Holbrooke said allies were not doing enough.

"The U.S. is by far the largest contributor (of aid) to the refugee relief crisis in Pakistan. I don't mind that ... But other countries are not doing the right amount in my view," he said, adding some foreign ministers had told him privately that their countries could do more.

CRUCIAL MOMENT

Afghanistan's upcoming vote is seen as a crucial moment for Afghan President Hamid Karzai and for Washington and delegates -- with Iranian post-election turmoil fresh in their minds -- stressed the importance of it being free, fair and credible.

Karzai called on the Taliban and their allies on Saturday to vote rather than attempt to disrupt the polls, a call applauded by Frattini, who said Arab League and Gulf countries were "particularly interested" in encouraging them to vote.

Holbrooke said senior members of the U.S. government were calling the vote "the most important event of the year".

"The fairness of those elections will determine the credibility and legitimacy of the government. We have just seen a spectacularly bad example just next door in Iran," he said.

"And in these situations, governance becomes more difficult. So, at the end of the process, we would like to see a government elected by its people in a way that is credible and viewed as legitimate by the people and the international community."

Afghan Foreign Minister Rangeen Dadfar Spanta told Reuters that Kabul aimed for a free and fair election, but added: "We have to recognise the reality, and the reality of Afghanistan, regarding violence, regarding the weak state."

Holbrooke said it was too soon for Pakistan to declare victory in its Swat valley, where the army has driven back Taliban insurgents.

"The true test is when the refugees go back to Swat. Will they have security? Will they be protected?", he said.

"Will the army be able to keep the Taliban from coming back down over the hills? And the bill for reconstruction in Swat is going to be enormous -- over a billion dollars, maybe over 2 billion." (Additional reporting by Adrian Croft; Writing by Phil Stewart; Editing by Kevin Liffey)

http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSLR127167



--LEQ
VERY INTERESTING !

[lequebecfume]

Britain to continue poppy eradication in Afghanistan despite US reversal

Britain will continue to fund the destruction of opium fields in Afghanistan despite the United States condemning poppy eradication as a waste of money.

By Ben Farmer in Kabul
Published: 3:39PM BST 28 Jun 2009

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/telegraph/multimedia/archive/01432/poppy-eradication4_1432631c.jpg
Despite a change in the US policy toward poppy eradication, Britain looks set to keep the same policy Photo: AP

The British Government said destroying poppy fields remained a key deterrent to growers and one of the "seven pillars" of its anti-opium strategy in Helmand province, just a day after Richard Holbrooke, the US envoy to Afghanistan, said that destroying the crop only drove poor farmers to join the insurgency.

In a reversal of policy, he said the United States would stop funding poppy eradication and instead concentrate on encouraging farmers to grow alternative crops.


The Afghan government backed Britain's stance and defended its previous efforts, which relied heavily on ripping up or flattening poppy plants, as "perfect".

General Khodaidad, Afghan minister for counter narcotics, said his strategy had been "the right path".

"We are happy with our strategy and we are working according to our strategy. I don't see any deficiencies in our strategy, our strategy is perfect, our strategy is good."

Mr Holbrooke's reversal is the latest change in policy as the US struggles to stem a growing Taliban-led insurgency.

Ten thousand US troops have arrived in Helmand this month with commanders admitting overstretched British troops are at a "stalemate".

International governments have repeatedly disagreed on how to tackle Afghanistan's rampant opium business which supplies more than 90 per cent of the world's heroin and feeds hundreds of millions of dollars to insurgent fighters.

Britain and other Nato allies strongly opposed former US plans to destroy poppies with crop-spraying planes saying it would only strengthen the increasing insurgency.

Mr Holbrooke, speaking at a Group of Eight summit dedicated to Afghanistan, said he now felt eradication was "a waste of money". He said it "might destroy some acreage, but it didn't reduce the amount of money the Taliban got by one dollar".

He added: "The farmers are not our enemy, they're just growing a crop to make a living. It's the drug system. So the US policy was driving people into the hands of the Taliban."

Britain leads international reconstruction efforts in Helmand province, where 60 per cent of the Afghan opium crop is produced.

The British government is spending more than £290 million on a three-year-programme of eradication, support for farmers and pursuit of drug barons and traffickers.

British officials denied there was tension with the US over the policy change and said the detail had not been decided.

A spokeswoman at the Department for International Development said: "Eradication is a key part because of the deterrent effect, not because we are going to destroy the whole crop." She said eradication targeted big growers rather than poverty-stricken small farmers.


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/5674309/Britain-to-continue-poppy-eradication-in-Afghanistan-despite-US-reversal.html




--LEQ
typical brit stupidity

[lequebecfume]

Afghans lose US support for opium strategy

Associated Press in Kabul
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 28 June 2009 19.04 BST



The Afghan counter-narcotics minister has defended his country's drug policy, after the US said it would withdraw support for efforts to eradicate opium cultivation.

General Khodaidad said Afghanistan had achieved a lot of success with its anti-drug strategy, which relies heavily on the manual destruction of poppy fields, monetary incentives and public relations campaigns to persuade farmers not to plant poppies.

His remarks come after Richard Holbrooke, the US envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, said on Saturday that eradication "might destroy some acreage, but it didn't reduce the amount of money the Taliban got by one dollar".

The Taliban are believed to reap tens of millions of dollars in yearly profits from opium cultivation.

A UN survey showed mixed results in the country's counter-narcotics effort. Out of 23 villages where Afghan officials had eradicated poppies in 2008, 11 continued to cultivate opium this year.

Afghan police have used tractors or hand tools to destroy opium fields for years and have often came under attack. Dozens have been killed by militants.

Khodaidad said the government was waiting to see details of the new US strategy which will assist farmers who abandon opium cultivation by increasing funding for agricultural assistance and co-ordinate a crackdown on drug trafficking.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jun/28/afghanistan-loses-us-support-opium

[lequebecfume]

Complex situation in Afghanistan could be turning point, if managed well, Special Representative says in briefing to Security Council

Source: United Nations Security Council
Date: 30 Jun 2009

SC/9696

Security Council
6154th Meeting (AM & PM)

Delegates Focus on Crucial Upcoming Elections As Growing Insurgency-Driven Civilian Casualties Raise Concern

Ahead of Afghanistan's defining presidential and provincial elections in August, Kai Eide, Special Representative of the Secretary-General, said today that, if managed well, the situation in that country ‑‑ the most complex it had been for years ‑‑ could become a turning point in efforts to bring end the conflict there.

Briefing the Security Council on the situation in Afghanistan, he said it was characterized by the emergence of three interlinked strategic shifts: increased emphasis on civilian efforts; a focus on subnational governance and service delivery; and the alignment of international efforts such as the aid-effectiveness agenda.

But, careful not to present "a rosy picture" of the situation, he said the ongoing conflict seriously undermined the prospects for progress. The number of security incidents had risen beyond the 1,000 mark for the first time in May, a 43 per cent increase over the same period in 2008. In fact, it had been the most intense fighting season so far experienced.

Efforts to ensure the Afghan people's continued support for the international community's military engagement must be strengthened, he said, emphasizing that the political costs of recent mistakes were simply disproportionate to military gains. However, the clear majority of civilian casualties were caused by the insurgency. They were not the result of tragic mistakes, but of deliberate policy.

In the context of the elections, he said ministers and heads of security institutions had given assurances of their determination to protect the integrity of their institutions. Candidates had been called upon to avoid inflammatory language and to conduct campaigns focused on their vision for Afghanistan's future. "We need a campaign, not only about who will lead the country, but where they will lead the country," he said.

He said that, with rising expectations and new opportunities emerging on the ground, there was a need for more resources to fulfil the donor-coordination mandate of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA); to meet new opportunities in capacity- and institution-building; and to expand across the country, as requested in Security Council resolutions. Expectations were high for that multifaceted and ambitious mandate and, while grateful for the additional resources received last year, UNAMA now needed more.

Afghanistan's representative said his country had grown from a country devoid of society, Government and infrastructure to one with thousands of miles of roads, millions of children in school, and accessible health care for some 85 per cent of the population. At the same time, daunting challenges were yet to be adequately addressed, most importantly insecurity, which was increasing rather than ebbing, with civilians continuing disproportionately to bear the costs.

The Taliban had shown an increasing disregard for human life, intentionally targeting civilians, particularly women, children and humanitarian staff, and using populated areas to stage attacks on international forces, he said. As the international forces increased in strength during the summer months, and insecurity worsened in parts of the country ahead of the elections, everyone must be careful to avoid increasing the loss of civilian life. Afghanistan applauded recent steps taken by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the United States to address those concerns, as well as the recently announced rules of engagement and improved guidelines for the use of air bombardment.

Afghanistan had the opportunity to make significant progress if it maintained its new momentum and focus over the coming months, he said. That would require broad and consistent international engagement. If the Government could ensure transparent and open elections, increase security for the Afghan population, improve coordination and aid effectiveness, strengthen institutions and constructively address the regional dimensions of the situation, "we can clear a space on which to build a strong, sustainable Afghanistan", he said.

The representative of the United States said her country's security policy goals in Afghanistan were clear. Among them were disrupting, defeating and dismantling Al-Qaida and building up the Government's capacity. The elections on 20 August were a critical milestone in the Government's efforts to expand governance. It offered the Government an opportunity to give its citizens a voice in the ongoing drive to strengthen democracy and good governance.

She said her country regretted deeply any injury or loss of life among innocent Afghans stemming from operations involving the United States or the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). Any loss of innocent life was tragic and the United States would continue to conduct thorough joint investigations of such incidents jointly with the Afghan Government. The United States and international forces took extensive precautions to avoid loss of life among Afghan civilians and Afghan forces in its operations against terrorists.

She added that the United States Government had announced on 14 June that reducing civilian casualties would be a top priority in providing a secure environment in which to strengthen the Afghan Government and society. As it pursued those goals, however, it must be remembered that it was fighting an enemy that employed appalling tactics, including the use of children as human shields. Most casualties were caused by the insurgents and not by the international forces.

The delegate of the Russian Federation said he was seriously concerned about the ongoing loss of civilian life, and called for meticulous investigation of all such incidents and accelerated efforts to prevent them in future. Efforts by the Afghan authorities and the international military presence had yet to bring about "any truly serious improvements in the security sphere". Much remained to be done, including with respect to the international military presence, in light of the growing presence of the Taliban and Al-Qaida, which undermined the basis of the Afghan nation, its stability and reconstruction.

Emphasizing the need to "Afghanize" anti-terrorist operations, he said that, without the active involvement of the Afghans themselves, it would be impossible to eradicate extremism. Nor would it be possible to maintain certain positive trends, such as shifting the focus of reconstruction to the Afghan Government. The Russian Federation also categorically opposed any arrangements with Taliban, terrorist or extremist ringleaders as any attempts to establish dialogue with them would undermine the Council's sanctions regime.

Pakistan's representative said Afghanistan stood "at the crossroads of history". Having suffered decades of war and civil strife, its challenges were numerous and daunting. It was time to end that vicious cycle, but there was no magic wand to turn the devastation of decades into development overnight. The absence of a comprehensive strategy had prevented significant gains in peace consolidation and achievement of stability. "We must move from the hitherto fragmented and piecemeal approach to tackle these formidable challenges and mount an integrated response fully owned and led by the Afghan people with the support of the international community," he urged.

The parameters of a sustainable solution should also include a comprehensive regional approach, he said, adding that, apart from Afghanistan itself, no other country had a more vital stake in peace, security and prosperity in that country than his own. Pakistan had suffered directly from the ongoing instability in Afghanistan. Peace in that country was essential to the tranquillity and development of Pakistan's own border regions, and Pakistan was, therefore, firmly committed to helping the Afghan Government and the international coalition in restoring security and bringing stability to Afghanistan.

Most of the nearly 30 speakers in the debate agreed on the need to define the contours of a comprehensive strategy for Afghanistan. While the country had made progress in certain areas, no one doubted the considerable challenges remaining on most fronts ‑‑ particularly the political, security, governance and development spheres. The dramatic deterioration of the security situation was worrying, as the increase in civilian casualties fuelled public discontent against foreign forces. Speakers pointed to the slow and uneven pace of reconstruction and development efforts, the absence of State authority throughout the country, rampant corruption and economic hardship, which one delegate said was "shattering the people's confidence" in the Government's ability to lead.

Also speaking today were the representatives of Japan, United Kingdom, Uganda, Austria, Mexico, Croatia, Costa Rica, Libya, France, China, Viet Nam, Burkina Faso, Turkey, Canada, Czech Republic (on behalf of the European Union), Netherlands, Norway, New Zealand, India, Italy, Australia, Germany and Iran.

Turkey's representative, whose delegation held the Council presidency in June, added a few farewell remarks, as he would be retiring tomorrow. He said the last four-and-a-half years at the United Nations, and especially the last six months in the Council, had been among the most interesting and rewarding experiences of his 44-year diplomatic career. He thanked all colleagues for their kindness and support, unreserved cooperation and understanding.

The meeting began at 10:10 a.m. and suspended at 1:15 p.m. It resumed at 3:10 p.m. and ended at 4:20 p.m.


http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900SID/MINE-7TJ4HZ?OpenDocument



--LEQ
is it more not a job for the Afghan population to decide ?

[lequebecfume]

U.S. Admits Afghan War on Drugs is 'a Failure'

Published Jun 28, 2009
by ■ Mark Kersten


http://www.digitaljournal.com/img/9/8/2/0/6/5/i/5/3/1/p-medium/3610199903_50eb8c676a.jpg
Philipp Klinger -

The American administration is taking a new course on dealing with the drug trade in Afghanistan, calling the current policy "a failure"

Destroying the poppy fields of Afghanistan has long been a controversial method in fighting the country's massive drug trade. But now, the American administration admits it has been "a failure" and is vowing to change its ways.
On the occasion of a G8 meeting on Afghanistan in Italy, American special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke was less than diplomatic in his assessment of targeting Afghanistan's poppy crops to hinder the Taliban and fight the drug trade, calling the policy the "least effective programme ever."

Instead, America would phase out poppy crop eradication and pursue a policy of "using the money to work on interdiction, rule of law, alternate crops."

There is little doubt that the production of drugs from poppy crops has helped the Taliban fund its activities in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan reportedly supplies over 90 percent of the heroin in the world, and much of that production is concentrated in the Southern regions of the country where the Taliban is strongest. However, the question regarding how to stop the drug trade, its funding of the Taliban while legitimizing Afghan farming has long been a point of contention.

The Senlis Council, for example, had recommended that in the short to medium term, Afghanistan's reliance on poppies should be resolved by making opiate-based painkillers such as morphine. Meanwhile, the United Nations estimates that since the mission in Afghanistan began in 2001, opiate output has risen forty-fold.

Despite such recommendations, the mission in Afghanistan continued to spend millions of dollars destroying poppy crops. But, as Holbrooke added, "Spraying the crops just penalises the farmer and they grow crops somewhere else."

Further, the policy has hindered, not helped, the prospects of success in Afghanistan. Holbrooke noted that "The hundreds of millions of dollars we spend on crop eradication has not had any damage on the Taliban...On the contrary, it has helped them recruit." He further told the Associated Press that "the U.S. policy was driving people into the hands of the Taliban."

According to Reuters, eradication of crops will still occur, but only in limited regions. As crop destruction is phased, the "emphasis will shift to intercepting drugs and chemicals used to make them, and going after drug lords."

The new direction was welcomed by officials from the other G8 countries and in the international community, many of whom felt the eradication of crops was deeply flawed.

Antonio Maria Costa, the head of the UN's Office of Drugs and Crimes said the policy had been a "sad joke...Sad because many, many Afghan policemen and soldiers ... have been killed and only about 5,000 hectares were eradicated, about 3 percent of the volume."

Afghan officials have yet to comment on change in policy.


http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/274934

[lequebecfume]

Marines Enter Afghan Opium Region to Strike Taliban (Update3)

By Ed Johnson and James Rupert

July 2 (Bloomberg) -- Thousands of U.S. Marines drove into a major Taliban opium-growing region in Afghanistan, opening a phase of President Barack Obama’s strategy to stem gains by insurgents in that country.

One Marine has died in the operation and several others have been injured, according to a Marine Corps release. The Marines haven’t received reports of any civilian deaths or injuries, or damage to property, said the release.

In the Helmand River Valley, almost 4,000 U.S. and 650 Afghan military personnel encountered little initial resistance as they entered villages using helicopters and armored vehicles, said Captain Bill Pelletier, a Marine spokesman in southern Afghanistan.

Poppy fields in Helmand province produced two-thirds of Afghanistan’s opium in 2008, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. The opium trade is a major financial pillar for the Taliban, which with local warlords gathered as much as $470 million last year from commerce in the raw material for heroin, according to the UN office.

Two British troops were killed in an explosion during a parallel operation by their units near Lashkar Gah, the British Defense Ministry said in a statement.

No Bombing

U.S. aircraft have dropped no bombs in support of the ground operation, nor have Marines or Afghan military units fired artillery, mortars or any other so-called “indirect fire” that could accidentally kill civilians, the Marine release said.

The U.S. has been under intense pressure to minimize civilian deaths in the aftermath of an accidental May 4 aerial bombing in a village in western Farah province that killed at least 26 people.

As Marines advanced in the south, the U.S. military said one of its soldiers in eastern Afghanistan was missing. Agence France-Presse cited a Taliban spokesman as saying the guerrillas had captured an American soldier.

A U.S. spokesman, Navy Chief Petty Officer Brian Naranjo, said in an e-mail that the missing American soldier “is not any way related” to the new combat operation. The soldier had been missing since June 30, he said.

U.S. forces are “deploying all available resources” to recover the soldier, said Captain John Stock, a spokesman for U.S. forces stationed at Bagram air base, north of Kabul, the capital.
The Marines’ offensive is the first of its size under the Obama administration’s shift of emphasis from Iraq to Afghanistan and Pakistan.

‘We Will Hold’

“Where we go, we will stay, and where we stay, we will hold,” Brigadier General Larry Nicholson said in a statement. Nicholson commands a Marine Expeditionary Brigade that is part of the additional 17,000 U.S. troops Obama ordered to Afghanistan.

The offensive comes two days after U.S. combat troops withdrew from Iraqi cities under a drawdown that will let the Pentagon shift attention to the Afghan war.

The U.S.-led force moved before dawn and “encountered only light contact” with guerrillas by midday, Pelletier said in a telephone interview from the Marine brigade’s headquarters near Lashkar Gah, the Helmand provincial capital.

The Marines said in a statement that they aim to take control of Nawa and Garmsir, two largely desert Helmand districts that are part of Afghanistan’s largest opium-growing region.

International forces in the districts have been limited before to a few British bases.

Taliban Gains

After the U.S. toppled the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in 2001, Taliban guerrillas fled to Pakistan. No international forces occupied Helmand and adjacent southern provinces of Afghanistan, and Taliban guerrillas slowly regained control, forcing out the few Afghan government and police officials.
Beginning in 2006, British troops established several bases in Helmand. They were unable to oust the Taliban, which operates in part from sanctuaries in Pakistan, about 160 kilometers (100 miles) south of the area of the current offensive.

Pakistan’s army is “reorganizing our forces near Helmand to ensure that Taliban fleeing the U.S. operation cannot cross the border into Pakistan,” Major General Athar Abbas, Pakistan’s military spokesman, said by telephone from the capital, Islamabad.

New Commander

U.S. General Stanley McChrystal assumed command of international forces in Afghanistan last month and has ordered new tactics that he says will better protect civilians from the Taliban.

McChrystal has said troops must focus on gaining the trust of the people to win the conflict and told the Wall Street Journal last month he will push soldiers farther out from their bases among Afghan civilians to try to bring stability.

“The measure of effectiveness will not be the number of enemy killed, it will be the number of Afghans shielded from violence,” the general said in a statement last month.

The Helmand offensive aims to “connect local civilians with their legitimate government” and bring secure conditions for national elections scheduled for August, the Marines said in their statement.

Troops will “build bases to provide security for the local people,” Helmand Governor Gulab Mangal said in the statement.

Troop Increase

The U.S. has about 54,000 soldiers in Afghanistan, with 36,000 in NATO’s International Security Assistance Force and 18,000 in a separate counterterrorism operation. The number of U.S. soldiers in the country is set to rise to 68,000 this year under Obama’s policy.

The reinforcements should enable the U.S. to follow a “classic counterinsurgency strategy of clear, hold and build,” something troops have failed to do since toppling the Taliban regime, said Anthony Bubalo, director of the West Asia Program at Australia’s Lowy Institute for International Policy.

“If you cannot hold territory and provide security, you can’t undertake the kind of development work you need to do to win hearts and minds and strengthen the authority of the government in Kabul,” he said.

Pentagon, NATO Views

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman told reporters today “this will unfold over time” and “these operations are going to be sustained. This is why the president approved additional capability to go into Afghanistan, particularly in the south.”
NATO’s top commander in the south, Major General Mart de Kruif of the Netherlands, told Pentagon reporters June 25 in a video teleconference that the first operations will “focus on securing the population, not hunting down the insurgents -- only if we have to.”

De Kruif pointed to several metrics he will be watching to measure the success of NATO’s southern operations, including polls of Afghans to gauge their perception of security.

“The best two metrics” he’s used to determine success during his prior eight months in Afghanistan will also be evaluated -- “the amount of shops open in the bazaar and the amount of schools open in the villages,” de Kruif said.


http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=at4Pq8lilY6U



--LEQ
Bon Cop, Bad Cop

http://torontoist.com/attachments/toronto_mathew/2006_08_18_bon.jpg

[lequebecfume]

Q+A: Opium and Afghanistan's insurgency

Fri Jul 3, 2009 5:29am EDT
By Jonathon Burch

KABUL (Reuters) - Controlling the opium trade in Afghanistan, the world's leading producer of the drug, is a key element in the fight against Taliban militants.

With thousands of U.S. Marines launching a major new offensive against the Taliban-led insurgency in southern Helmand province, the epicenter of world opium production, the U.S. envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan, Richard Holbrooke, has also foreshadowed a new approach to controlling the trade.

Following are questions and answers about Afghanistan's poppy production, its role in the insurgency and efforts to combat it.

HOW MUCH POPPY IS GROWN?

Afghanistan produces 93 percent of the world's opium, a thick paste made from the poppies that is processed to make heroin, according to United Nations figures.

In 2008, 157,000 hectares of opium were cultivated, down 19 percent from 193,000 hectares in 2007. Opium production only declined 6 percent to 7,700 tonnes because of record high yields.

Helmand cultivated 103,000 hectares in 2008.

In the same period, prices fell by about 20 percent, meaning the value of the opium to Afghan farmers fell by about a quarter from roughly $1 billion to about $730 million.

The export value of opium, morphine and heroin at border prices in neighboring countries fell to $3.4 billion in 2008 from $4 billion in 2007, according to the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) 2008 Afghan Opium Survey.

WHAT IS THE LINK BETWEEN OPIUM AND THE TALIBAN?

The Taliban are mainly funded by the opium trade.

Despite the drop in cultivation, production and prices, the UNODC says the Taliban and other "anti-government forces" still make "massive amounts of money from the drug business." Their take, mainly from levies on processing and trafficking, has been put at between $200 million and $400 million, with up to $70 million more from "ushr," or charges on economic activity.

UNODC executive director Antonio Maria Costa has also pointed to the danger of opium stocks held by the Taliban. "For a number of years, Afghan opium production has exceeded world demand. The bottom should have fallen out of the opium market, but it hasn't," he said in the UNODC's 2008 Afghan Opium Survey.

"So where is the missing opium? Lack of price response in the opium market can only be the result of stock build-ups, and all evidence points to the Taliban."

HOW DOES IT AFFECT MILITARY STRATEGY?

Addressing the opium problem will no doubt form a big part of General Stanley McChrystal's new counter-insurgency strategy, part of Washington's wider effort to defeat the Taliban and stabilize Afghanistan.

McChrystal and other commanders say their new strategy is designed to win the hearts and minds of ordinary Afghans, "to talk more and shoot less."

But the amount of money farmers can make from opium instead of other crops like wheat is a big problem. Destroying farmers' livelihoods by eradicating opium crops would make it very difficult to win them over to the fight against the Taliban.

In 2007, the gross income ratio for farmers from opium to wheat was 10:1. In 2008 that narrowed to 3:1, although that was partly due to drought. The United Nations has called for greater international development to consolidate on gains, along with "more honest government" and more security, it says.

WHAT ABOUT ERADICATION?

Holbrooke told a G8 conference this week that Washington is to phase out poppy eradication in a dramatic overhaul of its anti-drug strategy.

"The Western policies against the opium crop, the poppy crop, have been a failure. They did not result in any damage to the Taliban, but they put farmers out of work," Holbrooke said.

Haroun Mir, political analyst and co-founder of Kabul's Afghanistan Center for Research and Policy Studies, agreed.

"I'm sure this new (Holbrooke) decision to shift the counter-narcotics policy has something to do with the new General McChrystal," he said.

In total, only 5,480 hectares -- less than 4 percent of all cultivation -- were eradicated in 2008 compared with 19,047 hectares in 2007, a 71 percent drop.

Eradication is also costly and dangerous. At least 78 people involved in eradication, most of them policemen, were killed in 2008, a 75 percent increase on 2007, according to the

UNODC.

Supporters of poppy eradication say it is only a small part of a wider counter-narcotics policy and is only carried out on targeted areas where farmers have access to alternative crops.

Holbrooke says Washington will now concentrate on intercepting drugs and chemicals and going after drug lords.

(Editing by Paul Tait and Alex Richardson)


http://www.reuters.com/article/gc05/idUSTRE5621I120090703

[lequebecfume]

TUESDAY, JULY 07, 2009
National Guard aids Afghan farmers
By John Gramlich, Stateline.org Staff Writer



National Guard troops from a half-dozen heartland states are taking their civilian farming know-how to Afghanistan in a little-noticed aspect of the Obama administration’s efforts to stabilize the war-torn country.

About 400 Guard troops from six states — Indiana, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Tennessee and Texas — are serving 11-month tours in Afghanistan as part of special “agricultural development teams” that are teaching Afghans how to improve their farming techniques. Six other states — California, Florida, Iowa, Kentucky, Oklahoma and South Carolina — will send similar teams to Afghanistan by the end of the year, according to Guard officials.

Pioneered by the Missouri National Guard in 2007, the teams are intended to improve relations with the Afghan people and give a boost to Afghanistan’s agriculture-dependent economy.

Farming accounts for more than a third of Afghanistan’s gross domestic product, and nearly three-fourths of all Afghans rely on farming for their income, even though only about 12 percent of the land in the mountainous country is arable. But Afghan farming techniques are basic compared with those in the United States.

Guard officials hope the agricultural teams can build trust among the Afghan people and, by helping develop the battle-scarred country, improve the fragile security situation there. President Obama has made stabilizing Afghanistan one of his chief foreign objectives, and about 68,000 U.S. troops are now stationed there.

Guard leaders also hope that by teaching Afghan farmers more effective ways to grow local crops such as wheat, rice, nuts and fruit, the teams will discourage them from growing opium, which produces heroin, fuels the international drug trade and helps finance Afghanistan’s Taliban-led insurgency. In 2007, 93 percent of the world’s opium was produced in Afghanistan, according to the U.S. State Department.

Military officials say that Guard troops — who usually work full-time jobs as civilians until they are called into active duty by their governors or by the president — are uniquely prepared to carry out the agricultural development mission. Only the Guard and reserves offer both practical agricultural experience and combat-zone readiness, supporters of the teams say.

“It absolutely epitomizes the citizen soldier concept that the National Guard is all about,” said Charlie Kruse, president of the Missouri Farm Bureau, an advocacy group that lobbies on behalf of Missouri farmers. His is one of several non-governmental organizations that have provided financial and other support to the agricultural teams. Kruse served in the Missouri Guard for 26 years.

State land-grant universities also are lending a hand. Agriculture professors at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind., for example, have provided specialized training to National Guard teams from Indiana, Tennessee and Texas prior to their deployments.

Kruse and the outgoing head of the Army National Guard, Lt. Gen. Clyde Vaughan, another veteran of the Missouri Guard, first pitched the idea of the teams to Pentagon leaders in 2007. Since then, the teams have won praise at the highest levels of the military. In an interview with Stateline.org at the Pentagon last month, Gen. Craig McKinley, a four-star general who heads the National Guard Bureau, called the agricultural development initiative “one that I’m just as high on as I can be.”

The Guard’s teams usually are composed of about 60 soldiers and airmen, many with experience as commercial farmers in the United States and all of them volunteers for the mission. The non-farmers in the teams provide security.

Different states’ teams are assigned to different regions of Afghanistan, a country roughly the size of Texas. Missouri’s team, for example, is assigned to the Nangarhar Province in Eastern Afghanistan on the border with Pakistan, and has focused on improving locals’ irrigation systems, access to power and sanitation of crops, according to Maj. Denise Wilkinson, the team’s executive officer.

Wilkinson acknowledged that many challenges face her team, including a persistent lack of power and the possibility of being attacked by the Taliban. But she stressed that Afghan civilians have welcomed the Guard forces and helped them steer clear of danger. No members of an agricultural development team have been killed in Afghanistan.

“The government and the people want us here! We are creating jobs and improving their way of life. The more we do for them the more they want us around,” Wilkinson wrote in an e-mail to Stateline.org from her base in Jalalabad. She said Afghans have provided the team with information on the location of insurgents and IEDs, or improvised explosive devices.

The Afghan teams are not the National Guard’s first foray into non-combat partnerships with foreign countries.

Since the early 1990s, the Guard has run the State Partnership Program, which teams up individual states’ Guard units with foreign militaries to exchange best practices and build relationships around the world. Minnesota, for instance, partners with Croatia, Washington state with Thailand and Louisiana with Uzbekistan. The program was established after the fall of the Berlin Wall to help teach Eastern European countries how the military functions in a democracy.

The agricultural development teams are different from those participating in the State Partnership Program in one key respect, noted Maj. Gen. Tod Bunting, the commander of the Kansas National Guard, which has a 60-person unit currently deployed in Afghanistan.


http://www.stateline.org/live/details/story?contentId=411125

[lequebecfume]

Is Afghanistan about to become Obama's Vietnam

Marine Mission in Afghanistan Drink Tea Eat Goat Win Hearts and Minds

By Diana West Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Just read a big, frontpage story in the Wash Post about 4,000 Marines now deploying into Helmand and other southern provinces of Afghanistan. Presumably, the Taliban is reading the story, too — maybe their partly Yale-educated official is doing the translation. I am sorry to say it should not only put their jihadist hearts at ease, it should give them more than a few yuks.

This deployment, the headline tells us, is “a Crucial Test for Revised U.S. Strategy.” (Uh-oh is right.) And what is that strategy? On the one hand, the Taliban is off the hook. On the other, we have given our men Mission Impossible. “Our focus is not the Taliban,” Brig. Gen. Lawrence D. Nicholson told his officers. “Our focus must be getting this government back on its feet.”

A few questions, just to get the brain working: Why? What do we care about putting “this government” back on its feet? And what government? And since when is it the Marines’ mission to stand up governments? (Since Iraq. Enough said.)

The Post reports:

The two districts that are the initial focus of the Marine operation — Nawa and Garmser — have long been Taliban strongholds. Although British troops serving under NATO’s Afghan command have waged several battles against the insurgents in both areas over the past three years, the British lacked sufficient forces to maintain a significant presence in the districts. As a consequence, the Taliban have been able to shut down schools, drive out government officials and intimidate the local population.

And where is the Afghan government/military/police? Nowhere. In practical terms, they do not exist. And maybe they do not want to exist. I mean, think of it: We taxpayers have poured billions of dollars into Afghanistan, with thousands of troops and civilian personnel just begging the Afghans to do basic tasks necessary for the country to function and defend itself against the Taliban. Nothing happens.

I don’t know how many times I’ve read a statement like this one today in The Post from the US: “Mullen said he is `extremely concerned’ about the paucity of Afghan National Army and Afghan police forces in the south and elsewhere….” Funny how, as the Post also reports, $5 a day gets the Taliban as many fighters as needed. Mullen doesn’t seem to wonder why the Taliban draw men with five bucks and the US-supported Afghan government doesn’t with billions. Or, why the Islamic jihadists draw fighters with five bucks and the infidel-supported government doesn’t with billions. In fact, Mullen thinks the problem is “the long-standing deficit in the number of foreign [read: infidel] military trainers….”

Marine commanders said before the start of the operation that they expected only minimal Taliban opposition at the outset but that assaults on the forces would probably increase once they moved into towns and began patrols. Troops in the field have been told to prepare for suicide attacks, ambushes and roadside bombings.

“They’ve backed off for now, but there will almost certainly be more attacks to come,” said Col. Burke Whitman, who serves as a liaison officer to the local Afghan security forces. “They’re waiting to see what we do.”

And what are we going to do?

Once Marine units arrive in their designated towns and villages, they have been instructed to build and live in small outposts among the local population.

This sounds familiar…where have we heard it before?

Remember Gen. Petraeus’s “counterinsurgency” strategy designed to spread small units of American soldiers out among the Iraqi people? The idea, as decribed at CJR.com, was to deploy troops “simultaneously as fighters, diplomats, civil servants, and tribal consiglieri, while trying to build trust between Sunni and Shia sheiks, the Iraqi Army, the Iraqi police, local Nahia and Qada councils (think city councils) and the Concerned Local Citizens movement, any of whom might be working at cross-purposes with each other at any given time.”

Did it work? With Maliki now declaring “victory” over shockingly compliant US forces (subject of this week’s upcoming column), with “good riddance” best encapsulating Iraqi public sentiment towardUS forces now departed from Iraqi cities, we certainly didn’t win many friends (or ” hearts and minds,” or “trust”) in pursuit of what appears to be our signal achievement — putting out the jihadist eruption we have called Al Qaeda in Iraq. The centuries-elusive Sunni-Shiite “trust” remains elusive (as if…), and there are early signals that Maliki may be trying to transform himself into a Saddam-like strongman. Meanwhile, Iran is ever more deeply involved in Iraq.

Net gain for US: I regret to say it is nada.

Moral of this story: Stay out of Islamic countries. Certainly, don’t try to remake them. There is no way to turn them into allies because we have conflicting ideologies and interests. But no one — certainly no one in power — is supposed to notice that.

So back to our adventure in Afghanistan.

The brigade’s commander, Brig. Gen. Lawrence D. Nicholson, said his Marines will focus their efforts on protecting civilians from the Taliban and on restoring Afghan government services, instead of mounting a series of hunt-and-kill missions against the insurgents.

Insert Taliban laughter here.

“We’re doing this very differently,” Nicholson said to his senior officers a few hours before the mission began. “We’re going to be with the people. We’re not going to drive to work. We’re going to walk to work.”

Similar approaches have been tried —

Did they work?

— in the eastern part of the country, but none has had the scope of the mission in Helmand, a vast province that is largely an arid moonscape save for a band of fertile land that lines the Helmand River. Poppies grown in that territory produce half the world’s supply of opium and provide the Taliban with a valuable source of income.

The operation launched early Thursday represents a shift in strategy after years of thwarted U.S.-led efforts to destroy Taliban sanctuaries in Afghanistan and extend the authority of the Afghan government into the nation’s southern and eastern regions. More than seven years after the fall of the Taliban government, the radical Islamist militia —

Is there a “moderate Islamist militia” in the offing?

— remains a potent force across broad swaths of the country. The Obama administration has made turning the war around a top priority, and the Helmand operation, if it succeeds, is seen as a potentially critical first step….

Here we go:

The U.S. strategy here is predicated on the belief that a majority of people in Helmand do not favor the Taliban, which enforces a strict brand of Islam that includes an-eye-for-an-eye justice and strict limits on personal behavior. Instead, U.S. officials believe, residents would rather have the Afghan government in control, but they have been cowed into supporting the Taliban because there was nobody to protect them.

In other words, it’s Hail Mary time. Again.

Never, ever, ever, ever do U.S. officials even contemplate the possibility that the Taliban, as jihad fighters, present the “majority of the people” with an Islamic directive to support, or, at least, not hinder jihad.

In areas south of the provincial capital, local leaders, and even members of the police force, have fled. An initial priority for the Marines will be to bring back Afghan government officials and reinvigorate the local police forces.

Lotsa luck.

Marine commanders also plan to help district governors hold shuras — meetings of elders in the community — in the next week.

Will they be in Marine uniform or Islamic “manjammies”?

“Our focus is not the Taliban,” Nicholson told his officers. “Our focus must be on getting this government back up on its feet.”

But Nicholson and his top commanders recognize that making that happen involves tackling numerous challenges, starting with —

“the religiously inculcated, mandated hatred of non-Muslims?” Nah.

— a lack of trust among the local population. That mistrust stems from —

Islamic attitudes toward infidels? Nah.

— concern over civilian casualties resulting from U.S. military operations as well as from a fear that the troops will not stay long enough to counter the Taliban. The British army, which had been responsible for all of Helmand since 2005 under NATO’s Afghan stabilization effort, lacked the resources to maintain a permanent presence in most parts of the province….

Oh, yes — permanent presence. Let’s all just stay there forever. Now this again:

The Marines have also been vexed by a lack of Afghan security forces and a near-total absence of additional U.S. civilian reconstruction personnel. Nicholson had hoped that his brigade, which has about 11,000 Marines and sailors, would be able to conduct operations with a similar number of Afghan soldiers. But thus far, the Marines have been allotted only about 500 Afghan soldiers, which he deems “a critical vulnerability.”

“They see things intuitively that we don’t see,” he said. “It’s their country, and they know it better than we do.”

And maybe they should defend it themselves (if, that is, they want to)?

Despite commitments from the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development that they would send additional personnel to help the new forces in southern Afghanistan with reconstruction and governance development, State has added only two officers in Helmand since the Marines arrived. State has promised to have a dozen more diplomats and reconstruction experts working with the Marines, but only by the end of the summer.

To compensate in the interim, the Marines are deploying what officers here say is the largest-ever military civilian-affairs contingent attached to a combat brigade — about 50 Marines, mostly reservists, with experience in local government, business management and law enforcement. Instead of flooding the area of operations with cash, as some units did in Iraq, the Marine civil affairs commander, Lt. Col. Curtis Lee, said he intends to focus his resources on improving local government.

Maybe the good colonel will pass out The Federal Papers in Pashto at the next “shura” wearing “manjammies”?

Once [upon a time] basic governance structures are restored, civilian reconstruction personnel plan to focus on economic development programs, including programs to help Afghans grow legal crops in the area. Senior Obama administration officials say creating jobs and improving the livelihoods of rural Afghans is the key to defeating the Taliban, which has been able to recruit fighters for as little as $5 a day in Helmand.

Funny how our $5 dollars a day isn’t as good their $5 a day….

In meetings with his commanders at forward operating bases over the past three days, Nicholson acknowledged that focusing on governance and population security does not come as naturally to Marines as conducting offensive operations, but he told them it is essential that they focus on “reining in the pit bulls.”

“We’re not going to measure your success by the number of times your ammunition is resupplied… . Our success in this environment will be very much predicated on restraint,” he told a group of officers from the 2nd Battalion, 8th Marines on Sunday. “You’re going to drink lots of tea. You’re going to eat lots of goat. Get to know the people. That’s the reason why we’re here.”

It’s a mad world.


http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/12662

[lequebecfume]

Taliban fighters elude U.S. Marines' offensive in Afghanistan's Helmand province

12:00 AM CDT on Wednesday, July 8, 2009
FROM WIRE REPORTS McClatchy Newspapers, The Associated Press

KABUL – Taliban fighters and their commanders have escaped the Marines' big offensive in Helmand province and moved into areas to the west and north, raising fears that the U.S. effort has just moved the Taliban problem elsewhere, Afghan defense officials said.

The movement of the Taliban into those areas has prompted complaints from German and Italian commanders, whose troops operate there. It has also led to questions about whether the United States has enough troops to pursue the Taliban while carrying out Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal's plan to "clear, hold and build" in areas wrested from Taliban control.

As they fled, some Taliban fighters donned burqas and held children's hands to pass as women, said Brig. Gen. Mahaiddin Ghori, the Afghan army commander in Helmand.

U.S. and Afghan military officers said that in many cases, fighters hurriedly left roadside explosives as they fled, targeting the forces. So far, one U.S. Marine and one Afghan soldier have been killed in the operation, both by explosives. Several troops have been wounded.

Others have collapsed from heat exhaustion after hiking for days carrying 50-100 pounds of food, water, weapons and ammunition in temperatures approaching 120 degrees.

Violence is at its highest levels since the Taliban fell in 2001. Even with the addition of some of the 21,000 troops President Barack Obama has ordered to Afghanistan, commanders say they fear they won't have enough personnel to clear large swaths of the country and then hold them.

Afghan defense officials said they believe that the fleeing Taliban fighters stayed in the country and did not travel to Pakistan, where they often take refuge, because they believe they can wait out the latest operation.

"They want to carry on fighting. They don't want to escape during the summer. This is the height of fighting season," said Gen. Zahir Azami, spokesman for the Afghan Defense Ministry.

The offensive, which began Thursday when about 4,000 Marines and 750 Afghan security forces stormed into the Helmand River valley, seeks to cut off a major Taliban supply route. The militants bring in weapons and fighters from Pakistan and ship out opium, making the area a major cash supplier for the Taliban.

Besides clearing one of Afghanistan's most dangerous provinces, the operation is intended to signal to local residents that the United States intends to stay behind to help rebuild police and government institutions.

Azami said he had no estimates of how many Taliban fighters moved north and west. Ghori estimated that Helmand had 1,000 Afghan Taliban fighters and 500 foreign fighters before the offensive.

On Monday, images from a Predator drone showed a dozen Taliban fighters and 15 to 20 civilians inside a mud-brick compound in the village of Khan Neshin, 60 miles north of the Pakistani border. The U.S. troops held their fire and used a military translator and village elder to persuade the militants to free the women and children.

Two groups – children and what appeared to be women in burqas – left the compound. When the Marines entered, they found no one. The fighters had clearly donned burqas and slipped away among the civilians, according to Marines who took part in the operation.

McChrystal, the new U.S. and NATO commander, has said he would rather see militants escape than for civilians to be harmed in battle.

U.S. and NATO officials acknowledged that the Taliban fled Helmand ahead of the Marines. But the officials said they don't believe the Taliban forces threaten nearby areas. Instead, they believe the Taliban fighters are still contemplating how to respond to the operation.

U.S. officials said privately that they have seen less fighting during the offensive than they had anticipated. But they stressed that the operation is in its early stages, adding that they think it will take seven weeks to clear the valley.

"The sense is that many of the Taliban have left, but they have not gone very far," said a senior coalition officer, speaking on condition of anonymity.

McChrystal's plan for Afghanistan is modeled after the 2007 surge strategy in Iraq, where the United States sent an additional 30,000 troops to secure Baghdad and the surrounding perimeter.


http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/world/stories/DN-afghan_08int.ART.State.Edition2.4ba54be.html

[lequebecfume]

US general cites shortage of Afghan forces

Dan De Luce
July 9, 2009 - 12:59PM

The commander of US Marines in southern Afghanistan said there was an urgent need for more Afghan security forces as well as civilian experts to back up a major offensive against Taliban insurgents.

"I'm not going to sugarcoat it. The fact of the matter is we don't have enough Afghan forces, and I'd like more," Brigadier General Larry Nicholson told reporters in a teleconference.

A week after the launch of the US-led campaign against insurgents in the southern Helmand River valley, Nicholson said he was "cautiously optimistic" about the operation -- one of the biggest since US-led forces toppled the Taliban regime in 2001.

But he said the 4,000 Marines were accompanied by only about 650 Afghan security forces.

"Imagine if I had 4,000 Marines with 4,000 Afghan forces. I mean, it would not even be comparable to even the relative success that we've had over these first seven days," the general said from Camp Leatherneck, a Marine base in Helmand province.

He said that the US military and Kabul government were working to deploy more Afghan forces to the south while expanding the country's army and police forces.

"But the bottom line answer is, I'd like more, I need more," he said.

The general said he was satisfied he had enough US troops for the moment in the south, where about 10,000 Marines are deployed.

But he said more Afghan security forces would make the Marines more effective, as the goal of the coalition mission was to win the trust and confidence of the population.

The Afghan troops "see things we'll never see," Nicholson said.

"They understand politically what's going on in an area that we'll just never get, no matter how much cultural training our guys get."

It also was crucial to increase the number of US civilian experts in the south to bring economic development to Afghan villages and towns, he said.

"I'd like to get more, and I know more are coming," Nicholson said.

There were five civilians from the US government serving in the south and five more were due to arrive by September, said Kael Weston, a State Department official who also spoke at the briefing from Helmand.

The American civilian development experts were working with a British-led reconstruction team of about 100, he said.

The numbers appeared to fall far short of the civilian "surge" promised by President Barack Obama's administration when it rolled out its new strategy for the Afghan war.

Weston said the numbers might seem low relative to the size of the military contingent but that the civilians on the ground had extensive knowledge and budget resources at their disposal.

In an upbeat assessment of the southern offensive after one week, Nicholson said the Marines were holding key insurgent centers after relatively little resistance with about 10 incidents of combat so far.

"We've taken a hell of a large swath of Taliban heartland away from them," he said.

The general said the Taliban likely would soon launch counter-attacks to assert control of the province, a center for the poppy crop and lucrative opium trade that helps finance the insurgency.

"They have gone to ground," he said.

"This enemy is not going to just stay away. This area is far too valuable, far too important to them."

Nicholson said there had been no reports of civilian casualties in the operation, a top concern for US commanders who are anxious to defuse public anger over civilian deaths from US air raids.

Asked if the influx of American troops would reduce the need for air power, he said: "Absolutely, absolutely."

As thousands of Marines moved in throughout Helmand province, they had orders to meet with tribal leaders and village elders to forge ties to the local population, Nicholson said.

The Marines have pushed far down the Helmand River valley, setting up in the towns of Nawa and Garmsir and taking control of Khanishin in the far south towards Pakistan.

After US forces moved in to Khanishin, the provincial governor and an Afghan commander on Wednesday raised the Afghan national flag over the town's 18th century castle.

Nicholson said it was the first time in many years the flag had flown over the town that has been dominated by the Taliban.

http://news.theage.com.au/breaking-news-world/us-general-cites-shortage-of-afghan-forces-20090709-de55.html

[lequebecfume]

Helmand's long and difficult road


The military campaign in Afghanistan has now led to more British deaths than the war in Iraq. BBC defence correspondent Caroline Wyatt looks at the campaign so far.


http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/46043000/jpg/_46043247_007630352-2.jpg
British forces have been in Afghanistan since 2001, first in alliance with US forces on Operation Enduring Freedom in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.

Their aim was and is to destroy terrorist training camps and infrastructure within Afghanistan, and capture al-Qaeda leaders.

Many have warned that a long and difficult road lies ahead in Helmand province and that there will be more casualties this summer and beyond

Five more dead in Afghanistan

Britain then also became part of the Nato-led Isaf mission to stabilise the country and support its new government after the Taliban were toppled from power.

Back in 2001, there was a widely held sense of "mission accomplished" as it appeared the Taliban had been routed and - even if Osama Bin Laden had not been captured - al-Qaeda put on the run.

In the following years, the world's attention shifted to events in Iraq and the US-led invasion in 2003.

With British and US forces fighting hard in Iraq, Afghanistan became the forgotten campaign.

It was only when British forces were sent into Helmand province - a Taliban stronghold - in 2006 that operations in Afghanistan once again made the headlines as the death rate rose unexpectedly rapidly.

New strategy

The hope, expressed by then Defence Secretary John Reid, that British forces might leave without a shot being fired was a forlorn one, and now sounds hopelessly naive as British troops see some of their fiercest fighting in years.

Repatriations of fallen soldiers to the UK are becoming commonplace

So far, they have fired more than four million bullets, in a campaign which has cost £5.6bn and 184 British lives - 15 of them this month.

Commanders say the recent rise in the death toll among British and several other coalition forces - most notably the US, which provides the bulk of troops in Afghanistan - is largely down to the current offensives against the Taliban.

That new focus has come from the top in Washington, with the election of President Barack Obama, the publication of a new Afghanistan/Pakistan strategy and the appointment of a new Isaf commander.

The strategy of General Stanley McChrystal is first of all a military push against the Taliban to extend security, in the kind of operations now being seen in Helmand.

The new Isaf commander has made it clear "the population is the prize", and the military effort must go hand-in-hand with progress on the civil side.

Gen McChrystal has warned against causing civilian casualties, which have alienated many Afghans.

Western frustrations

Greater security is essential to the rebuilding effort and to give time and space for good governance to emerge.

And good governance - if it does grow - would help security by convincing the Afghan people that foreign troops are supporting an Afghan state that can bring tangible benefits to their lives.

We can't cut and run from this one. We can't afford to lose
Military historian Allan Mallinson

The relative lack of progress on so many fronts, though, over the past years under President Hamid Karzai has been one of the main Western frustrations.

The levels of corruption within the Afghan government, its ineffectual reach in many provinces and the lack of a real justice system, or yet an effective police force, have all made it harder to convince the Afghan people that they are much better off now.

Despite this, only 23% of people in southern Afghanistan are said to support the Taliban, while support for the Isaf coalition has remained reasonably high despite the campaign's problems.
There is now a gritty realism dawning in the campaign, and the public acknowledgement of just how difficult all this will be in the world's fourth-poorest country, which has been torn and scarred by war for the past three decades.

Many of the Afghan middle classes who might form the backbone of the new Afghanistan have long since fled abroad, though some remain.

Presidential elections

The current focus on Helmand by 9,000 British and now an extra 10,000 US troops is because the province remains one of the Taliban's strongholds and the producer of more than half of the country's opium crop.

The US and UK appear to have dropped the original policy of trying to eradicate the poppy crop before providing alternative livelihoods for Helmand farmers, a policy which had alienated potential allies.

The US and British forces want to stabilise Helmand in time for next month's Afghan presidential elections.

UK forces are engaged in a major offensive in Helmand
And although the operation is proving costly in terms of casualties, it is seen by many as a defining moment in this long and tough campaign.

Without visible progress this year, the momentum - and the overall campaign, not just in military terms - could be lost.
Military historian and former cavalry commander Allan Mallinson says Britain simply cannot afford to fail in Afghanistan, especially after Iraq.

"With Afghanistan, we're clearly in it for the long haul if we are to see any results," he says. "We can't cut and run from this one. We can't afford to lose."

But he and others have expressed fears the government has still not committed all the resources the UK contribution to the Isaf campaign needs, from more helicopters to higher troop numbers.

Many have warned that a long and difficult road lies ahead in Helmand province and that there will be more casualties this summer and beyond.

For some, though, the question marks remain over how long Britain and Nato's resolve will last - and whether the Taliban's will last longer.



http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8145683.stm

[lequebecfume]

President Obama Defines ‘Core Mission’ In Afghanistan

Posted by Gilbert Mercier on Jul 12th, 2009 and filed under Headlines, World News.
By Gilbert Mercier

While in Africa, President Obama gave an exclusive interview to UK’s Sky News. At the front and center of it was the war in Afghanistan, and the President’s assessment of the situation on the ground.

The war in Afghanistan has become rather unpopular in the UK due to the rising death toll. In the last 10 days alone, 15 British soldiers have died, making the number of British soldiers killed in Afghanistan higher than the one in Iraq.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown, while trying to justify British involvement in Afghanistan said that: “ The UK’s military deployment was aimed at preventing terrorism in the UK.”

President Obama told Sky News that the war in Afghanistan was a critical element in the battle against terrorism.

President Obama said:

” This is not an American mission, the mission in Afghanistan is one that the Europeans have as much, if not more, at stake in than we do. The likelihood of a terrorist attack in London is at least as high, if not higher, than it is in the United States. Great Britain has played an extraordinary role in the coalition, understanding that we can not allow either Afghanistan or Pakistan to be safe haven for Al-Qaeda, those who with impunity blow up train stations in London or buildings in New-York. We knew that this Summer was going to be tough fighting. The Taliban have, I think, been pushed back but we still have a long way to go. We’ve got to get through the Afghan election in August. All of us are going to have to do an evaluation after the Afghan election to see what more we can do. It may not be on the military side, it might be on the development side. We need to provide Afghan farmers an alternative to opium poppy crops and also make sure that we are effectively training a judiciary system and set up a rule of law, in Afghanistan, that people can trust. We’ve got a core mission that we have to accomplish.”


http://newsjunkiepost.com/2009/07/12/president-obama-defines-core-mission-in-afghanistan/

[lequebecfume]

From Times Online
July 13, 2009

Verdict on the Afghanistan campaign: exactly what are we fighting for?

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00588/afghan_588682a.jpg
(Ahmad Masood/Reuters)

Dog of war: a British soldier and his explosives-sniffer take a break during Operation Panther's Claw

Michael Evans, Defence Editor: Analysis

Public confusion over the principal objectives of the military campaign in Afghanistan has forced ministers to try to explain why so many British soldiers are dying and for what cause.

Initially, the reason for the mission in Helmand province was to ensure that al-Qaeda was prevented from ever again using Afghanistan as a safe haven for terrorism which would be damaging to Britain’s national security.

Verdict: the presence of British troops in the province since 2006 has helped to reduce the threat posed by al-Qaeda remnants who stayed behind after the Taleban was toppled in 2001. But some of the insurgents killed in clashes with British troops have turned out to be Yemenis, Chechens, Saudis and other, non-Afghan, nationalities.

Al-Qaeda responded by switching its terrorist operating centre from Afghanistan to Pakistan. So the threat to British streets from terrorism comes from Pakistan, not from Afghanistan. No one, apart from President George Bush in a speech he made several years ago, seriously believes that the Taleban is threatening Britain’s cities and towns.

Rating: 7 out of 10.

The troops of 16 Air Assault Brigade who were the first to go to Helmand were all told that their principal mission was “reconstruction” — in other words, to help the Afghans to improve their lives after decades of war.

Verdict: the soldiers found themselves so caught up in fighting the Taleban who, until the British arrival, only faced 100 American troops running a provincial reconstruction Team (PRT) in Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital. The Taleban mounted a ferocious defence of what they considered to be their spiritual heartland. There was little time left for reconstruction, and when it did take place, it tended to be a new roof for a market here and a refurbishment of a school there.

Today, there is more development underway, but it’s largely in the hands of small teams from the Department for International Development, guarded wherever they go by armed private security men. The troops might want to build schools and roads, but they are still fighting to spread security and stability in key zones in order for work to start.

Rating: 5 out of 10.

The objective of Operation Herrick, codename for the British military campaign in Afghanistan, slowly began to suffer from mission creep. Tony Blair, when he was Prime Minister, emphasised that the troops were also there to tackle the heroin trade in Afghanistan. He warned the public that more than 90 per cent of the heroin that reached the streets of Britain and ended up ruining young people’s lives came from Afghanistan.

Verdict: Britain was given the responsibility under the so-called Bonn agreement to deal with counter-narcotics. But the achievements were limited in the first few years. Up to £20 million was spent putting money into the pockets of Afghan farmers to persuade them to turn to growing wheat and maize and vegetables, but to no avail. The poppy harvesting continued at record rates.

Today, progress has been made in targeting the opium traffickers and destroying stocks when found. But British troops have played no part in eradicating poppy fields; indeed they patrol through the fields during the poppy season in late April and early May and do nothing to stop the farmers from scraping the resin from the poppy heads which is then converted into opium. The yield from the last poppy harvest was down on the previous year but that had more to do with poor weather than successful missions by the international community to persuade poppy farmers to go straight.

Rating: 2 out of 10.

In addition to keeping out al-Qaeda, the Government has also stated the objective of spreading Afghan governance throughout Helmand, and ensuring that the presidential election on August 20 can go ahead without Taleban interference and intimidation.

Verdict: ask any Afghan official in Helmand whether he is able to do his job without fears for his safety. He will say that it is impossible to carry out all his responsibilities because there are areas which are still too dangerous. There also appears to be limited interest in Helmand development programes from within the government of President Karzai in Kabul. One district governor in Helmand told The Times that he had not been visited once by a ministry representative from the capital.

It is too early to know whether Operation Panther’s Claw, the mission to drive the Taleban out of central Helmand, will succeed in allowing the election to go ahead peacefully.

Rating: 4 out of 10.

Harriet Harman, the Leader of the Commons, introduced a further mission-creep objective to the British campaign when, last week in the Commons, she said that the provision of school places for children was a vital aim.

Verdict: although her remark was not totally incompatible with the objective of spreading governance and helping the Afghans to improve their lives, it helped further to muddy the waters over why 9,000 British troops are serving in southern Afghanistan. It is true, nevertheless, that millions more Afghan boys, and in particular, girls, are now going to school but often have to take classes in the heat of the day in makeshift tented classrooms.

Rating: 5 out of 10.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article6700347.ece

[DaMagoMan]

why so many British soldiers are dying and for what cause
Seems to me the Brit numbers are pretty low
and would be expected to increase with a major offense underway.

Like the song says,
we got sucker punched and we will get You, no matter how long it takes.

Anybody catch Toby Keith speaking at the National Press Club the other night?

It was on CSPAN, not sure why I came across it,
since I don't surf those channels at night but I did.

He said several things that really stuck with me:
"My righty friends call me a hippie and my lefty friends call me a Nazi..."
"I will never apologize for being patriotic."
"Everybody with an agenda spins everything their way.."
"The media reports what they want, not what really happens every day over there ..."
"Even if you don't agree with the War, everybody should support the troops....Stop them and tell them So."

I thought it was very good, reflects most American's feelings about the Wars and everybody should check it out.

But what do I know, I'm just a Warrior at heart :)

Not a country music fan either

Oh and BTW Toby,
It's "fresh horses and wine for my men"
not
"whiskey for my men and beer for my horses"
Who da' hell rides more than one horse and feeds them beer?!? :D

[lequebecfume]

FACTBOX: Five facts about Afghanistan's Helmand province

Fri Jul 17, 2009 8:49am EDT

(Reuters) - A roadside bomb killed a British soldier in southern Afghanistan, the military said on Friday, as defense officials in London said they may need to deploy even more troops in the fight against the Taliban.

July has become the deadliest month for foreign forces in the 8-year-old as casualties mount after U.S. and British troops mounted major operations in southern Helmand province.

Helmand has been the Taliban's opium-producing heartland.

Some 10,000 U.S. Marines launched Operation "Strike of the Sword" this month in the province's southern half, while a similar-sized British-led task force launched operation "Panther's Claw" to the north.

Following are five facts about Helmand province.

* Helmand is Afghanistan's largest province, about 60,000 sq km (23,000 miles), making it nearly as large as the Republic of Ireland. At least 43 foreign soldiers have already died this month as U.S. and British troops simultaneously launched the two biggest operations of the war to seize the province.

Canadian, Dutch and other NATO troops had been fighting alongside some 9,000 British troops in Helmand but U.S. military commanders had described the combat situation in the past year as a stalemate. Existing force levels had not been able to cope with the size and difficulty of the terrain, which includes wide deserts in the south and mountains in the north. In May, the deputy commander of NATO-led forces in the south warned of "a bloody summer ahead."

* Helmand's population is mainly made up of Pashtuns, Afghanistan's largest ethnic group who have also traditionally been the country's power brokers. It borders Pakistan to its south, Kandahar province to its east and Nimroz province to the west, all mainly Pashtun provinces and heavily influenced by the Taliban. Provincial officials estimate four out of Helmand's 13 districts are under Taliban control.

* Helmand produces more than half of the opium cultivated in Afghanistan, the source of about 90 percent of the global supply, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. In 2008 more than 103,000 hectares of poppy were cultivated. The drug crop is closely tied to the insurgency and the Taliban are mainly funded by the opium trade.

But NATO forces in Afghanistan are not permitted to engage in crop eradication, a policy that limited British tactics in crippling the insurgency. Britain, the United States and other NATO allies have started a number of civilian programs to offer farmers alternative crops to opium, such as wheat, but Helmand remains Afghanistan's biggest poppy-producing province.

* Helmand is mostly desert, with agricultural fields cultivating opium poppy and food crops, concentrated around the Helmand River, Afghanistan's longest and which cuts through the center of the province.

Most of the province's population is clustered around the river in north and central Helmand, where British and U.S. troops are also mainly deployed.

* U.S. troops have been deployed to Helmand before to bolster British efforts. In late 2006, months after arriving in the district of Musa Qala, British troops were forced to pull out because of daily Taliban attacks that at times reached their perimeter defenses.

The Taliban seized the town in February 2007 and set up a shadow administration. But 10 months later thousands of British and U.S. troops launched an offensive around the district, paving the way for Afghan soldiers to capture the town.

(Sources: British Ministry of Defense, International Security Assistance Force, Reuters reports, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime)


http://www.reuters.com/article/newsMaps/idUSTRE56G3T620090717

[lequebecfume]

Something Is Happening Down There

July 19, 2009:

The U.S. Marine advance into Helmand province is being slowed down by the new Rules Of Engagement (ROE), which forbid the use of bombs or missiles in any situation where there might be civilians.

The Taliban will typically spend the night, or longer, in a village or walled compound, and that's where U.S. troops will typically trap them. But bombs and missiles cannot be used on these places, so U.S. troops have to besiege the place, or just move on, leaving the Taliban alone. Some marines get creative, like having the jet fighters or bombs make a high speed pass over the Taliban held buildings. The fearsome noise will sometimes unnerve the Taliban and cause a surrender, but not as much as it used to. Another favorite tactic is having the fighter (usually an F-16 or F-18) come in low and use its 20mm cannon. But these air craft only carry a few seconds worth of ammunition. Moreover, having these jets fly that low makes them liable to crashing (this has happened, at least once) or being brought down by enemy fire (has not happened yet). But the cannon fire sometimes induces the Taliban to give up, or try to flee.

The other option, when you have the Taliban cornered, and using human shields, is to go in and fight them room-to-room. That gets more Americans killed, as well as putting the Afghan civilians in danger. This room-to-room tactic has not been used much, as commanders don't want to take the heat for losing troops in that kind of fighting. If there is a lot more of this house to house fighting, and civilians get killed, the ROE may be changed again to forbid any kind of combat if civilians are present. This reduces the anger of locals from civilian deaths involving U.S. forces, but makes it much more difficult to hunt down and destroy the Taliban gunmen. The Taliban are still vulnerable, as they have to move in order to operate, and the Afghan Army or police can often negotiate a surrender, or go in and root them out by force. But the best troops available for chasing down the Taliban gunmen are the U.S. and NATO ones.

It's not just the Taliban who are being shut down in Helmand. The heroin operations are a major target, as are corrupt Afghan cops (who often set themselves up as bandit kings, shaking down criminals and ordinary civilians, and often making peace deals with the Taliban.) The district commanders (there are 398 districts in the 34 provinces) are sometimes corrupt as well, or not willing to risk losing the fight it they go after a rogue police unit. The marines have brought in better trained and led police (the questionable cops are sent away for retraining, or discharge).

The battle against the drug gangs is a complicated one. A lot of money is involved, and the drug lords are pretty smart. They now keep a lot of their processing (opium into morphine or heroin) labs mobile. The vehicles travel with armed guards, but force is a last resort. The security detachment is also armed with a lot of cash, and the first weapon to be deployed is a bribe. That usually works. But the U.S. intelligence troops are after the drug gangs now, and this makes concealment more difficult. The U.S. military isn't releasing any play-by-play of these operations, lest they provide useful information to the enemy. It won't be until the end of August that an initial assessment is possible, and not until the end of the year until one can check the trends in wholesale and retail prices for heroin. As Afghanistan heroin production grew since the 1990s, the world supply has doubled, and prices have come down by about 50 percent. More people are using, and dying from, heroin. And now we can add many of the victims of the fighting in southern Afghanistan to that toll.

The intense combat in Helmand, and elsewhere, has bumped up the casualty rate. Foreign troops are headed for a record number of casualties (possibly 800 or more, including about a hundred dead) for the year. There are also heavier casualties for Afghan soldiers and police, but not as high as the foreign troops and Taliban. Going after key targets in Helmand province, the source of most of the world's heroin supply, goes to the heart of Taliban power: drug money. The drug gangs and the Taliban are partners, just as they were back in the 1990s, when the heroin trade got established in Afghanistan under Taliban protection. With the drug money gone, the Taliban would lose most of their ability to put a lot of gunmen into action each Summer. The heavy Taliban use of suicide and roadside bombs has turned most of the civilian population against them. Thus the push to limit the use of American weapons that can kill or injure civilians. But in Afghanistan, "hearts and minds" work a little differently. Afghanistan is the poorest nation in Eurasia, and most of the population lives on the edge of disaster (one or two bad crops and there used to be massive death tolls from starvation). While the foreign food aid eliminates the ancient threat of starvation, and Afghans know where that food aid comes from, there is a tendency among Afghans to side with whoever is strongest. This was one reason the Taliban were driven out of power in two months in late 2001. There is no shame, to an Afghan, in switching sides. For an Afghan, it's the smart thing to do. It's how you survive. It's how it's been done for thousands of years.

In southeast Afghanistan, NATO and Afghan troops are disrupting Taliban operations by raiding known Taliban safe houses and operating areas. This is part of the effort to damage the network of roadside and suicide bomb builders and those who finance and direct them.

July 18, 2009: A U.S. F-15E fighter bomber crashed in eastern Afghanistan at about 3:15 AM. The two man crew was killed. These aircraft normally operate at 20,000 feet (6,500 meters) to avoid ground fire. But at that altitude, you have to watch out for the many mountains and ridges in the area that are over 3,000 meters high. The U.S. Air Force is conducting an investigation.

July 16, 2009: The Taliban released a video of an American soldiers who went missing on June 30th, and was believed to have been captured by local tribesmen, and sold to the Taliban. The Taliban are now demanding that the U.S. get out of southeast Afghanistan and not attack the Taliban there, or the soldier will be killed. The U.S. has offered $25,000 reward for information on the whereabouts of the soldier, and is scouring the area looking for him. This is the first U.S. soldier ever captured by the Taliban since U.S. forces entered Afghanistan in late 2001. The circumstances of how this soldier was taken are murky. He says on the video that he was grabbed when he lagged behind while on patrol. But initial reports were that he was drinking with Afghan soldiers, and left the base with them, and then disappeared. It will be a while before the true story comes out.

http://www.strategypage.com/qnd/afghan/articles/20090719.aspx

[lequebecfume]

Votes in Afghan Province Could Turn on Loss of Poppies


By Pamela Constable
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, July 21, 2009

FAIZABAD, Afghanistan -- The economic fortunes of Badakhshan province, a remote and wildly beautiful corner of far northeastern Afghanistan, have risen and fallen over the past seven years with the production of opium poppies.

Not long ago, emerald fields with nodding pink poppy flowers were everywhere, and Badakhshan was one of the country's fastest-growing poppy producers. Today, its golden hills are dotted with freshly harvested wheat stacks, and its 95 percent drop in opium production last year has been hailed as a model by international anti-drug officials.

For many communities, however, the loss of poppy income has meant a return to desperate rural poverty. As national elections approach on Aug. 20, with President Hamid Karzai seeking reelection against a field of 40 challengers, the decision among Badakhshan's voters rests partly on whether they give his government and its international backers credit or blame for the end of the poppy boom.

"The authorities promised our people jobs and projects if they stopped growing poppy, but that never happened," said a teacher here in the provincial capital, who gave her name as Aria. "We know that opium is un-Islamic and makes people addicted, but what about the farmers and their families? When we grew poppy, the people were doing well. Now they are suffering."

Aria was one of several thousand people at a recent campaign rally for Karzai's most prominent challenger, former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah. He spent a weekend this month barnstorming Badakhshan in a battered, Soviet-built military helicopter that crossed the snowcapped Hindu Kush mountains, swooped into narrow valleys and landed in wheat fields across the vertiginous province.



In speeches in village mosques, soccer stadiums and shady groves beside rushing mountain streams, Abdullah made vague promises to bring jobs, economic development and better government. But his major selling point was his role in Afghanistan's "holy war" against the Soviet Union during the 1980s, when he was an aide to the now-deceased mujaheddin leader Ahmed Shah Massoud.

"The people here know me, because I used to come on horseback and bring medical supplies in the early days of jihad," said Abdullah, 50, an ophthalmologist who graduated from medical school in Kabul in 1983 and became an adviser to Massoud two years later. Karzai named him foreign minister in 2002, but he was abruptly removed from the cabinet in 2006. Though fond of finely tailored Western suits during his run as foreign minister, Abdullah dresses in the locally popular salwar-kameez -- a tunic with baggy trousers -- when he is out on the campaign trail.

In each community where the green helicopter touched down -- it was provided by the central government in accord with official election policy -- crowds hoisted posters of Abdullah with Massoud, who was killed in 2001. His remarks included tributes to local martyred comrades and sentimental stories from the long-ago war, and he was constantly interrupted by impassioned shouts of "Long live jihad!" from men and boys in the crowd.

"We believe in jihad, and we do not want our Islamic values to be destroyed by the foreigners," said an elder named Rahim in the town of Jurm, who introduced the candidate and referred to his wool cap, traditionally worn by northern Islamic fighters. "As long as the pakul is on his head, he will follow the way of jihad and stand up for all the mujaheddin."

Yet despite their emotional identification with Abdullah, many people interviewed after or outside the rallies said they planned to vote for Karzai, who has ruled the country with strong international backing since early 2002. They said that the president has not visited their province in a long time but that he is a proven national leader with access to large amounts of foreign assistance.

"I would say 80 percent of the people in this district support Karzai," said Mohammed Issah, 36, a mullah in Baharak, a town surrounded by wheat fields and fruit orchards. "His government has brought us roads and security. Our people are living in harmony, and there is no more poppy, which we know is the enemy of our religion. It is our tradition to be hospitable to all guests, but that does not say how we will vote."

In Faizabad, a sleepy town that is largely inaccessible in winter, opinions were mixed. Some inhabitants bitterly blamed Karzai's government for the lack of economic development, noting that the local airstrip is still a Soviet-made metal platform, the main road is only now being paved and donkeys remain the principal form of transportation.

Several women here said that the state of provincial health care is a disgrace and that many pregnant patients die in childbirth because it is so difficult to reach hospitals. For years, according to U.N. reports, the levels of infant and maternal mortality in Badakhshan have been the highest in Afghanistan and on a par with those in many sub-Saharan African countries.

Other residents disputed the criticisms, saying that conditions have improved noticeably during the Karzai era and that international charities have been able to operate safely because the region is more secure than many other parts of the country.

"In the past, we had no roads or cars, and now we have a lot of them. In the past, we had a lot of poppy, and now it's gone," said Abdul Haq, 43, a shopkeeper who had pasted a campaign poster of Karzai to his wooden shutters. "We hear there is fighting in other places, but here we have 100 percent security. That is enough for me."

In some ways, Badakhshan's unusual geography has created a political anomaly. Its remoteness has made it both virtually impervious to the predations of Taliban insurgents based in the distant south and exceptionally devoted to its local leaders.

The governor, a Badakhshan tribal elder named Abdul Majid, has been credited with spearheading the anti-poppy drive by personally appealing to farmers across the province. The campaign in Badakhshan has proved more successful than in many other parts of Afghanistan, a country that produces more than 90 percent of the world's illicit opium.



Although Majid was appointed by Karzai, he has said he received little help from the central government in fighting drugs. Roadside signs in several towns touted the U.S. government's "alternative livelihoods" program for poppy farmers, but community elders complained that they had received scant assistance to develop legal crops.

"We have no work here, and all our young men go to Iran to find jobs," said Abdul Samad, an elder in Kesham district who hosted a picnic for Abdullah in a thriving grove of poplar, pear and pine trees. But Samad said that the grove had been funded by a Norwegian charity and that local farmers had neither the seeds nor the irrigation to replicate it. "We need a strong Muslim leader, a real mujahed, to bring us jobs and justice," he said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/20/AR2009072003335_2.html

[lequebecfume]

US bombs poppy crop to cut Taliban drug ties

CNN.com
Published on Tue, Jul 21, 2009 at 16:57, Updated on Tue, Jul 21, 2009 at 17:42 in World section

http://static.ibnlive.com/pix/sitepix/07_2009/opium_poppy313%20234.jpg
OPIUM TRADE: A UN report says opium cultivation in Afghanistan has dropped by 20 pc in a year.


Kabul: The US military bombed about 300 tonnes of poppy seeds in a dusty field in southern Afghanistan on Tuesday in a dramatic show of force designed to break up the Taliban's connection to heroin.

The air strike occurred mid-day in Helmand province and was observed by CNN's Ivan Watson, who is embedded with the US Marines operating in that province. The military dropped a series of 1,000 pounds bombs from planes on the mounds of poppy seeds and then followed with strikes from helicopters.

Tony Wayne, with the US State Department, said the strikes on poppy seeds, that can be used to make opium and heroin, is part of a strategy shift for the military to stop the Taliban and other insurgents from profiting from drugs.

"There is a nexus that needs to be broken between the insurgents and the drug traffickers," Wayne said. "Also, it is part of winning the hearts and minds of the population because in some cases they are intimidated into growing poppies."

In a bid to encourage Afghan farmers to swap out their poppy plants for wheat crops the US Agency for International Development has been offering them seeds, fertilizers and improved irrigation.

Observers have noticed a significant decline in the opium trade in Afghanistan, with the number of poppy-free provinces increasing from 13 in 2007 to 18 in 2008, according to a U N report released in 2008.

Opium cultivation in the country, which has 34 provinces, dropped by about 20 per cent in a year, the UN reported in August.

"It's a challenge to deliver assistance in a war zone -- you can hear fighter jets flying above us right now," said a USAID Development Officer, Rory Donohoe.

"At the end of the day, what we found is successful is that we work in areas that we can work," he told CNN in a recent interview in Helmand province.

"We come to places like this demonstration farm where Afghans can come here to a safe environment, get training, pick up seeds and fertilizer, then go back to districts of their own."

Many of Afghanistan's northern and eastern provinces have already benefited from USAID alternative farming programs, which have doled out more than $22 million to nearly 210,000 Afghans to build or repair 435 miles (700 kilometers) of roads and some 2,050 miles (3,300 kilometers) of irrigation and drainage canals.

Giving Afghan farmers improved access to markets and improved irrigation is successfully weaning them away from poppy production, according to officials at USAID.

Over the years, opium and heroin - both derivatives of the poppy - have served as a major source of revenue for the insurgency, most notably the Taliban movement that once ruled Afghanistan.

"If you can just help the people of Afghanistan in this way, the fighting will go away," said a farmer in Lashkar Gah, Abdul Qadir.

"The Taliban and other enemies of the country will also disappear."


http://ibnlive.in.com/news/us-bombs-poppy-crop-to-cut-taliban-drug-ties/97603-2.html

[lequebecfume]

US bombs poppy crop to cut Taliban drug ties

CNN.com
Published on Tue, Jul 21, 2009 at 16:57, Updated on Tue, Jul 21, 2009 at 17:42 in World section

http://static.ibnlive.com/pix/sitepix/07_2009/opium_poppy313%20234.jpg
OPIUM TRADE: A UN report says opium cultivation in Afghanistan has dropped by 20 pc in a year.


Kabul: The US military bombed about 300 tonnes of poppy seeds in a dusty field in southern Afghanistan on Tuesday in a dramatic show of force designed to break up the Taliban's connection to heroin.

The air strike occurred mid-day in Helmand province and was observed by CNN's Ivan Watson, who is embedded with the US Marines operating in that province. The military dropped a series of 1,000 pounds bombs from planes on the mounds of poppy seeds and then followed with strikes from helicopters.

Tony Wayne, with the US State Department, said the strikes on poppy seeds, that can be used to make opium and heroin, is part of a strategy shift for the military to stop the Taliban and other insurgents from profiting from drugs.

"There is a nexus that needs to be broken between the insurgents and the drug traffickers," Wayne said. "Also, it is part of winning the hearts and minds of the population because in some cases they are intimidated into growing poppies."

In a bid to encourage Afghan farmers to swap out their poppy plants for wheat crops the US Agency for International Development has been offering them seeds, fertilizers and improved irrigation.

Observers have noticed a significant decline in the opium trade in Afghanistan, with the number of poppy-free provinces increasing from 13 in 2007 to 18 in 2008, according to a U N report released in 2008.

Opium cultivation in the country, which has 34 provinces, dropped by about 20 per cent in a year, the UN reported in August.

"It's a challenge to deliver assistance in a war zone -- you can hear fighter jets flying above us right now," said a USAID Development Officer, Rory Donohoe.

"At the end of the day, what we found is successful is that we work in areas that we can work," he told CNN in a recent interview in Helmand province.

"We come to places like this demonstration farm where Afghans can come here to a safe environment, get training, pick up seeds and fertilizer, then go back to districts of their own."

Many of Afghanistan's northern and eastern provinces have already benefited from USAID alternative farming programs, which have doled out more than $22 million to nearly 210,000 Afghans to build or repair 435 miles (700 kilometers) of roads and some 2,050 miles (3,300 kilometers) of irrigation and drainage canals.

Giving Afghan farmers improved access to markets and improved irrigation is successfully weaning them away from poppy production, according to officials at USAID.

Over the years, opium and heroin - both derivatives of the poppy - have served as a major source of revenue for the insurgency, most notably the Taliban movement that once ruled Afghanistan.

"If you can just help the people of Afghanistan in this way, the fighting will go away," said a farmer in Lashkar Gah, Abdul Qadir.

"The Taliban and other enemies of the country will also disappear."


http://ibnlive.in.com/news/us-bombs-poppy-crop-to-cut-taliban-drug-ties/97603-2.html





--LEQ
hot !, humid almost tropical ! causes extreme pain today

[lequebecfume]

Iran to strengthen border security

Fri, 24 Jul 2009 17:44:38 GMT

http://www.presstv.ir/photo/20090724/barghi20090724202406859.jpg
Iran lies on a transit corridor between opium producing Afghanistan and drug dealers in Europe.

Iran lays out a comprehensive multi-year plan to tighten security along its borders as part of the plan to crack down on terrorists and drug traffickers.

Iranian Police Chief. Esmeil Ahmadi-Moqaddam told reporters on Friday that efforts are underway to further secure the country's borders, after gloomy reports showed an uptick in cross-border terrorism and drug smuggling.

The efforts come after Iranian authorities allocated more than $150 million for an initiative to strengthen border security and block the entry of terrorists and drug smugglers into the country.

Iran lies on a transit corridor between opium producing Afghanistan and drug dealers in Europe. Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the country has lost more than 3,300 of its security forces in its war against narcotics.

On the country's eastern border, the Pakistan-based Jundullah terrorist organization regularly stages a slew of terror attacks on Iranian officials and civilians.

To its west, Iran faces security threats from the Party of Free Life of Kurdistan (PJAK) -- an offshoot of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

Iran has emerged as one of the leading countries in fighting drug trafficking after making 85 percent of the world's total opium seizures.

Earlier in May, Executive Director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Antonio Maria Costa, acknowledged and praised Iran's counternarcotics efforts.

Costa said that Iran was "making a massive sacrifice" to stop the smuggling of drugs from Afghanistan to the West, and therefore deserves “both the gratitude and the support of the international community".

"The anti-narcotics police in Iran are among the best in the world", Costa said.

SBB/HGH

http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=101531&sectionid=351020101

[lequebecfume]

Italy underlines Iran's role in Afghanistan

Sat, 25 Jul 2009 08:33:51 GMT

http://www.presstv.ir/photo/20090725/fazeli20090725113309031.jpg
Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini

Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini has said that Iran plays a major role in resolving internal issues in Afghanistan.

"Iran is a major player in the region, a regional power that has a lot to say on the issues in Afghanistan, starting with the fight against drug trafficking, which uses the 700 km of their common border,” Frattini said in an interview with the Italian daily newspaper Avanti! on Friday.

“It should sit at the table when it comes to resolving the Afghan issue,” the minister added.

“The meetings in Trieste and L'Aquila have rewarded our approach based on the involvement of regional powers in areas of crisis. And Iran is no exception to this rule in Afghanistan," he explained.

Iran lies on a transit corridor between opium producing Afghanistan and drug dealers in Europe.

The Islamic Republic has emerged as the leading country fighting drug trafficking after making 85 percent of the world's total opium seizures.

Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iran has lost more than 3,300 of its security forces in its war against drug smuggling.

Over the past five years, it has contributed more than $50 million annually to Afghan anti-narcotics efforts.

HRF/ZAP/DT

http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=101573&sectionid=351020101

[lequebecfume]

Afghanistan's Chinese curse

by The Oregonian Editorial Board
Friday July 24, 2009, 6:22 PM

http://blog.oregonlive.com/opinion_impact/2009/07/medium_afghanmap.jpg
The central Asian country seems doomed to live in interesting times

For a country with limited infrastructure, little social cohesion and many rough neighbors, Afghanistan is cementing its place in the spotlight of U.S. military and diplomatic policy. It's a country seen at a tipping point, caught between western powers, its own tribalism and Taliban extremists.

President Barack Obama has ratcheted up America's military commitment to making Afghanistan secure. But even he is a little vague about what constitutes America's desired end state in the country.

He shied away from the use of the word "victory" in a televised interview last week, saying that NATO forces aren't battling a nation-state, but determined non-state enemies.

Slowly, too slowly, the western military approach has evolved into a coherent counterinsurgency mission. But a successful counterinsurgency campaign takes time and exposes troops to increasing risks.

Here are some signposts along the road. Not all are positive:

July has been the deadliest month for U.S. and NATO troops in the war so far. As this is written, 63 coalition troops have been killed this month in Afghanistan.
A forthcoming report on the Battle of Wanat last summer says the battle, which was considered a tactical victory, was instead a strategic defeat because the military mishandled the engagement in many ways, from treating the local population as if it was the enemy to failing to equip soldiers appropriately. Sen. James Webb also says the Army appears to have mishandled its first investigation into the battle, which killed nine U.S. soldiers.
A Pentagon order last month instructed military leaders not to release estimates of the number of enemy killed. It is seen as an effort to make the population feel less like the enemy, and to avoid the risk of using inflated enemy casualty counts, as was common in the Vietnam war.
President Hamid Karzai, who faces a tough battle to be re-elected next month, says he wants to establish a "framework" for foreign troops that would limit how long they would stay in Afghanistan and would shut down a major detention center at Bagram Air Force Base.
U.S. troops no longer are wiping out crops of opium poppies, recognizing that it turns Afghan farmers into enemies. Instead they will pursue drug traders and carriers.
And of course, closest to home, U.S. forces are continuing to hunt for Northwest soldier Pfc. Bowe Bergdahl, who left his base under still-unexplained circumstances and was turned over to or captured by the Taliban, who used him to make a propaganda video. The episode complicates and raises the stakes in America's battle with the Taliban.

As long as next-door Pakistan, armed with nuclear weapons, continues to wobble, western troops provide a useful counterweight to the forces that would destabilize Afghanistan further. But nobody in NATO can expect Afghanistan to transform itself into a smoothly functioning democratic nation. For now, the clearest order of business is to continue to protect the people of Afghanistan from extremists who are more interested in power than the welfare of the population.

http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2009/07/afghanistans_chinese_curse.html

[lequebecfume]

Rs187 billion drugs seized during 2007-09, Senate told
(2,471 billion $CDN )

Saturday, July 25, 2009

ISLAMABAD: The upper house of parliament was informed on Friday that the Narcotics Control Ministry seized 0.6 million kilogrammes of drugs worth Rs 187 billion during different activities across the country.

During the Question-Hour, the Senate was told in a written reply that the Narcotics Control Ministry had seized 26,694.717 kg of opium, 5,434.22 kg of morphine base, 102,123.113 kg of hashish, 2660.66 kg of heroin, 22.009 kg of cocaine, 625 kg of acetic, 15,316 kg of anhydride, 850 ecstasy tablets, 12 kg of acetone, 10,974 kg of opium syrup, 2,278 kg of liquor, 12,491 kg of intoxicant and 880 kgs of poppy straw.

It was informed that narcotics were burnt in a ceremony at the earliest after a decision by the CNS court. The decision for disposal of drugs burning is obtained from concerned CNS special court and the responsibility of sampling drugs is assigned to a judicial magistrate by the concerned court.

A drug burning ceremony is also held in the presence of concerned judges/magistrates that is also attended by dignitaries, government officials and judiciary, which follows the signing of drug burning certificate by the concerned judge.

Replying to a supplementary question, Minister for Parliamentary Affairs Dr Babar Awan said the government had established rehabilitation centres for treatment of drug addicts across the country.

However, he said there was need of a policy for the drug addicts, who repeated this offense once they were released by the police and ruled out the impression that the seized drugs were sold out in the market. He asserted that these drugs were burnt in public eye.

Later, Minister of State for Interior Tasneem Qureshi said the government was observing rules while appointing people on deputation in the Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT) administration. To a question whether the Ministry of Railways observed quota in giving jobs to the people, the concerned minister, Ghulam Ahmad Bilour, said the ministry took utmost care to observe the provincial quota and asked the members to inform him if there was any violation in this regard.

Minister for Interior A Rehman Malik said posting of officers in the BPS-17 and above in the Revenue department of the ICT administration was made in accordance with the government policy, adding that officers from the District Management Group (DMG) and the provincial services were being posted to the Revenue department.

The interior minister told the House that persons working on deputation would be repatriated to their parent department as and when their deputation period was completed or their services were not be required by the ICT administration. However, he added that no specific time frame could be given for their repatriation.


http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=189864

[lequebecfume]

Offensive against Taliban in Full Swing in Afghanistan's South

By Rachel Smalley
London
31 July 2009

Over 9,000 British and an additional 10,000 American troops have been sent into Afghanistan's Helmand Province to rout the Taliban and establish security ahead of next month's national elections. The fight against the insurgents has been tough as rising casualty figures show and the war against the continued widespread cultivation of poppies and production of opium have proved equally difficult.

http://www.voanews.com/english/images/AfghanPoppyHill_web31jul09.jpg
Poppy crop growing in Helmand Province in southern Afghanistan

Helmand Province in southern Afghanistan - focal point of heavy fighting by British and American forces against insurgents. Helmand is a stronghold of the Taliban, and it is where more than half of the country's opium crop is grown.

Afghanistan produces over 90 percent of the world's opium, which is then smuggled across the border and ultimately sold as heroin.

So far, counter narcotics efforts have focused on eradicating poppy fields.

But Paul Burke, policy director at ICOS - the International Council for Security and Development - says that only robs farmers of their livelihoods and forces them to join the insurgency to support their families.

"You get rid of some 10 hectares of poppy. Another 10 hectares will soon pop up elsewhere and, by the way, in the interim, we've just created another 50-100 ready recruits for the insurgency," Burke said.

The United Nations estimates that insurgents earn up to $400 million a year from opium, which funds their ability to fight.

Christopher Langton served in the British Army for 32 years. He is now an analyst with the International Institute of Strategic Studies and says opium is complicating Britain's mission in Afghanistan.

"Poppy produces finance for the insurgency, as well as for corrupt government officials, of course, and others in Afghanistan," Langton says. "And, ultimately it produces heroin on the streets of Britain. So it's always in peoples' minds. The question is what do you do about it?"

Opium can easily be trafficked across Afghanistan's porous border. This truck has just entered Iran.

The U.S and its allies have been encouraging Afghan farmers to grow alternative crops such as wheat, pomegranates or nuts - but its failed to stop the widespread cultivation of poppy.

America's new policy will focus on stopping the opium from leaving Afghanistan - aiming to not punish the average farmer, but rather to cut off the supply routes and hopefully, ultimately make the opium worthless.

But Paul Burke wants America and Britain to support his group's "Poppy for Medicine" campaign. It would convert a portion of Afghanistan's opium into morphine for medicinal use around the world. "We have a vast abundance of this crop in Afghanistan. Let's try and start to use that for the benefit of cancer sufferers around the world," he said.

The "Poppy for Medicine" campaign would ensure that farmers who grow poppy crops can still support their families.

Christopher Langton says while the theory is good - the timing is wrong to set up a morphine production plant in Afghanistan. "I think in the future when there is stability and governance has grown, then there is going to be a much greater opportunity for this. As I say, it's a very worthy idea, and it shouldn't be discounted," he said.

As the fighting ratchets up ahead of next month's elections in Afghanistan, the war and rising casualty figures have sparked debate in London. And as for the war against opium, opposition lawmaker, Adam Holloway of the Conservative Party, says it is part of the larger fight for the hearts and minds of local Afghans.

"If we're going to win over the people, we have to give them some sort of alternative," he says, "It's crazy to think that - if you grow poppy, we'll destroy your fields. That's just mad, that not a way to win hearts and minds."

Holloway thinks the strategy in Afghanistan needs to shift from the battlefield to helping average Afghans. He thinks that will go a long way to beat back the insurgency and cut down the production of opium.


http://www.voanews.com/english/2009-07-31-voa21.cfm



--LEQ
I repeat several times per year THAT there is a glut of Medical Grand Opium on the WORLD Market, for the treatment of chronic pain.

Only India and Turkey have legally grown poppies for their respective medical Opium programmes.

LEGALIZE AND REGULATE Poppies and the Opium production in Afghanistan AND pay farmers a JUST price for what Afghanistan is best suited for !

[lequebecfume]

No joint US, EU policy
By Shada Islam
Saturday, 01 Aug, 2009 | 01:02 PM PST |


http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/9bb68c804f0b8fc5bf4cbf00edfb04c3/helmand2_ap608.jpg?MOD=AJPERES
The US and Europe may never see completely eye to eye on the west’s ultimate goal in Afghanistan and ways of helping Pakistan to consolidate democracy and fight extremism. — Photo by AP

Don’t count just yet on the emergence of a joint transatlantic strategy to stabilise Pakistan and Afghanistan. Talk of a joint US-European Union policy on dealing with the military, terrorism and development challenges facing Kabul and Islamabad is premature and simplistic.

Watch carefully, however: there is a new mood of transatlantic rapprochement as officials in Washington and Brussels meet and talk to each other increasingly frequently — and amicably — on how best to deal with their ‘Af-Pak’ concerns.

A visit to Brussels some days back by Richard Holbrooke, the high-profile US envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, is just one example of increasing contacts between the US and the European Union as well as between Washington and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato). Holbrooke has been to Brussels often in the past months and also meets frequently with his 20 or so European ‘Af-Pak’ envoys to discuss common challenges.

Given their differing security concerns, strategic visions and political priorities, the US and Europe may never see completely eye to eye on the West’s ultimate goal in Afghanistan and ways of helping Pakistan to consolidate democracy and fight extremism. Slowly but surely, however, American and European policymakers are starting to lay the foundations for what could become a common agenda for joint transatlantic policy and action in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Such an initiative would be welcome but when — or even if — it will happen is difficult to predict. Certainly, with President Barack Obama leading the way, consultation rather than confrontation with the EU on Afghanistan is on the agenda as Americans strive to replace years of Euro-bashing over Afghanistan with a more conciliatory and pragmatic stance on what Europeans can and should do in the country.

Significantly also, for the first time, Washington is discussing strategy towards Pakistan with its European allies. America’s new approach is strikingly different to years under the Bush administration when US officials lashed out at their European counterparts for not doing enough to fight the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan. European governments were routinely admonished by the US for not sending more troops to fight the militants, especially in the volatile south of the country. Germany came in for special criticism for keeping its soldiers in less troubled northern Afghanistan.

Pakistan barely figured in the US-EU conversation in those days, and when it did, Washington made it clear it knew how best to deal with Islamabad and its close ally, former President Pervez Musharraf. Not surprisingly, European officials resented the public scoldings and the constant criticism. In return, they insisted that America’s focus on military hard power alone would never lead to success in Afghanistan. What was needed to fight back the insurgency, said

EU officials, was more development aid to build schools and hospitals, more assistance to fight opium production and stronger efforts to win the hearts and minds of ordinary Afghans.

The change in mood and tone — and increasingly even the content — of transatlantic discussions on Afghanistan and Pakistan clearly reflects a growing realisation in both Washington and Brussels that the problems facing both countries are too complex to allow for policy disarray. Upcoming presidential elections in Afghanistan and the urgent need to come to the aid of millions of people displaced by the military offensive against the Taliban in Pakistan make such transatlantic coordination especially necessary.

In addition, both countries need increased and sustained development aid, with Pakistan also seeking better access to markets in Europe to increase its trade with the bloc. Although the two nations face very different challenges, there is transatlantic consensus that both need help to reform national police structures, strengthen the judiciary and improve the rule of law. Civil society — more vibrant in Pakistan than in Afghanistan — needs to be bolstered and promoted in its efforts at political and social modernisation and democratisation.

There is also less tension as regards the military presence in Afghanistan given that European countries have sent in extra troops to the country in an effort to step up security ahead of presidential elections on Aug 20. Germany, for example, has reinforced its presence with some 900 soldiers, ostensibly to counter security threats linked to the election. But 400 of them are set to stay, and their rules of engagement have been quietly amended. They no longer have to wait for the enemy to shoot at them but are allowed to react as soon as they believe that a threat is imminent.

Despite his reputation for plain-talking, while in Brussels recently, Holbrooke was full of praise for Europe’s military effort and insisted: ‘We’re not going to repeat the unproductive banging on about restrictions and troop levels...we’re all in this together.’ One element of this newfound unity is a strategic decision to separate first-tier Taliban (leaders and hardliners) from the second-tier Taliban (local leaders whose allegiance to the Taliban is opportunistic and who may be persuaded to side with allied efforts and the Afghan government).

In a speech at the Nato headquarters on July 27, British Foreign Secretary David Miliband described the Taliban insurgency as a ‘wide but shallow coalition of convenience’. ‘People are drawn into the insurgency for different reasons, primarily pragmatic rather than ideological,’ he said, adding that while the Taliban could terrorise, ‘their military, technological and organisational inferiority to conventional forces means they cannot take and hold territory and power on a lasting basis’.

Miliband also insisted on the need for post-military reconstruction of Swat and the Malakand Division and said ‘the people of Fata need a clear road map towards proper inclusion in the Pakistani state’. Significantly, Holbrooke’s message to the EU also focused on Pakistan and the need for urgent development aid to tackle the refugee crisis in the Swat valley.

‘Pakistan needs more attention from the Europeans,’ Holbrooke said. ‘This is more than a humanitarian crisis. This is a strategic issue as well. Those refugees are in the exact area where Al Qaeda and the Taliban are, and it’s right up against the Afghan border.’ The US has given $335m so far to shelter, feed and resettle refugees, according to Holbrooke. EU officials say their assistance is currently estimated at $263m, not all that far behind America.

Europeans readily admit that they need to forge a strategic partnership with Pakistan. The first EU-Pakistan summit held in Brussels mid-June was the first step in this process. Both Brussels and Islamabad will now have to work hard to put flesh on the bones of the long list of promises made at the meeting. But given its clout in both Pakistan and the EU, the US will also have to ensure that the EU-Pakistan relationship remains on the front burner.

The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Brussels.

http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/news/world/04-no-joint-us-eu-policy-qs-10

[lequebecfume]

Afghan gov't strives to bring down increasing poppy cultivation

2009-08-04 14:06:05


KABUL, Aug. 4 (Xinhua) -- Government officials and some other people attended an campaign organized by the Ministry of Counter Narcotics in capital Kabul on June 26, the World Drug Day.

According to the United Nations office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Afghanistan produced over 90 percent of world poppy cultivation in 2007.

Officials have been saying the massive income from heroin finances Taliban insurgency that has been rising in the past couple of years.

According to the U.N. statistics, illicit drug production has been increased since the ouster of Taliban regime in late 2001 under the U.S.-led Coalition operation.

In 2001 the lowest opium production was recorded in Afghanistan since 1994-when Taliban had controlled almost the entire country except some of the Northern provinces.

And yet after eight years of international campaign against drugs, Afghanistan still remains the largest producer.

　　FINANCING TALIBAN INSURGENCY

It is believed that Taliban receives over 63 percent its financial assistance from the 4 billion U.S. dollars opium industry account for 53 percent of the GDP of Afghanistan. NATO forces have been trying to eradicate the financial supply line of Taliban, the drug trade.

Officials calculated that Taliban earned 140 million U.S. dollars from opium in 2007. the Insurgents are involved in different ways, through direct cultivation to safeguarding and transportation of the production.

According to officials, about 20 times more area has been brought under cultivation during the last eight years. In 2001, it was 7,606 hectares while cultivation was recorded at 157,000 hectares in 2008.

Most poppy crops are cultivated in five southern insurgency-hit provinces where Taliban have been challenging the writ of the Afghan Government making a strong comeback after they were ousted by the US-led forces.

Over 50 percent of the total production is just cultivated in Helmand province, the heartland of Taliban militants where a major military offensive-Operation Khanjar (strike with sword), the largest since the ouster of Taliban in 2001-with 4,000 U.S. Marines and over 600 Afghan troops, is underway.

Some Afghan analysts believed that if Helmand province is completely taken from the control of Taliban insurgents, half of Afghanistan's opium production can be controlled.

Besides the recent deployment of 4,000 U.S. Marines for the military operation, there have been over 8,000 British troops stationed in Helmand.

Despite this, there are more than 50 drug processing labs in this province. There was an increase record of 160 percent in poppy production in Helmand last year. Before this massive military operation was launched in Helmand, Taliban insurgents controlled five of total 14 districts of this province.

"US ANTI-DRUG POLICY INEFFECTIVE"

International community is worried about the growing poppy production in Afghanistan, despite billions of dollars has been spent on efforts to eradicate the illicit drugs from the war-torn country.

Recently, the U.S. special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke admitted the U.S. anti-drug policy has been ineffective.

The U.S. anti-drug campaign has been "the most wasteful and ineffective program", said Holbrooke while talking to media recently in the Brussels Forum in Belgium.

The U.S. and Britain spent annually hundreds of millions of dollars on counter-narcotics program in Afghanistan.

However, Holbrooke said the U.S. "has nothing out of the counter-narcotics program."

JOINT COOPERATION

There have been different approaches in counter-narcotics in Afghanistan during the last eight years.

A couple of months ago, NATO had allowed its forces to target" insurgency related poppy networks".

Prior to this, the forces did not directly involve against the drug networks. The U.S. wanted to spray herbicides on the vast poppy farmlands, but the Afghan Government has been opposing the idea.

The Afghan Ministry of Counter-Narcotics has been launching livelihood programs for poor farmers in the southern provinces to encourage them grow other crops and give up poppy cultivation.

Poverty is a major reason behind the production of poppy that can bring a farmer ten times more earning than wheat crop. Around 90 percent of the world heroin produced in Afghanistan is being smuggled to parts of the world through neighboring countries especially Iran and Pakistan.

A couple of months ago, a Triangular Joint Anti-Narcotics Operation was conducted by the anti-drugs police of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran on the joint borders. This was the first joint counter-narcotics initiative by the neighboring countries to control drug smuggling on their borders.

The joint operation was the initial action plan of the gradual task to reduce drug smuggling. The respective countries have declared the focal points to implement the joint operations against drug trafficking. A Joint Planning Cell has already been set up in Tehran in February of 2009.

NEW STRATEGY

Talking to media after the G-8 Conference, U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke said that the new U.S. Administration under President Obama will change drug efforts from poppy eradication to ban on drug shipments and supplies. He admitted that the anti-drug efforts in Afghanistan have resulted in failure.

Under the new strategy, the U.S. will not support poppy eradication, but its movement and interception of chemicals and drug transportation while going after drug lords.

Though the Afghan Government had welcomed the new strategy, butBritish officials said they would continue eradication efforts.

It showed that a split which could cause concern vis--vis poppy eradication since British forces have been controlling the highest-poppy producing province Helmand. Poppy products had dropped down 21 percent in 2008 against 8,200 tons in 2007, while authorities predict more reduction in the harvest of menace in 2009.

Meantime, the Afghan government said that 20 out of the country's 34 provinces have been declared poppy free and the target will be achieved in three to five more provinces within the next couple of years.



http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-08/04/content_11823813.htm

[lequebecfume]

The Drug Thugs of Afghanistan
Edited by JAY PALMER

The Taliban and the drug trade. Ecological Intelligence. And a memoir masked as a novel.

Reviewed by Lewis Perdue

AFGHANISTAN MAY NOT BE WHAT YOU thought it was. According to Seeds of Terror, most of the Taliban's religious fanatics have been replaced by organized gangs of big-time drug thugs whose primary goal is to protect their cut of the multi-billion-dollar Afghan heroin trade. In this book, which is subtitled How Heroin is Bankrolling the Taliban and al Qaeda, Gretchen Peters estimates that the Taliban gets at least 70% of its funding from the heroin trade, and that both Hezbollah and Al Qaeda also benefit from global dope.


While Western media pundits wring their hands about the Afghanistan troop surge turning into another Iraq, Peters, who covered Pakistan and Afghanistan for the Associated Press and ABC, writes that "the parallels are actually closer to Colombia. The Taliban and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia both got their start as modern-day Robin Hoods, protecting rural peasants from the excesses of a corrupt government. Strapped for cash and needing the support of local farmers, both groups began levying a tax on drug crops."

Then, Peters explains, both the FARC and the Taliban started providing protection for the drug lords, gradually taking control of the drug refineries and strongarming farmers to meet production quotas. Severe punishment or death awaited those who failed or refused. Finally, the FARC and the Taliban established themselves as alternate systems of a dictatorial government, ruling by fear and violence.

And like the FARC, which tried to maintain a virtuous "people's army" facade, the narco-terror leadership of today's Taliban uses jihad as a convenient public-relations cover to gloss over its greed and lust for power. Peters tells us that Helmand province -- one of the key battle areas for the current U.S. military surge -- produces more than half a billion dollars a year in opium.

"If it were a separate country," Peters writes, "it would be the world's leading opium producer....It's also where links between the Taliban and opium trade are the strongest."

Small wonder, then, that fighting is fiercest there today. But all across Afghanistan, wherever there are drugs, the Taliban is there with protection: attacking NATO checkpoints so opium shipments can get through, planting mines around opium fields and rigging explosives to take out soldiers who dare trespass on the poppies.

Seeds of Terror makes it clear that the Taliban could not have achieved its preeminent position in the illegal global drug trade without the blundering of every U.S. President beginning with President Carter. Peters tells us that Jimmy Carter, in 1979, signed off on secret aid to Afghan guerillas fighting against the Soviets despite warnings that the groups were moving dope. President Reagan continued the policy of looking the other way.

After the Russians left in 1989, President George H. W. Bush terminated most aid -- hundreds of millions of dollars worth -- to the guerillas and government. "Overnight, that left 135,000 armed Afghans and their families no way to support themselves," says Peters, quoting a former CIA officer.

When President Clinton took office in 1993, his administration eliminated what little financial support was still trickling toward Kabul, thus forcing the population to rely on its only cash crop, opium. Money did begin to flow with the second Bush administration's invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, but the damage had been done: The Taliban had become a potent, well-financed adversary, and military errors to come only complicated matters.

The U.S. military, Peters tells us, "doesn't do drugs." That is, despite the fact that the Taliban insurgency runs on the lifeblood of opium, the military refused to support anti-drug operations. "One Green Beret complained that he had been ordered to disregard opium and heroin stashes when he came across them on patrol."

The results of these bone-headed decisions become more significant in the light of a Stanford University study Peters cites: "Out of 128 conflicts studied, the 17 which relied on 'contraband finances' lasted five times longer than the rest." Seeds of Terror offers layer after layer of fascinating information about the deadly consequences of decades of disastrous policy decisions. This is a well-written, well-documented and exemplary work of journalism.

LEWIS PERDUE, a former Washington correspondent and journalism professor, is editor of WineIndustryInsight.com.


http://online.barrons.com/article/SB124908141125198161.html?mod=googlenews_barrons

[lequebecfume]

US to target 'Afghan drug lords'

Opium trafficking provides the Taliban with much of its income.

The US has put 50 Afghans suspected to be drug traffickers with Taliban links on a list of people to be "captured or killed", the New York Times reports.

Two American generals have told the US Congress that the policy is legal under the military's rules of engagement and international law, the paper says.

In a report, yet to be released, it was described as a key strategy to disrupt the flow of drug money to the Taliban.

The move is a major shift in America's counter-narcotics drive in Afghanistan.

In interviews with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which is due to release the report later this week, two American generals serving in Afghanistan said that major traffickers with proven links to the insurgency have been put on the "joint integrated prioritised target list", the New York Times reported.
That means they have been given the same target status as insurgent leaders, and can be captured or killed at any time.
It quoted one of the generals as telling the committee: "We have a list of 367 'kill or capture' targets, including 50 nexus targets who link drugs and the insurgency."

The generals were not identified in the Senate report, the paper said.

Poppy destruction

For many years, US policy in Afghanistan had focused on destroying poppy crops.

But in March Richard Holbrooke, the US envoy to the region, said that US efforts to eradicate opium poppy crops in Afghanistan have been "wasteful and ineffective".

He said efforts to eradicate poppy cultivation had failed to make an impact on the Taliban insurgents' ability to raise money from the drugs trade.

The southern Afghan province of Helmand is the main producer of Afghan opium, which accounts for more than 90% of the global supply.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8192671.stm

[lequebecfume]

Whose Side Is The Afghan President On?

“I Beg Your Pardon, Is That a Karzai Crony Poppy Garden?”

http://www.canadafreepress.com/images/uploads/stoos081409.jpg



By William Kevin Stoos Friday, August 14, 2009

Lemme get this straight: Hamid Karzai is the President of Afghanistan, whose country we are propping up in order to hold free and fair elections, allow the Afghans to establish a democratic state where people have the right to govern themselves, while keeping the Taliban at bay.

In order to do this, we have spent billions of dollars, and sent thousands of brave men and women to risk life and limb (losing dozens of them per month) fighting a bunch of knuckle dragging religious zealots who believe that women are a lower form of human life, who should be covered with sheets and beaten with pipes.

I recall that some of the women were publicly executed, stoned, and had their tongues cut out. Yeah, that bunch. We threw them out years ago. Now they are back--threatening our troops, killing dozens of them, and holding their own against the world’s best military, and our generals are not at all sure that we can defeat them without ten times more troops that we already have in place.

Back to Hamid. In order to curb drug traffic and expedite prosecution of drug traffickers in the country, the United States has spent tens of millions of dollars and untold time and effort to establish Afghan drug courts. This is because the traditional judicial system in Afghanistan is too cumbersome, inefficient, and corrupt to handle these cases. Why is this important? Well, the bad guys who are shooting at our wonderful young men and women and blowing them up with IEDs are being financed by the opium trade. If we can persuade the farmers not to grow poppies, in favor of some other cash crop, and if we prosecute the big fish who are trafficking in opium and financing the bullets and IEDs that are killing our brave troops, then we might make some headway in our fight to establish a viable, democratic government over there and protect it against the Taliban. However, there seems to be one big hitch in this plan: the Afghan President himself.

Yes, it seems that the President of Afghanistan is not even on the same page as the United States, and is in fact working against us. How? Well, those bad guys who are trafficking in dope, financing the war on our brave troops, and helping the bad guys--those whom we spent tens of millions on, to track down, prosecute, and convict in Afghan courts, are being pardoned by the dozen. And by whom? Of course, the President of Afghanistan himself. It seems that his government is so corrupt that the people running Karzai’s campaign have rather seedy relatives who are working against the United States and financing the Taliban through the drug trade. But, since Karzai---above all--wants to be reelected, and since he needs the support of the same well to do supporters whose relatives are working against our wonderful troops, he has decided his main priority is to be reelected. So, in the worst tradition of Chicago politics, Karzai (probably for financial gain or in any event to curry favor with his top supporters) lets the dirtbags go…the ones we just spent millions to convict.

This, of course, begs the question: Whose side is Karzai on? With friends like him, who needs enemies? If he is willing to free bad people who are directly financing the war against the United States, all for political gain, then he is no friend of ours and his agenda is not ours. If he gets reelected in part because he curried favor with the relatives of the druggies who are financing the war against us, then how can we ultimately trust him anyway? Put simply--what is the difference between Karzai and the Taliban? Ultimately, he is no less inimical to long term American interests than the Taliban. The only difference is, he is not shooting at us.

The UN Office on Drugs and Crime Afghanistan Opium Survey, 2008, revealed that opium production remains strong, though somewhat reduced, and that tens of millions of dollars are being funneled to the Taliban to finance the war against the Afghan government and its allies.


http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/13724


LEGALIZE AND REGULATE AFHGAN OPIUM AND CANNABIS

--leq
this bloody heat wave and high humidity IS near killing me

[Rockster]

Thanks for posting those news stories lequebecfume,very revealing.

Old Karzai getting into a bit of dirty political skullduggery by pardoning some main players,well fancy that!:p

All the Western alliance has to do is legalise for medicinal morphine production.The logistics are difficult but not impossible.It would legitimise some baddies admittedly but they'll then become goodies as their money will not go towards the Taliban as that would potentially destabilise their nice new squeaky clean opium profits.

[lequebecfume]

Opium
Fighting a losing battle

By HENRY J. WATERS III
Saturday, August 15, 2009
ADVERTISEMENT

As the United States and its allies seek to stabilize Afghanistan and defeat the Taliban there, we are up against an intractable problem: Our chosen method involves destroying one of the basic elements of national life and well-being.

Many farmers depend on opium production for their very economic existence. They use raw opium as money to buy staples of life. Under great international pressure, the government has instituted a tough crackdown on opium production, casting thousands of village farmers into poverty and toward dependence on the Taliban.

Afghanistan supplies 93 percent of the world’s opium, the key ingredient in the production of heroin. Opium production is the only cash crop for many villagers and the primary source of support for the Taliban, which get revenue from an opium trade nearly impossible to control in the wilds of the country. In 2007 opium amounted to half the national gross domestic product. Now it has been squeezed, but the benefits to the Taliban are largely untouched because almost all the opium is grown in remote provinces under Taliban control.

As government prohibition increases, resentment is built among the populace, black-market prices increase and the illicit trade becomes ever more lucrative for the Taliban. Does this sound like a winning plan?

The dreamy idea was that local farmers would switch from poppies to crops like mustard that produce only a fraction of the return. Some continue to plant poppies to produce opium, fomenting government raids into their fields to destroy the plants. Prohibition is in the process of failing in the Afghan poppy trade just as it did with alcoholic beverages in our own country.

Meanwhile, the United States is actively trying to help Mexico crack down on drug-trafficking gangs south of the border, a fruitless effort. Huge black-market profits to be made in the United States will keep illicit drug traders busy even though, as in Afghanistan, authorities do their best to stamp them out with law enforcement.

As we all know, the drug black market spawns continual drug-related crime, doing more to fill our prisons than any other activity.

We can continue spending billions without success, or we can legalize narcotic drugs and use our resources for treatment and anti-use propaganda. With this tactic we would reduce the Taliban’s financial support more surely than by any other means and lower street crime in our own country as well. We would stop fighting an impossible battle against individual freedom.

We would do better to fight drug use just as we do tobacco and booze. We can’t stop it with force. We merely spend untold billions making things worse.

All laws are an attempt to domesticate
the natural ferocity of the species.

— JOHN W. GARDNER

This article was published on page A4 of the Saturday, August 15, 2009 edition of The Columbia Daily Tribune.


http://www.columbiatribune.com/news/2009/aug/15/opium/

[lequebecfume]

ANOTHER VIEW: Opium vital to Afghan villagers, Taliban

OPIUM'S AFGHAN IMPACT

RUKMINI CALLIMACHI -- Associated Press | Posted: Sunday, August 16, 2009 12:05 am

Editor's note: Afghanistan supplies 93 percent of the world's opium, and the money often goes to fund the growing Taliban movement. This is the first of two stories exploring the impact of opium in Afghanistan.

SHAHRAN, Afghanistan ---- For as long as anyone can remember, there was no need for paper money in this remote corner of the Hindu Kush. The common currency was what grew in everyone's backyard ---- opium.

When children felt like buying candy, they ran into their father's fields and returned with a few grams of opium folded inside a leaf. Their mothers collected it in plastic bags, trading 18 grams for a meter of fabric or two liters of cooking oil. Even a visit to the barbershop could be settled in opium.
But the economy of this village sputtered to a halt last year when the government began aggressively enforcing a ban on opium production. Villagers were not allowed to plant their only cash crop. Now shops are empty and farmers are in debt, as entire communities spiral into poverty.

Opium is one of the biggest problems facing this troubled country, because it is deeply woven into the fabric of daily life as well as into the economics of insurgency. Afghanistan supplies 93 percent of the world's opium, and it is one of the main sources of funding for the growing Taliban movement.
Yet the government ban on opium is working at best unevenly. In areas of the country under Taliban control, opium production is going strong. In government-held areas such as Shahran, it has gone down drastically, but at the cost of the livelihood of hundreds of thousands of people. Their anger is imperiling government support in one of the few areas of the country that has resisted the Taliban's advance.

"Now we don't even have 10 Afghanis ($0.25) to give our children to buy bubble gum," says opium farmer Abdul Hay. "Before they would go into the field and collect the money themselves."

Two years ago, opium, the raw ingredient used to make heroin, grew on nearly half a million acres in Afghanistan. The harvest was worth about $4 billion, or equal to nearly half the country's GDP in 2007. As much as a tenth ---- almost half a billion dollars ---- went to local strongmen, including the Taliban, according to the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime.

Under intense international pressure, the government redoubled its effort to crack down on opium farmers. By last year, the number of acres planted with poppy had dropped by a fifth, yet the Taliban's finances remained largely untouched. Ninety-eight percent of Afghanistan's opium is now grown in just seven of the country's 34 provinces ---- all areas under partial or total Taliban control.

Opium was so entrenched in Badakshan province, where Shahran is located, that it is said Marco Polo sampled it when he passed through in the 13th century. Until recently, the sloping mountain faces were awash with pink, purple and magenta poppies, nodding in the wind. But in the past year, poppy production has gone down 95 percent.

The villagers here held a meeting and decided two years ago not to plant opium, after government radio messages warned that poppy fields would be destroyed and opium growers jailed. Posters distributed throughout the area showed a man with his hands bound by the stem of the opium poppy.

The villagers say they did as the government told them, and planted their fields with wheat, barley, mustard and melons.

But these crops need more care than the tough opium poppy, which will bloom with little water or fertilizer.

Most of the wheat fields yielded little because the farmers couldn't afford to fertilize the land. Even where yields were decent, farmers say they could have earned between two and 10 times more by planting the same land with opium.

"See this mustard? It can take care of my family for one month," says farmer Abdul Saboor, 25, pulling up a shoot of the green plant and snapping it open with his teeth. "When we planted opium in this same plot, it took care of all our expenses for an entire year."

Rising frustration

The hole in the economy is swallowing up the community, from the farmer to the turbaned shopkeepers whose scales used for weighing opium now sit idle.

Every month, shopkeeper Abdul Ahmed used to bring $20,000 worth of goods to sell in the bazaar. It's been four months since his last truckload, and he has only sold $1,000. Ahmed is one of 40 traders left; there used to be 400.

"We open in the morning and go back at night. No money comes in. No one buys anything," says Ahmed. "There is no money left in this village. Opium is the only income we had."

Villagers say desperation is pushing hundreds to immigrate to neighboring Iran, where they work as day laborers. Farmers throughout the region are also sinking deeply into debt. They borrow money to buy staples such as rice and oil, which they used to buy with opium. They also take loans to buy seeds and fertilizer and to rent donkeys to take the wheat to market ---- an expense opium did not bring because all the local shops accepted it as legal tender.

On a hill flanking the highway in Argu District, a four-hour drive southeast of here, a thin farmer is bent over cutting wheat with a hand-held sickle. Abdul Mahin says he is several hundred dollars in debt to the man who sold him fertilizer.

"If we plant two bags of wheat, then we'll have just enough money to buy the seeds to plant another two bags of wheat," says the gray-bearded farmer. "We're going backwards. Of course we're angry at the government."

A small number of farmers in other towns are planting opium despite the ban. Most are seeing their fields destroyed, as government agents intensify patrols.

Farmer Abdulhamid, 55, says he has only rain-fed land, and none of it is irrigated. So he can't grow wheat and barley with much success. Unless the government helps, he says, he will have to plant opium again.

"We are getting poorer day by day," says Abdulhamid, in the village of Pengani. "What should I do? Kill my children so that I don't have to feed them?"

When farmers were asked to stop planting, they were promised help from the government. Badakshan is set to receive $1,000 for each hectare (roughly 2.5 acres) of land freed of poppies ---- some $10 million this year. It's being used to build three clinics and three schools, pave a major road and rebuild six fallen bridges.

Farmers say a distant clinic or bridge is not going to feed their children. But counternarcotics experts and government officials respond that the opium ban is necessary.

"These poor farmers are going to get stepped on and get hurt in this effort," says former Drug Enforcement Agency official Doug Wankel, who organized the U.S. counternarcotics effort here in 2003. "But it's a pain that has to be endured for the good of the masses."

"In the U.S. and the U.K., when people do an illegal activity, the police stops them, right? This is an illegal act, so we need to stop it in order to enforce the rule of law," says Zalmai Afzali, a spokesman for the Ministry of Counternarcotics. He also notes the link to the insurgency: "I try to explain to the farmer that cultivates poppy that he is buying a coffin for his child."

Bankrolling Taliban

Yet the poverty created by getting rid of opium may be stoking terrorism. Nangahar ---- which became poppy-free last year and is held up as an example of government control ---- has seen a rapid increase in extremism, according to a field study by David Mansfield, counternarcotics consultant for the U.N. and the World Bank.

By April last year, the province rescinded agreements to limit the movement of anti-government groups on its border with Pakistan. By July, these groups were believed to have set up bases in four districts next to Pakistan. By September, they were attacking government buildings. And by October, there were Taliban checkpoints.

Also, the crackdown in the country's far north is unlikely to stop the flow of opium and money to the Taliban in the south. In Zabul the home province of Taliban spiritual chief Mullah Omar poppy production grew by 45 percent last year.

Helmand province, a Taliban stronghold, grew so much opium last year that if it were a separate country, it would rank as the world's top opium producer, according to Gretchen Peters, author of "Seeds of Terror," on how the Taliban is bankrolling itself through drug smuggling. Peters says the Taliban's video messages now talk about securing smuggling routes and protecting poppy plantations.

Poppy fields in Taliban areas are so dangerous that eradication teams comb them for bombs before trying to destroy them. Last year 78 government agents were killed trying to destroy fields in the south. By contrast, the worst they faced in Badakshan was crying farmers.

Zainuddin, the head security officer for Darayim district in Badakshan, says he feels awful every time he uproots a poppy field.

"Sometimes I cry as I am hitting the poppies," says Zainuddin, who like many Afghans goes by a single name. "Because I know these are poor people and I am taking away the only thing they have."

Over the past month, dozens of fields have been destroyed in the mountains of Badakshan. Nasrullah, a 35-year-old farmer, planted three small plots of white-and-violet poppies inside a hill of wheat, hoping the taller crop would hide the illegal blossoms.

He stood in silence on a recent morning as nine police officers crossed a small gulch and climbed the hill. They assaulted his crop, hitting the flowers with long sticks until they fell to the ground. He put his face in his hands.

"I didn't plant this for my own pleasure," he says. "I planted this so that my family could eat. All the rest of this is worth nothing," he says, waving at the wheat. "The choice I have to make now is either kill myself. Or leave the country."

NEXT WEEK: Opium's impact on a family and their village.

http://www.nctimes.com/news/opinion/perspective/article_bdfed119-a3b2-549d-b6dd-b01221051a46.html


--LEQ
up since 4 a.m. in excruciating PAIN,
medicating with opium

[lequebecfume]

Targeting Afghans, not 'the enemy'

By Ben Anderson
Southern Helmand Province, Afghanistan

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/46208000/jpg/_46208313_usmarinesouthhelmand_getty.jpg
Ben Anderson was embedded with US marines in the Taliban heartlands

"By wintertime, the Taliban are going to be on their heels, sitting in Pakistan, wondering what to do next. And we'll have the people," Marine Battalion Commander, Lieutenant Colonel Christian Cabaniss told me.

"Once the people decide they won't tolerate the Taliban's presence, there's no way they can stay."

Last month he arrived with the 4,000 marines from 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade in Southern Helmand, Afghanistan's most violent province for Operation Khanjar.

Their mission - the first major military operation ordered by President Barack Obama - was to oust the Taliban and then stay in every area cleared to win the trust of the local population ahead of the presidential elections.

In counter-insurgency talk it is called "targeting the population, not the enemy" - if you win the support of the people, the enemy can no longer operate.

To me this sounded remarkably similar to what the British had been trying to do in Helmand for years, and yet they had just suffered their worst month since the start of the war.

The US hopes this "surge" will drive the Taliban out for good
"The Brits had a good understanding of what was going on down here, but they never had enough combat power to do what they would like to do and then sustain it over time," Lieutenant Colonel Christian Cabaniss said.

"My battalion taking over, we're obviously just a little bit larger, we've been able to position forces all over the central Helmand river valley and really get out amongst the people. They just didn't have the capability to do it right."

Under attack

Echo Company, who at that point were further south than anyone else in Helmand, had met stiff resistance.

During one firefight that had lasted more than seven hours, one marine was killed, the first military death on an operation ordered by President Obama.

This is like... Vietnam... half the time when you're getting shot at, you don't even see, it's like you're getting shot at by bushes
US marine

It took me a week to reach them. On my first attempt, the convoy I was travelling with was hit by an improvised explosive device (IED) and we had to turn back.

Incredibly, although the front left tyre of our vehicle had been blown 70 metres into a nearby field, everyone inside the armoured MRAP truck had walked away without a scratch. Even Blue, the explosives sniffing dog, jumped out wagging his tail.
It was depressing and infuriating to remember the very different experience British soldiers so often have, when they drive over IEDs.

More traditional threats still exist in Southern Helmand too.
On my fourth day with Echo Company, I was embedded with a platoon that was ambushed first with light arms fire, and then with rocket-propelled grenades (RPG).


The tactics being used were central to the success of the troop surge in Iraq

"This is what you wanted, you got it, now go get it," Staff Sergeant Timothy Funke screamed as he ordered his men into position.

We had run through three compounds with AK47 rounds and rockets flying over our heads, until the marines finally spotted the attackers.

The marines aimed heavy fire at a tree line no more than 150 metres away. Soon everything went quiet. The men who had been firing at us were either dead or had retreated.

The Taliban have realised that the marines are here to stay and so are using ever more sophisticated tactics. Increasingly they rely on IEDs.

One marine told me that the Taliban opened fire on his platoon knowing they would run for cover in a nearby compound. The Taliban had already planted the compound with at least three powerful bombs, detonated by tripwire. The marines were lucky not to suffer any losses.

'Hard way'

Long daily patrols in temperatures that often top 50C, amongst a population that many marines find it hard to establish relationships with and impossible to trust, have started taking their toll.

"Every single day we get shot at. This is like... Vietnam... half the time when you're getting shot at, you don't even see, it's like you're getting shot at by bushes," said one.

Lieutenant Colonel Christian Cabaniss said he anticipated frustration.

"What I told the marines before they went out was, this isn't going to happen overnight.

"My hope is that by Eid we will have really cemented relationships with the local population, built that trust.

"The marine battalions in Al Anbar in Iraq had already come to the same conclusion - that working closely with the local population, and building relationships with them had a greater impact on security than just going from street to street shooting did," he told me.

"We learnt that the hard way in Iraq, and we're starting the right way in Afghanistan."

Watch Ben Anderson's film in full on Newsnight on Wednesday 19 August 2009 at 10.30pm on BBC Two.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/8201197.stm

[lequebecfume]

EDITORIAL
Afghanistan Votes


Published: August 20, 2009

Millions of Afghans, determined to shape their own future, defied Taliban threats and voted Thursday in the country’s second-ever presidential elections. That courage deserves to be rewarded with far better governance than Afghans have experienced in the four years since the last presidential vote.


President Obama has rightfully defined success in Afghanistan as essential to America’s struggle against Al Qaeda. He has backed that up with more troops — there are 62,000 now with 6,000 on the way — stronger American military leadership and a more careful use of air power devised to limit civilian casualties.

There is a lot more that must be done. The country’s next president will need the full support of the United States and NATO allies if there is to be any hope of defeating the worst of the Taliban and any chance of getting the rest to lay down their weapons. Washington must also be willing to deliver tough, unsolicited advice when needed on issues like official corruption and drugs.

Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the new American commander, has been commendably candid about how badly the war is going — and how hard and costly it is likely to be even to start turning things around.

United States and NATO troops, and, increasingly, the new Afghan National Army must dislodge Taliban guerrillas from the strategic mountain passes and towns they have retaken in recent years (without recklessly placing local residents in the line of fire).

Success on the Afghan battlefield will not be enough unless Pakistan closes down Taliban training camps and infiltration routes on its side of the border. Washington must use every diplomatic and aid lever at its command to turn Pakistan’s government, army and intelligence services away from their historic support of the Taliban toward support for the legitimate Afghan government.

And even that won’t be enough. The Taliban cannot be defeated militarily unless they are also defeated politically. The next Afghan president — President Hamid Karzai or one of his challengers — must win and keep the loyalty of the Afghan people in the face of Taliban intimidation.

Mr. Karzai, Afghanistan’s top leader since December 2001, has presided over a government whose systemic corruption has consumed its credibility and the country’s limited financial resources. He has built alliances with notorious warlords. Opium cultivation and drug trafficking have expanded under the protection of his relatives and allies and are now the most dynamic sectors of the national economy. The army is far from combat ready and the national police are often corrupt and under the sway of local warlords.

The Afghan government — and its backers in Washington and other NATO capitals — don’t have a lot of time to turn these disastrous trends around.

Unfortunately, not all unsavory alliances with warlords can be liquidated immediately. The country would be ungovernable. But the next president’s goal should be to quickly free himself from their toxic and disabling grip. Increasing the pay and improving the training of the army and the police would lessen that dependency. The United States and NATO need to provide many more qualified trainers and enough financing to allow the government to outbid Taliban commanders and drug lords for the services of unemployed young men.

Afghanistan’s farmers do not want to be in business with brutal drug traffickers or the Taliban. But they need seasonal crop loans no legitimate lender seems willing to provide. Microcredit banks could make a huge difference and international donors should step in to provide needed start-up money. More aid is also needed to help improve local infrastructure — building roads and irrigation projects — while at the same time creating more local jobs outside the opium trade. These projects will need careful monitoring to make sure funds are not skimmed away by corrupt officials and contractors.

Meanwhile, the next Afghan president must crack down hard on big drug traffickers. They need to be purged from government offices and police forces. Afghanistan needs a justice system that can arrest and try suspected drug criminals and punish the guilty severely.

Afghan misgovernment is the Taliban’s most important ally and most effective recruiting agent. The price of continued misgovernment will be paid with the lives of Afghans and of American and NATO soldiers.


http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/21/opinion/21fri1.html

[lequebecfume]

Afghanistan: where do we go from here?

Last week, the tally of British troops killed in Afghanistan passed 200. With no end in sight to the conflict, the Government has yet to face up to the enormity of the challenge

Sean Rayment, Defence Correspondent
Published: 7:00AM BST 23 Aug 2009

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/telegraph/multimedia/archive/01467/AFGHANISTAN_TROOPS_1467347c.jpg
Every single combat unit sent to Afghanistan now expects to sustain casualties Photo: MOD

Private Richard "Hunty" Hunt probably assumed that he was in a safer position than most soldiers fighting in southern Afghanistan.

As the driver of a Warrior armoured personnel carrier, he was protected by several tons of metal that had more or less proved invulnerable to the Taliban's deadly bombs. But in the deserts and fertile valleys of Helmand, death is random, and no one, irrespective of rank or experience, is safe.
Within days of being posted to Musa Qala, the former Taliban stronghold of Northern Helmand, Pte Hunt, a fiercely proud, 21-year-old member of the 2nd battalion The Royal Welsh, was seriously wounded. His vehicle, the 11th in a convoy of 30, detonated an improvised explosive device (IED) as it trundled along a river bed, en route to the main British base.
Such was the force of the blast that Pte Hunt's head was smashed against the side of the Warrior. Even though he was wearing a helmet, the impact caused immediate brain damage.
Close to death, he was taken to the field hospital at Camp Bastion, where surgeons fought to keep him alive long enough so that he could be flown home to spend his final hours with his family.
The private, who was also training to be a sniper and harboured aspirations to join the SAS, died a week yesterday, at the Royal Centre for Defence Medicine at Selly Oak Hospital in Birmingham, with his family gathered around his bed.
Pte Hunt holds the tragic distinction of being the 200th member of the Armed Forces to be killed in Afghanistan since 2001. While his death is no more important than the 199th or the 201st, it is a grim milestone which, at the very least, provides an opportunity to raise questions over the nature of the conflict – the most obvious of which is: "Why are we there?"
This is an area where, within the Government, confusion is rife – never a good basis for any campaign. Military commanders need unambiguous orders: "Go there, do this, and leave."
Gordon Brown insists our forces are fighting and dying in Helmand to prevent terrorist attacks on British streets. According to the Prime Minister, there is a "chain of terror" stretching from Britain to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Yet the only terrorist attack to emerge from Afghanistan was 9/11.

Meanwhile, Harriet Harman, the Leader of the House of Commons and one of the most senior members of the Cabinet, claims that the presence of troops is vital so that Afghan girls can go to school. A laudable aspiration, but, in my opinion, not worth the life of a single British soldier. And the Chancellor Alistair Darling harbours the belief that continued military involvement in Helmand would allow Afghanistan, one of the world's most corrupt countries – which, incidentally, also condones marital rape – to emerge as a democracy.
With such a confused political strategy, how can the military ever be expected to deliver success?

As early as 2002, concerns among Britain's high command began to emerge. The history of Afghanistan is littered with the bones of invading armies. In the past 160 years, three successive British campaigns have either met with disaster or limited success. One officer noted in a 19th-century journal that after more than three years of hard fighting, the only ground his soldiers ever really held was that on which they stood.

More recently, the Russian occupation, which began in 1979 and lasted for 10 years, cost the lives of 14,500 Soviet troops – further evidence of the precarious nature of military operations in that country.

It was against this historical backdrop that in 2002 Admiral Sir Michael Boyce, then Chief of the Defence Staff, warned of the dangers of Britain getting its hand caught in the "mangle of Afghanistan". He sought to describe the intractable nature of war in a country where the people can be as hostile as the terrain.

The UK entered Helmand in 2006, as part of a multinational force whose mission was to bring security to southern Afghanistan in order to allow reconstruction to begin. But Britain was also heavily committed to fighting a burgeoning insurgency in southern Iraq that was threatening to spiral out of control. While commanders wanted to send around 6,000 troops to Helmand, the Treasury would only agree to 3,500 – a move now regarded as an unmitigated blunder.

The first signs that the Government hadn't grasped the size of the undertaking came in early 2006, when John Reid, then defence secretary, said he hoped British troops would leave Afghanistan after three years, and without a shot having been fired. Although the former cabinet minister has since insisted that his quotes were taken out of context, the very notion that such a media-savvy politician could voice such an aspiration underlines the Government's lack of understanding of the enormity of the challenge.

Within three months of arriving in Helmand, British troops were effectively at war. But they found to their cost that they did not have enough men, helicopters, armoured vehicles – or intelligence. Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Tootal, commanding officer of the 3rd battalion The Parachute Regiment, recalled being ambushed in a village which, during previous visits, had been friendly: "It wasn't that our intelligence was wrong – the fact was we just didn't have any intelligence."

Resources aside, the lack of understanding of the terrain and complexities of the tribal system also served to undermine the British mission. In September 2006, Tony Blair, then prime minister, made his now infamous promise that he would send whatever equipment commanders need to defeat the Taliban – helicopters included.

Three years on, British troops have recently completed Operation Panther's Claw, a battle supposedly fought to force the Taliban from a large area of central Helmand so that the population could have unfettered access to polling stations during last week's presidential and provincial elections.
More than 25 British soldiers died in the operation and dozens more were wounded. But just half of the polling stations in Helmand opened, the others were closed through fear of Taliban attack and the number of voters was woefully low – officials fear the final turnout may be little more than 40 per cent (turnout in 2004 was more than 70 per cent): a paltry return for such a large sacrifice. The test facing the Army now is to hold onto the ground from which the Taliban were cleared.
Last month was the bloodiest on record in Helmand for British troops, with 34 soldiers being killed and more than 94 wounded – 19 of them very seriously.

The vast majority of casualties were caused by IEDs laid by the Taliban, who switched tactics following its inability to defeat Nato in head-on engagements. Astonishingly, senior commanders once described this change in tactics as a measure of British success – until the casualty figures went through the roof. Such levels of attrition are now being viewed as unsustainable in terms of military capability and public acceptance. A report ordered by General Sir Richard Dannatt, the outgoing Chief of the General Staff, revealed that the level of wounded was beginning to compound the problems faced by the Army.

So what are the alternatives?

Britain could pull out, as some politicians, primarily the Liberal Democrats, have advocated. But I believe a unilateral withdrawal could have catastrophic consequences for the West's long-term security.

It is highly likely that the 42-nation coalition that comprises the Afghan International Security and Assistance Force would collapse within weeks. Any semblance of Britain being a world power would also evaporate immediately. Perhaps even more serious, Nato might not survive the crisis. It would be left up to the United States to continue on its own in Afghanistan or instigate an emergency withdrawal. Either way, the country would be plunged into chaos; civil war would probably ensue, and the backlash would be felt across the border in Pakistan, which would embolden the Taliban and al-Qaeda, and bring greater instability to the world's only declared nuclear Islamic state.

A unilateral withdrawal would also destroy the UK's diplomatic relationship with the United States and probably end all coalition-led military interventions for a generation, thus allowing al-Qaeda, or any other terrorist group, to set up in a failed state and launch attacks against the West without fear of invasion. This is, of course, a nightmare scenario, but one to which many senior commanders subscribe.

There is, however, an alternative: a benign, large-scale occupation but with a limited timescale.

It has been clear for some time that there simply are not enough troops in Afghanistan. The Americans – the powerhouse behind Nato – need to convince the organisation's partners to increase troop levels from 64,500 to around 200,000. Such an enterprise has already begun, with the mini-surge of some 17,000 US troops into Helmand. Clearly, a large uplift of troops would be a major undertaking, but it would bring much greater security, reconstruction, and allow the writ of the government to be extended.

More troops would also allow greater numbers of the Afghan Army and police to be trained more quickly, which would lead to a greater sense of nationhood among the Afghans. The security would allow reconstruction to begin in the small villages and hamlets where the Taliban currently hold sway.
But such a strategy should be set within a limited time frame and any pretensions of creating a democracy should be dismissed. It is a strategy that is wholly dependent on Nato's member states preparing to share the burden being shouldered by the United States and Britain. It is also clear that whatever the outcome of last week's presidential election – and it looks as though Hamid Karzai, the incumbent, has won – a power-sharing deal will have to done with the Taliban if Afghanistan is to have any semblance of a peaceful future.

The troop shortage, which is hindering any meaningful progress, is at its most acute in Sangin, a town that was once the centre of opium production and Taliban activity. Despite the British having had a sizeable presence there since 2006, more soldiers have been killed and wounded in Sangin than in any other area of Helmand. Within 24 hours of Pte Hunt's death, four more soldiers were killed by IEDs; three of those were killed in a double bomb attack, the second multiple IED ambush in a month.

Another two soldiers died after being caught in an explosion last Thursday, the same day that an RAF Chinook, again close to the town, was forced to land after being hit by enemy fire – a worrying escalation of the threat posed by the insurgents. The Taliban is able to plant bombs with apparent impunity because, in effect, it has freedom of movement – a luxury afforded by the shortage of British troops.

And so almost every other day at Camp Bastion, the main Nato base in Helmand, a tragic ritual is performed. Soldiers gather close to the runway on the northern perimeter to watch their comrades carry Union Jack-draped coffins into the bowels of a giant RAF C-17 transport aircraft bound for the UK. Although attendance for "Ramp Ceremonies" is not compulsory, every service is attended by hundreds of troops. It is a deeply moving, humbling experience, a reminder to all of the human price being paid day after day. Tears are openly shed as the plane flies overhead, dipping its wing in a final salute to those remaining behind.

For those who survive their wounds, many will face an uncertain future. It is not only their lives that are being changed forever, but also those of their wives, children, mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters.

The looming spectre of Afghanistan fatigue, a curse that will inevitably deplete the morale of troops sent to fight in Helmand for the fourth or fifth time in years to come, also beckons. The heady days of 2006, when Paratroopers fought toe-to-toe with the Taliban and tales of derring-do abounded, have long gone. The Afghan war has turned nasty. The Taliban has transformed a large part of Helmand into a minefield, where one step in the wrong place, one small lapse in concentration, can mean death or mutilation.

Every single combat unit sent to Afghanistan now expects to sustain casualties. Many soldiers, some barely 18, have held the hand of comrades as they died. Others have seen comrades suffer traumatic amputations. An unknown but growing number returning from Helmand's battlefields will carry mental scars for the rest of their lives.

And so while the politicians talk of democracy and freedom, the troops endure. For them this is simply a war of survival – their own.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/6074105/Afghanistan-where-do-we-go-from-here.html

[lequebecfume]

The fog of war in Afghanistan

Any serious scrutiny reveals the claims used to justify Nato's presence to be utterly specious

Charles Ferndale
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 23 August 2009 19.00 BST


On Newsnight on 20 August 2009, while being interviewed by Gaven Esler, US General David Petraeus said that the Afghan war is "not a war of choice".

He was echoing President Obama, Gordon Brown, British military officials and others. We are told constantly that Nato forces have to be there to prevent Afghanistan from becoming a training ground for terrorist attacks on our countries. The implication is that we are killing Afghans in their tens of thousands to stop Britons at home from being killed in their tens, or, at worst, in their hundreds.

The claim that we are in Afghanistan to keep terrorists off our streets is false; our presence there increases the threat of terrorism here.

Afghanistan has not been an important planning area for any attacks on western countries and the Taliban have shown no inclination to conduct war against Nato countries outside Afghanistan (so far, but we seem to be doing our best to change their practices). Petraeus said the attacks on the World Trade Towers were planned in Afghanistan. This remark is disingenuous. Osama bin Laden may have been in Afghanistan at the time of the attacks, but had he been in New York, London, Paris or Hamburg, his whereabouts would have made no difference to the outcome. The perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks resided in Germany, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia and were trained (in part) in flying schools set up by the CIA in Florida.

Gordon Brown recently repeated the claim that 75% of the terrorist attacks planned against Britain so far have been planned in Afghanistan or Pakistan. Another dishonest statement. Mr Brown has no idea what number of terrorist attacks on Britain have been planned, nor where they have been planned, so he cannot know what percentage were planned in Afghanistan or Pakistan. The most he can even claim to know is what percentage of the terrorists attacks planned and known to our intelligence services were planned in one of those two countries.

And what about the convenient disjunction in the claims of our officials – that the terrorist plots were planned in Afghanistan or Pakistan? In which country were these alleged terrorist attacks planned? Does Brown think we don't care? If none were planned in Afghanistan, then what relevance have they to our presence there?

For the existence of any such plans to afford us grounds for killing thousands of Afghans in their own country, it would have to be shown (minimally) that such plots could not be hatched elsewhere. Clearly, that cannot be shown. So, even if such plans might have exited, or might occur in future, their existence, or possible existence, offers no grounds for our belligerent presence in Afghanistan.

Western officials talk little of the fact that when the Taliban were in power, from 1996 to 2001, opium production in Helmand was eliminated completely. Newspapers allege repeatedly that the Taliban is financing itself with sales of heroin. The media's favourite estimate of the profit made by the Taliban is $100m a year. How do they know? Second, which Taliban make this money? There is no unified command. There are at least 14 different groups being called "Taliban". Nato officials are probably the source of most claims about the drug trade in Afghanistan. Can they be trusted? Simultaneously with claims that the drug trade is run by the Taliban, we are told that it is run by Karzai's supporters. But Karzai is America's man. Can these commentators have it both ways? Or is the drug trade financing both sides?

Despite the billions of dollars that have poured into Afghanistan since 2001, no help has been given to the poor there. Actually, the condition of the poor has got much worse since 2001, which is why, contrary to yet more dishonest statements by our officials, most Afghans support the Taliban. And the plight of women (outside of the privileged families located mainly in Kabul) has also got much worse since the Taliban were overthrown (hard as this may be for us liberals to believe). The BBC's world affairs editor John Simpson was honest enough to say last week that, had the money spent so far on the Afghan war been spent on the poor, there would be no war there. At last, we see a glimmer of truth in the self-serving, meticulously disseminated "fog" of war.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/aug/23/taliban-afghanistan-opium-trade

[lequebecfume]

US to engage more Afghan soldiers to fight Taliban

25 August, 2009, 09:07

“Now that the Afghan presidential elections are over, it is high time for the US military to regain the initiative and to consider decisive military action,” says RT military analyst Evgeny Khrushchev.


US forces are battling militants in the country, but they have a long road ahead as 10,000 US Marines launched an offensive against the Taliban in July in Helmand province, famous for providing the considerable bulk of the world’s opium poppy crop.

By the end of 2009, there will be 68,000 US forces in Afghanistan, twice as many as in 2008.

Khrushchev concluds that, “Until the US Military Command could make sure that the US military units operate only with the equal or even bigger number of Afghan units – until then it will be an exclusively American exercise in futility with inevitable collateral damage and negative consequences to the US image, not only in Afghanistan, but all over the region.”

Meanwhile, an Afghan election official says the country's current leader Hamid Karzai has won last week's presidential election, as the first preliminary results are due to be announced on Tuesday.

Mr. Karzai's main opponent, former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah has rejected the claims and accused the president's camp of vote rigging.

UN monitors say there were some problems which will be investigated.

The voting took place amid widespread security fears, and threats from the Taliban are thought to have affected voter turnout, particularly in the south of the country.

http://www.russiatoday.com/Politics/2009-08-25/us-engage-more-afghan.html

[lequebecfume]

Obama's Afghan war - a race against time:Bernd DebusmannThu Aug 27, 2009 10:05am EDT






var csvSymbolIds = "";var quoteLink = "true";



(Bernd Debusmann is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own)

By Bernd Debusmann

WASHINGTON, Aug 27 (Reuters) - By making the war in Afghanistan his own, declaring it a war of necessity and sending more troops, U.S. President Barack Obama has entered a race against time. The outcome is far from certain.

To win it, the new strategy being put into place has to show convincing results before public disenchantment with the war saps Obama's credibility and throws question marks over his judgment. Already, according to public opinion polls in August, a majority of Americans say the war is not worth fighting. Almost two thirds think the United States will eventually withdraw without winning.

There are similar feelings in Britain, which fields the second-largest contingent of combat troops in Afghanistan after the United States. A poll published in London this week showed that 69 percent of those questioned thought British troops should not be fighting in Afghanistan.

In the United States, almost inevitably in a country that never forgot the trauma of the only war it ever lost, 36 years ago, pundits are conjuring up the ghost of Vietnam. A lengthy analysis in the New York Times wondered whether Obama was fated to be another Lyndon B. Johnson, the president who kept escalating the Vietnam war.

The war in Afghanistan is drawing into its ninth year and chances are it will still be going when Obama is gearing up for his campaign for re-election in 2012. According to a study by the RAND institute, a think tank working for the military, counter-insurgency campaigns won by the government have averaged 14 years.

"The insurgent wins if he does not lose," according to the U.S. Army's counter-insurgency manual, "while the counterinsurgent loses if he does not win. Insurgents are strengthened by the common perception that a few casualties or a few years will cause the United States to abandon (the effort)." A key to winning: "firm political will and extreme patience."

Patience is not an American virtue. The first call for Obama to set a "flexible timetable" for the withdrawal of American troops came this month, from Senator Russell Feingold, a Democrat and member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Not exactly a reflection of firm political will and extreme patience.

In Afghanistan, the Taliban insurgents not only have been winning by not losing, they have actually been gaining ground. In the words of the top U.S. military officer, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mike Mullen, the situation in Afghanistan "is serious and is deteriorating."

What does that mean? According to Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Taliban have expanded their area of influence from 30 of Afghanistan's 364 districts in 2003 to some 160 districts by the end of 2008. But, says Cordesman, a widely-respected authority on military affairs, "the military dimension is only part of the story."

CORRUPTION AND INCOMPETENCE

The other part is a corrupt, incompetent government and an equally corrupt and inefficient system of disbursing international aid. In his war-of-necessity speech, Obama obliquely referred to that aspect of the Afghan war by saying it could not be won by military force alone. "We also need ... development and good governance."

Both have been in very short supply. "The Afghan government lost legitimacy over the past five years," says Bruce Riedel of the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. Whether, and how quickly, it can regain it is open to doubt, no matter who emerges as the winner of the August 20 election in which President Hamid Karzai was running for a second five-year term. (Full results are due on September 3. Both Karzai's camp and his main challenger, former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah, have claimed victory on the basis of partial results.)

The extent of corruption and the lack of good governance are reflected by two international gauges - the Failed States Index compiled by the The Fund for Peace and Foreign Policy magazine and the annual Corruption Perceptions Index issued by Transparency International, a Berlin-based watchdog group. Afghanistan ranks 7th on the failed states list and 176th (out of 180) on the corruption scale.

This is not an environment that lends itself to swift solutions. There are powerful vested interests in maintaining what Cordesman calls a dishonest system of power-brokering and corruption. Jean MacKenzie, a Kabul-based reporter, said in a recent guest column for Reuters that foreign assistance coming into Afghanistan was one of the richest sources of funding for the Taliban.

"It is the open secret no one wants to talk about ... Virtually every major project includes a healthy cut for the insurgents," MacKenzie wrote. "International donors, primarily the United States, are to a large extent financing their own enemy."

Until recently, most experts thought that the Taliban was financed largely from taxes the insurgents levied on the production of opium, the raw material for heroin. Richard Holbrooke, Obama's special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, said last year (when he was not in government service) that "breaking the narco-state in Afghanistan is essential or all else will fail."

He no longer thinks that the insurgency is mostly funded by the opium trade. Instead, he says that the volume of money flowing into the Taliban coffers from sympathizers in Gulf states and elsewhere exceeds that of the drug trade.

"Obama inherited a disaster," according to Riedel, "a war which has been under-funded and under-resourced for six of the past seven years." And what would happen if the Obama's war of necessity went wrong and the United States pulled out of Afghanistan? In the Muslim world, it would be seen as "a triumph on a par with the withdrawal of Soviet forces" from Afghanistan after their disastrous nine-year war and occupation.

Not to mention the impact it would have on Obama's political standing. (You can contact the author at Debusmann@reuters.com) (Editing by Kieran Murray)

http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSN27311087



--leq/Michael
in bad pain at my rehab clinic

[lequebecfume]

Change in Afghanistan must come from within

The Observer, Sunday 30 August 2009


GORDON BROWN has made a flying visit to Afghanistan, calling the campaign to secure the country's recent election worthwhile. It's true that the fact a vote of any kind has been held is an achievement. But with Richard Holbrooke, US special envoy to Afghanistan, among those concerned about fraud and ballot-stuffing – and the revelation that the turn-out in the south was even worse than anticipated, questions must be asked about what difference the elections have made.

The reasons to hold the poll were ambitious. It would provide legitimacy for a weak government, undermining the Taliban in the process. But all that has emerged is the suspicion of a deeply flawed process and the continuation of the problem that for so long has afflicted the country: a separation of the Pashtun-speaking south from Kabul. The national average turnout is thought to have declined to little more than 40%, down from 70% in the last election.

The view that elections are the essential ingredient for a stable future is undermined in a country where President Hamid Karzai has stuffed his cabinet with war lords and where a functioning civil society is but a rumour along with the notion of justice. They appear like a fig leaf rather than the ultimate expression of democracy.

It is easy to blame the Taliban for this. But it was the west's half-hearted engagement with Afghanistan, after bringing down the Taliban regime after 9/11, that created the social tensions, particularly in the south, that allowed the Taliban to re-emerge. Promises to create an effective national police force were not followed up with resources. Farmers whose opium was destroyed were promised aid that never came. Billions were spent with little impact on a country with huge unemployment.

This failure is a problem for all of us. With so much invested by the west in the result of the elections, the outcome threatens to leave our politicians without an obvious exit strategy for Nato troops.

We need to recognise that a large part of the difficulty lies with the west's support for President Karzai. For years, US diplomacy has been expended coaxing and threatening Karzai into doing what the west would like: to be less tolerant of corruption, to secure more international investment and to be more effective in delivering services and aid to ordinary people.

Karzai's relationships with drug dealers and war lords are, perhaps, not as serious in the long run as another culpability – his presiding over a regime devoid of the development of any party political system that might have thrown up options for his country's future, rather than a system that has supervised the sharing of its spoils.

It is clear that Karzai is neither capable of nor willing to change. The democratic process has run aground. The west faces the prospect of upholding a dubious regime for a narrow strategic reason – to prevent terrorism in the UK and the US and to stop al-Qaida setting up their terror camps again.

The question now is whether this is necessary. If Nato troops leave Afghanistan, it may become easier for al-Qaida to operate there but, equally, the sense of grievance that attracts Afghans to the Taliban and Muslims to extremism elsewhere may be diminished. But for as long as our troops are in Afghanistan, British soldiers will be killed, making it an increasingly urgent political problem for Gordon Brown.

The government finds itself nailed to the logic of a failed humanitarian intervention where it is hard to abandon what it promised to redeem. The Conservatives, lacking a clear foreign policy doctrine, do not offer much hope either.

It is clear that there will be no obvious moment for withdrawal. There are two highly risky options: a commitment to do whatever it takes to rout the Taliban, rebuild Afghan infrastructure, reconfigure Afghan politics and stick around for a generation for which there is a fast diminishing public appetite. Or to set a time-table for a staged military withdrawal.

In the end, it may be that solutions cannot be imposed by the west, but need to emerge from within an Afghan society free of the interference that has for three decades exacerbated its problems.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/aug/30/afghanistan-karzai-brown-nato-withdrawal

[lequebecfume]

American government condemns fraud in Afghan election

The American government has spoken out against fraud in the Afghan presidential election, amid signs the international community is preparing to take a firmer stance with candidates.

By Ben Farmer in Kabul
Published: 8:37PM BST 29 Aug 2009

A spokesman for the US National Security Council, a White House foreign policy forum chaired by President Barack Obama, said: "We condemn any acts of fraud.

"It is important that the outcome of these elections reflect the will of the Afghan people.


"We will continue to encourage Afghan authorities to follow the comprehensive anti-fraud measures established in order to protect the integrity of the election process and ensure that the election results are credible."

There are growing fears that Afghanistan's second presidential election is at risk of being undermined by a low turn-out and widespread allegations of vote-rigging.

The condemnation follows reports that President Hamid Karzai had heated exchanges with Richard Holbrooke, President Obama's special envoy to the region, during a discussion about the August 20 poll.

Envoys from Britain, the US and its allies are also to meet on Wednesday for a summit in Paris to discuss the aftermath of the vote.

The Afghan election watchdog has received more than 1,500 accusations of ballot rigging, intimidation and fraud.

Abdullah Abdullah, the former foreign minister and the president's closest challenger, has accused the government of "state-engineered fraud" and said he will not accept the legitimacy of a stolen election.

Yesterday the incumbent Hamid Karzai appeared to pull farther ahead of his main rival, according to the latest results unveiled yesterday by the country's election commission.

Total results released so far come from 35 percent of polling stations

Out of 2.03 million valid votes counted, Karzai won 940,558 and former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah 638,924, Daud Najafi, chief electoral officer at the Independent Election Commission (IEC), told a news conference.

Those results handed Karzai 46.3 percent of votes announced and Abdullah 31.4 percent, widening the incumbent's previous lead of around nine percent.

Dr Abdullah's campaign has filed more than 100 official complaints against the Karzai campaign including allegations that ghost polling stations were set up and ballot boxes were stuffed with forged votes.

Mr Karzai's campaign has in turn accused Dr Abdullah's supporters of intimidation.

The incumbent is widely considered to be the favourite to win, but pre-election polls suggested Dr Abdullah could deny him the 50 per cent needed to avoid a second round.

After polling, Mr Karzai's campaign has repeatedly said it had gained enough votes to win outright.

A successful Taliban campaign of intimidation meant most voters were scared away in much of the Pashtun tribal south and nationwide turnout may be as low as 35 per cent.

Certified results will not be announced in the election until September 17.


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/6111371/American-government-condemns-fraud-in-Afghan-election.html




--LEQ
governments that grow grass, should not store thrones

[lequebecfume]

Government redefining 'democracy' in light of failure in Afghanistan

Pundits and politicians can ponder the fragility of flowers, but the rest of us know what plain democracy is—and Afghanistan definitely isn't it.

Displaying start of article containing 843 words - So, the word means something after all.

"Democracy" put us in Afghanistan and "democracy" kept us there. "Democracy" justified casualties and the cost, some $18-billion. Pundits and politicians said so, over and over. Now confronted with failure of the mission, they'd aim to redefine what democracy is. No, not that kind of democracy—we meant the bribe-taking, ballot-stuffing, heroin-trading, Islamic-desert-kingdom kind of democracy.



http://www.hilltimes.com/members/login.php?fail=2&destination=/html/index.php?display=story&full_path=2009/august/31/political_reporting/&c=2


--LEQ
hmmmmmmmm ????

[lequebecfume]

US 'needs fresh Afghan strategy'

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/45983000/jpg/_45983074_007544924-1.jpg
The general's report will not carry a direct call for extra troops

A top US general in Afghanistan has called for a revised military strategy, suggesting the current one is failing.

In a strategic assessment, Gen Stanley McChrystal said that, while the Afghan situation was serious, success was still achievable.

The report has yet not been published, but sources say Gen McChrystal sees protecting the Afghan people against the Taliban as the top priority.

The report does not carry a direct call for increasing troop numbers.

"The situation in Afghanistan is serious, but success is achievable and demands a revised implementation strategy, commitment and resolve, and increased unity of effort," Gen McChrystal said in the assessment.

Copies of the document have been sent to Nato Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer and US Defence Secretary Robert Gates.

The report came as further results from last week's presidential election were expected to be released, at 1230 GMT. President Hamid Karzai is leading so far.

The independent Electoral Complaints Commission says that of more than 2,100 allegations of wrongdoing during voting and vote-counting, 618 have been deemed serious enough to affect the election's outcome, if proven.

Crisis of confidence

The general's blunt assessment will say that the Afghan people are undergoing a crisis of confidence because the war against the Taliban has not made their lives better, says North America editor Mark Mardell says.

Gen McChrystal says the aim should be for Afghan forces to take the lead but their army will not be ready to do that for three years and it will take much longer for the police.

And he will warn that villages have to be taken from the Taliban and held, not merely taken.

Gen McChrystal also wants more engagement with the Taliban fighters and he believes that 60% of the problem would go away if they could be found jobs.

His report is expected to be presented to military chiefs in Washington on Monday.

Hints on troop numbers

More than 30,000 extra US troops have been sent to Afghanistan since President Barack Obama ordered reinforcements in May - almost doubling his country's contingent and increasing the Western total to about 100,000.

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/46231000/jpg/_46231494_007729596-1.jpg

What what we need to do is to correct some of the ways we operated in the past
General Stanley McChrystal
(In recent BBC interview)

Nato's new approach (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8210352.stm)

This report does not mention increasing troop numbers - that is for another report later in the year - but the hints are all there, our correspondent says.

But when General McChrystal's report lands on President Obama's desk he will have to ponder the implications of increasing a commitment to a conflict which opinion polls suggest is losing support among the American people.

The latest Washington Post-ABC news poll suggests that only 49% of Americans now think the fight in Afghanistan is worth it.

In a recent BBC interview, Gen McChrystal said that he was changing the whole approach to the conflict in Afghanistan - from what he described as a focus on "body count", to enabling the Afghans to get rid of the Taliban themselves.

On Saturday, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown promised more support for UK troops in Afghanistan, during a surprise visit to the country.

During the visit he met Gen McChrystal. Correspondents say the pair discussed the need to speed up the pace of training of Afghan troops.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8230017.stm




--LEQ
Legalize, Regulate and Tax OPIUM , there is a DIRE NEED of Medical Grade Opium on the international market for Chronic Pain Patients

[lequebecfume]

Time to Get Out of Afghanistan

By George F. Will
Tuesday, September 1, 2009

"Yesterday," reads the e-mail from Allen, a Marine in Afghanistan, "I gave blood because a Marine, while out on patrol, stepped on a [mine's] pressure plate and lost both legs." Then "another Marine with a bullet wound to the head was brought in. Both Marines died this morning."

Allen and others of America's finest are also in Washington's hands. This city should keep faith with them by rapidly reversing the trajectory of America's involvement in Afghanistan, where, says the Dutch commander of coalition forces in a southern province, walking through the region is "like walking through the Old Testament."

U.S. strategy -- protecting the population -- is increasingly troop-intensive while Americans are increasingly impatient about "deteriorating" (says Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) conditions. The war already is nearly 50 percent longer than the combined U.S. involvements in two world wars, and NATO assistance is reluctant and often risible.

The U.S. strategy is "clear, hold and build." Clear? Taliban forces can evaporate and then return, confident that U.S. forces will forever be too few to hold gains. Hence nation-building would be impossible even if we knew how, and even if Afghanistan were not the second-worst place to try: The Brookings Institution ranks Somalia as the only nation with a weaker state.

Military historian Max Hastings says Kabul controls only about a third of the country -- "control" is an elastic concept -- and " 'our' Afghans may prove no more viable than were 'our' Vietnamese, the Saigon regime." Just 4,000 Marines are contesting control of Helmand province, which is the size of West Virginia. The New York Times reports a Helmand official saying he has only "police officers who steal and a small group of Afghan soldiers who say they are here for 'vacation.' " Afghanistan's $23 billion gross domestic product is the size of Boise's. Counterinsurgency doctrine teaches, not very helpfully, that development depends on security, and that security depends on development. Three-quarters of Afghanistan's poppy production for opium comes from Helmand. In what should be called Operation Sisyphus, U.S. officials are urging farmers to grow other crops. Endive, perhaps?

Even though violence exploded across Iraq after, and partly because of, three elections, Afghanistan's recent elections were called "crucial." To what? They came, they went, they altered no fundamentals, all of which militate against American "success," whatever that might mean. Creation of an effective central government? Afghanistan has never had one. U.S. Ambassador Karl Eikenberry hopes for a "renewal of trust" of the Afghan people in the government, but the Economist describes President Hamid Karzai's government -- his vice presidential running mate is a drug trafficker -- as so "inept, corrupt and predatory" that people sometimes yearn for restoration of the warlords, "who were less venal and less brutal than Mr. Karzai's lot."

Mullen speaks of combating Afghanistan's "culture of poverty." But that took decades in just a few square miles of the South Bronx. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, thinks jobs programs and local government services might entice many "accidental guerrillas" to leave the Taliban. But before launching New Deal 2.0 in Afghanistan, the Obama administration should ask itself: If U.S. forces are there to prevent reestablishment of al-Qaeda bases -- evidently there are none now -- must there be nation-building invasions of Somalia, Yemen and other sovereignty vacuums?

U.S. forces are being increased by 21,000, to 68,000, bringing the coalition total to 110,000. About 9,000 are from Britain, where support for the war is waning. Counterinsurgency theory concerning the time and the ratio of forces required to protect the population indicates that, nationwide, Afghanistan would need hundreds of thousands of coalition troops, perhaps for a decade or more. That is inconceivable.

So, instead, forces should be substantially reduced to serve a comprehensively revised policy: America should do only what can be done from offshore, using intelligence, drones, cruise missiles, airstrikes and small, potent Special Forces units, concentrating on the porous 1,500-mile border with Pakistan, a nation that actually matters.

Genius, said de Gaulle, recalling Bismarck's decision to halt German forces short of Paris in 1870, sometimes consists of knowing when to stop. Genius is not required to recognize that in Afghanistan, when means now, before more American valor, such as Allen's, is squandered.

georgewill@washpost.com


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/31/AR2009083102912.html


--LEQ

what a narrow minded opinion !

[lequebecfume]

Troops inflict ‘vast damage’ in south Afghanistan, says Holbrooke

PARIS: US and NATO troops have inflicted “vast damage” on the Taliban in southern Afghanistan, seizing strongholds and making a dent in the militia’s drug trade, US special envoy Richard Holbrooke said on Monday.

Holbrooke, who has visited the southern Helmand province twice in recent weeks, told France 24 in an interview that a major US offensive launched last month was showing results. “The coalition forces including the British and Americans have done vast damage to the Taliban, disrupted them, captured major caches of opium, heroin and drug paraphernalia,” he said. His comments came as the US and NATO commander in Afghanistan submitted a review calling for a revised strategy to defeat the Taliban and reverse the country’s serious situation.

General Stanley McChrystal’s review, compiled since he took up command in mid-June, had been widely anticipated under US President Barack Obama’s strategy putting Afghanistan at the heart of his foreign policy. Holbrooke was in Paris ahead of a meeting on Wednesday with his counterparts from France, Germany, Britain and the United Nations to chart a way forward in Afghanistan following the elections. The US special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan reiterated that the “door is open for dialogue with members of the Taliban who renounce Al Qaeda and violence”. afp


http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2009%5C09%5C01%5Cstory_1-9-2009_pg7_45

[lequebecfume]

LANGLEY TIMES
Poppy pushers



Published: December 23, 2009 11:00 AM
Updated: December 23, 2009 11:36 AM



Prime Minister Stephen Harper recently stated that after 2011, Canada would still provide secondary/technical support to the NATO forces in Afghanistan. I do not understand why we are there in the first place.

The plausible reason would be profit-driven, i.e. oil supply, human rights or opium production.

The UN stats for opium production are as follows: In 2001, under the Taliban drug eradication program, opium production was reduced to 7,606 hectares and 185 Imperial tons of opium.

Fast forward to 2008, under NATO/UN control. Opium cultivation is now 123,000 hectares, with a yield of 6,901 Imperial tons. Who said democracy does not work?

Human rights? If that were the case, we would have troops in China 20 years back and UN troops would be in Canada fighting for our own natives’ rights.

The fighting and border conflict are spreading to Pakistan and Iran. Our soldiers are driving vehicles with little or no armour plating and roadside IEDs are the main cause of casualties.

You need to write your MP and demand an exit plan from Afghanistan by 2011 for all personnel. There were 132 reasons not to go into Afghanistan — 132 lives gone and families shattered. For what?

Tom Beattie,

Langley


http://www.bclocalnews.com/opinion/letters/80002627.html

[lequebecfume]

INTERVIEW -
Afghan govt members fuelling opium trade - minister
Sun Dec 27, 2009 4:20pm IST
By Jonathon Burch

KABUL (Reuters) - Members of the Afghan government are sponsoring slices of the country's lucrative opium trade, a senior Afghan minister said, at a time when the president is under mounting pressure to stamp out state corruption.

President Hamid Karzai, whose own reputation has been tainted after winning a fraud-marred election, is under increasing pressure from the West to tackle corruption in his government head on.

General Khodaidad, who has been nominated to continue his job as counter-narcotics minister in a new cabinet, said people at all levels were profiting off the drug -- from the lowly police recruit to government officials running major smuggling networks.

While catching small dealers was one thing, rooting out corrupt officials and ringleaders was near impossible, Khodaidad, who has served as Afghanistan's counter-narcotics minister for the past three years, told Reuters in an interview.

"We can catch small (traffickers) everyday. It is very difficult to identify ... big drug dealers. They are not involved themselves but they are ... behind it, they are behind the network," said Khodaidad, who goes only by one name.

Asked who these big players were, Khodaidad said: "They are inside the government, they are outside of Afghanistan ... they are behind these networks."

Although poppy cultivation fell by 22 percent this year, Afghanistan still produces around 90 percent of the world's opium, a thick paste from poppy that is processed to make highly addictive heroin and smuggled abroad.

"DO MORE"

The Taliban are said to siphon off millions of dollars from the trade and nearly all cultivation is in areas they control.

Khodaidad points to a map of Afghanistan on his office wall where a large swathe of bright red represents the country's southern provinces.

"Those areas in the map which are red ... Helmand, Kandahar, Uruzgan, Farah (and Nimroz), in these provinces most of the area is under control of the insurgents," Khodaidad said.

"The people are under the pressure of ... the insurgents..., that is why they are growing poppy," he said.

Khodaidad said he was confident the 30,000 new troops Washington was sending to Afghanistan would make a difference.

"More troops are coming, conducting operations, eliminating, destroying and disrupting the network of terrorism ... it is very good news for the counter-narcotics issue," Khodaidad said.

Some 10,000 U.S Marines have been pushing through southern Helmand province since spring, where around 60 percent of the country's opium is produced. That Marine force is set to double in the south over the next few months.

Khodaidad said while foreign troops do not target the crop directly as this simply alienates the poor farmers, the offensives helped cut off supply routes for the drug.

Despite the decrease in cultivation over the last two years, poppy cultivation has soared since the Taliban were overthrown in late 2001 and this year's drop seems to be a result of simple economics, rather than law enforcement efforts.

Prices for the drug plummeted this year, causing farmers to switch to other crops. Only 4 percent of the crop was eradicated -- at a great cost to human lives -- and only 2 percent of the harvested product was seized. Khodaidad said it was not enough.

"It is not enough. I think from my side, we should do more."


http://in.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idINIndia-45004020091227

[lequebecfume]

US Marines in southern Afghanistan keep their hands off opium poppies, but farmers still upset

By Sebastian Abbot (CP)


KHAN NESHIN, Afghanistan — The arrival of U.S. Marines has disrupted the illegal drug trade in opium-rich Helmand province - and that's not necessarily a good thing.

Farmers in Rig district say the troops have driven away many of the smugglers they relied on to transport their opium poppy across 75 miles (120 kilometres) of open desert to a market on the Pakistani border.

"The people from Khan Neshin will still be growing opium," said Fathi Mohammad, referring to the capital of Rig district. "But it will be more difficult for them to sell it."

As the U.S. prepares to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan, the experience in this rural district illustrates how the illegal drug trade complicates efforts to win over the population.

Many people in Helmand, which produces more than 50 per cent of the world's poppy, rely on the heroin-producing crop to make a living. Disrupting the trade could undermine the goodwill generated by military and civilian development projects, such as dredging irrigation canals and opening schools.

The Obama administration tried to neutralize the drug issue earlier this year when it reversed a Bush-era policy of destroying poppy crops in Afghanistan, a tactic officials said did little or nothing to reduce the amount of drug money flowing to the Taliban and simply drove the population into the insurgents' camp.

The Marines patrolling the dusty fields and irrigation canals in Rig district have been careful to stress to residents that they are here to battle the Taliban, not cut into their livelihoods.

"Our guys have gotten pretty good at telling the farmers, 'Don't worry, we're not going to burn your opium crop,"' said 2nd Lt. Doug Toulotte, a member of the Marine battalion posted in Rig.
But the presence of U.S. forces can still have knock-on effects that harm farmers. Another 8,500 Marines are headed to Helmand by the end of 2010 as part of the increase in troops.
The remaining smugglers operating in Rig are paying farmers one-fifth of what they used to pay for poppy, said 1st Sgt. Mohammad Daoud, a member of the Afghan border police training with the Marines.

"The price has gone down because it is harder for the smugglers to transport the drugs," he said.

Further, the district governor views poppy as un-Islamic and has demanded that farmers not grow it, a position the Marines from the 4th Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion say they must support - even though it complicates their efforts to win hearts and minds.

"Anywhere that's under our control, we will destroy their opium crop," said Gov. Massoud Balouch, who comes from a wealthy family in Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand.

The governor distributed wheat seed to Rig farmers this fall ahead of the planting season, in line with U.S. efforts to encourage them to move away from poppy. But farmers said they make five times more money growing poppy than wheat from the same amount of land.

"The wheat is not going to do us any good," said Asmatullah, a young Khan Neshin resident who expressed frustration at the government's attempts to counter poppy cultivation. Like many Afghans, he goes by only one name.

"The Taliban didn't interfere with anyone's work while they were here," he said. "If we start growing opium again, it will help us out."

Another problem with wheat is that it requires only about one-tenth of the labour needed for poppy cultivation and harvesting, so shifting to the crop would significantly increase unemployment, Vanda Felbab-Brown, a narcotics expert at the Washington-based Brookings Institution, said in recent U.S.
Senate testimony.

Fewer jobs could provide the Taliban with another grievance to exploit to increase their support.

U.S. development officials in Rig hope to introduce higher-value alternative crops in the area, such as pomegranates, but that project has yet to get off the ground.


http://www.google.com/hostednews/canadianpress/article/ALeqM5jT5zhftMs7ctWKF5aIorX1dsWvwg

[lequebecfume]

U.S. Announces $20 Million to Help Afghanistan Agriculture

By Peter Sedik
Epoch Times StaffCreated: Jan 12, 2010Last Updated: Jan 12, 2010

http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/mambots/content/multithumb/thumbs/350.0.1.0.16777215.0.stories.large.2010.01.13.afgh an92383624.jpg
An Afghan worker inspects grapes at the Badam Bagh farm in Kabul on Oct. 26, 2009. (Romeo Gacad/AFP/Getty Images)

The U.S. plans to donate up to $20 million to Afghanistan’s Agriculture Ministry to improve its capacity to deliver services to the local farmers. According to a report from the Associated Press, the intention behind the program is to help the country to continue to switch from opium production to cultivation of legal crops like grapes or corn.

U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced the plan on Tuesday after a three-day visit to Afghanistan.

Afghanistan is the biggest opium exporter in the world, covering as much as 90 percent of the worldwide demand for this drug, used in the production of heroine.

Groups like the Taliban use the money from illegal drug trafficking to finance their operations. The group, leading guerrilla warfare against the U.S-led invasion in country, provides numerous services to farmers—futures contracts, guaranteed marketing, financing, seeds, and fertilizers.

Secretary Vilsack, who has visited Afghanistan six times, told the Associated Press in Kabul that they have to provide a counteroffer to the Afghans' farmers, who are reportedly earning five times more money from poppy than wheat from fields of the same size.

Before the war, Afghanistan used to export dried fruits, nuts, and pomegranates, but the industry was largely devastated. Many of the farmers now rely on poppy production for their income.

Afghan agriculture reform is a part of the Obama administration’s efforts to stabilize the country. Mr. Vilsack told AP that due to the incentives offered in 2009—wheat seeds and fertilizer for low prices—poppy crops were reduced by one third in the southern Helmand Province, a main center for opium production.

This year’s plan is to diversify agriculture by extending the support to nut trees, fruit, and vegetables.

According to a recent report from the Center on International Cooperation at New York University, the essential condition for implementing counter-narcotics policies is “a state that works.” But in most of Afghanistan, “the state is only one of several contending authorities there, and its reach is particularly weak in areas where opium production is concentrated.”

The analysis suggests that to ask farmers for voluntary restraint, much larger development livelihood programs should be delivered—and not just announced or funded or launched—to all farmers, especially in the provinces that are not planting poppy or are reducing it.

The Washington, D.C. based National Bureau of Asian Research says in a report that “a multitude of actors are involved in Afghanistan’s opium poppy production, including the Taliban, all levels of the Afghan government, law enforcement, unofficial powerbrokers, and tribal elites.”

The study suggests that an alternative legal economy should be in place, which cannot consist of a mono-cropping system, but that the sustainable legal livelihoods need to include “high-value, labor-intensive, diversified crops, such as fruits and vegetables.”


http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/27906/

[lequebecfume]

US military telegraphs coming battle in hopes some Taliban choose to sit out the fight

By Anne Gearan (CP) –

WASHINGTON — The U.S. military is openly telegraphing a plan to clear out an insurgent haven in what may be the first major battle since President Barack Obama's expansion of the Afghanistan war, hoping that all but the most hardcore Taliban will sit out the fight.

U.S. military leaders have spoken bluntly in recent weeks about a looming assault on Marjah, a town in the southwest Afghan province of Helmand described as Taliban-owned and operated.
"It's been increasingly clear for weeks now about the need to clear out Marjah, so that's going to happen," Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen told reporters travelling with him in Afghanistan in December. "It's going to happen ... at a time and place of our choosing, but it's going to happen."

The battle would be a keystone in an offensive planned for early this year against a resurgent Taliban-led insurgency. The Obama administration approved the offensive, and an infusion of 30,000 additional U.S. forces, as a way to put the brakes on the Taliban's expansion across southern Afghanistan.

U.S. officials say there is only a narrow path to victory, but that a forceful stand in Helmand and Kandahar provinces will establish U.S. resolve to stick it out. Both sides are girding for a fight.

The U.S. military does not normally comment on the timing or other details of future operations. But remarks from senior military leaders in Afghanistan and Washington suggest they see no point in hiding plans to confront what they said is the last trouble spot in a district where U.S. forces have already cleared several other towns of active Taliban presence.

Marjah, a small town in a farming district some 380 miles (610 kilometres) southwest of Kabul, is a strategic target because it is a key supply hub for the opium poppy crop and shelters Taliban units thought to have fled the Marines elsewhere in Helmand.

Helmand is the world's largest producer of opium, the main ingredient in the production of heroin, and Afghanistan accounts for more than 90 per cent of the world's opium supply. Some of the proceeds from this multibillion dollar trade go to fund the insurgency. Profits also line the pockets of corrupt government officials.

"We're going to go in big," Brig. Gen. Larry Nicholson, commander of the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade, told reporters travelling with Mullen in Helmand. "I'm not looking for a fair fight."

"Marjah is next," Nicholson said, because if U.S. forces are going to protect Afghans from the Taliban - a key component of Gen. Stanley McChrystal's new Afghan war strategy - they need to ensure free passage throughout Afghanistan.

Tensions have intensified in southern Afghanistan as local protesters claiming that international troops destroyed copies of the Qur'an clashed with Afghan and foreign security forces in Helmand on Tuesday. The tumult left six people dead, Afghan officials said.

Also in the south, 13 insurgents were killed Tuesday by a missile fired from an unmanned drone. The pilotless drones have mostly been used for surveillance, but the airstrike commenced after coalition troops scanned insurgents preparing ammunition and mortar teams moving equipment in the Naw Zad area of Helmand, NATO said.

On Monday, another missile fired from a drone killed three insurgents farther south in the Nad Ali district of Helmand, according to NATO.

During a trip to the region late last year, Mullen chose to fly around the Marjah district rather than directly over it, a sign of how potent the insurgent threat has become there. The area's strategic importance near the provincial capital and a major roadway makes it a propaganda prize as well as valuable real estate.

Military officials said the battle would be designed to minimize Afghan civilian casualties, but the fight, whenever it comes, may involve house-to-house combat and other tactics that put civilians at risk. It is unclear how many true civilians remain in the town itself, although many live in the surrounding 40 miles (65 kilometres) or so of lush river-and canal-fed farmland.

Although the U.S. military clearly wants to eliminate the Taliban threat around Marjah, some of the big talk may be a deliberate attempt to mislead the insurgents about when and how the assault will come.

By openly discussing their plans for Marjah, military officials risk the possibility that the Taliban will act contrary to their plans and mount a stiff defence that could swell American casualties.
But defence officials, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the future military operation, said commanders are banking on the assumption that Taliban foot soldiers may choose to quietly slip back to their civilian lives rather than face vastly superior U.S. forces.

"We are going to put the enemy on the horns of a dilemma," Nicholson said. "He has to decide what to do."

Nicholson said it's impossible to hide the arrival of 10,000 Marines that began last month. Their mission is clear to everyone including the Taliban, the general said.

"There is a certain inevitability to this," Nicholson told reporters as he and Mullen walked through a nearby town, Narwa, without flak jackets or helmets to underline the improved security since Marines confronted militants there last summer and fall.

A small market has reopened in Narwa, whose civilian population scattered more than a year ago and has barely begun to return.

If U.S. forces can flush militants from Marjah, farmers and legitimate merchants will have freer passage on the province's main roadway and the Taliban middlemen will have more difficulty moving the opium crop from farmers' fields, military officials said.

Afghanistan's Interior Ministry claimed its troops confiscated 1.3 tons of opium in one raid in Marjah in 2008.

Marines have moved into strategic Helmand towns one by one since Obama's first infusion of forces last summer. The strategy places the protection of ordinary Afghans from Taliban threats, violence and shakedowns above the killing of militants.

Nicholson said what he called "small-T Taliban," the hired help who go home to their families at night, may walk away while other more committed militants fight or try to flee to yet another haven.

Canadian Press

http://www.google.com/hostednews/canadianpress/article/ALeqM5jvicACkx8tjPUt8dC4wsbyGKHPEQ

[lequebecfume]

UN: Afghan Corruption Matches Scale Of Opium Trade

http://gdb.rferl.org/00EDEE52-D17D-40EB-A794-D214D38D9DBF_w527_s.jpg
Two money-changers wait for customers at an exchange market in Kabul.

January 19, 2010
By Antoine Blua

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) says that Afghans paid out $2.5 billion in bribes over a 12-month period.

In a report issued today, titled "Corruption in Afghanistan," UNODC says the figure is equivalent to almost one-quarter of Afghanistan's gross domestic product (GDP), and is similar in size to the estimated $2.8 billion in revenues from the opium trade in 2009.

One Kabul resident tells RFE/RL’s Radio Free Afghanistan that graft is part of everyday life.

“I think there is no one in Afghanistan who has not experienced the bad phenomenon of corruption. Everybody has faced corruption in government institutions, in court, and in the prosecutor's office," he says. "You can see corruption everywhere. About 20 minutes ago, in front of my eyes, police stopped a loaded truck and then let it go after the driver gave him 50 Afghanis. This is corruption, the bribe. People face it and see it everyday, including me."

The UN survey tells a similar story.

Based on interviews with 7,600 people in 12 provincial capitals and more than 1,600 villages around Afghanistan between autumn 2008 and autumn 2009, the survey shows that Afghans consider rampant corruption as their biggest problem.

Fifty-nine percent of the respondents felt that "public dishonesty is a bigger concern than insecurity (54 percent) or unemployment (52 percent)."

Explicit Demands

One Afghan out of two had to pay at least one kickback to a public official during the survey period.

More than half of the time, the request for illicit payment was an explicit demand by the service provider.

The report says citizens were asked for bribes when they needed a document or a license, to have their rights protected in courts, or to receive medical treatment.

In most instances, the bribes were paid in cash.

The average bribe was $160, in a country where GDP per capita is $425 per year.

A spokesperson for UNODC in Vienna, Walter Kemp, tells RFE/RL that corruption is a major impediment to improving security, development, and governance in Afghanistan.

"Corruption is not only a crime in itself, it's a lubricant for other forms of organized crime, like drug trafficking," Kemp says. "But not only that, it is a major impediment to development.

"If money which is designed to help the country disappears in a big, black hole, then that certainly hinders the ability for the country to rebuild itself. Also, it's a hindrance to security and, of course, the implementation of the rule of law."

UNODC found that the biggest culprits were police and local officials, followed by judges, prosecutors, and members of the government.

The international community does not escape criticism. The report says more than half of Afghans believe that international organizations and nongovernmental organizations "are corrupt and are in the country just to get rich."

It says this perception risks undermining aid effectiveness and discrediting those trying to help the country.

Set Clear Benchmarks

Meanwhile, lack of confidence in the ability of public institutions to deliver public goods is pushing Afghans to look for alternative providers of security and welfare, including antigovernment elements.

For all these reasons, UNODC urges the new Afghan government to make fighting corruption its highest priority.

Kemp says an international conference on Afghanistan in London later this month should set clear benchmarks for the Afghan government on corruption.

"We're calling for the international community to use the UN convention against corruption as the benchmark for measuring progress in Afghanistan," Kemp says. "And there's plenty of very concrete measures in there about how to prevent corruption, about how to criminalize corruption, how to recover stolen assets, and so on. So we're saying: There's no need to start from scratch."

The UNODC is also calling on President Hamid Karzai to turn the country's anticorruption agency, the High Office of Oversight and Anticorruption, into an independent, fearless and well-funded authority.

Since Karzai began a new term in November after an election marred by massive fraud, his Western allies have put him under mounting pressure to crack down on corruption.


http://www.rferl.org/content/UN_Afghan_Corruption_Matches_Scale_Of_Opium_Trade/1933680.html?page=1#relatedInfoContainer

[lequebecfume]

UN report finds corruption rife in Afghanistan

Bribes bring in nearly as much as opium trade

BY ADRIAN CROFT, REUTERSJANUARY 19, 2010


http://a123.g.akamai.net/f/123/12465/1d/www.canada.com/news/report+finds+corruption+rife+Afghanistan/2460344/2385908.bin?size=620x400

Karzai, when he was sworn in for a second five-year term in November after a tainted election, promised measures to fight graft. But he has also defended his record on corruption, saying the issue had been "blown out of proportion" by Western media.
Photograph by: Majid Saeedi, Getty Images

LONDON - Corruption costs Afghans $2.5 billion a year, a United Nations agency said on Tuesday, with the scale of bribery matching Afghanistan's opium trade.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said a national survey it conducted showed Afghans were more concerned by public dishonesty than insecurity or unemployment.

"Bribery is a crippling tax on people who are already among the world's poorest," UNODC's Executive Director Antonio Maria Costa said in a statement, adding the scale of corruption was equivalent to nearly a quarter of the country's economic output.

He urged Afghan President Hamid Karzai to "urgently administer tough medicine based on the United Nations Convention against Corruption which he pushed so hard to ratify".

U.S. President Barack Obama and other Western leaders have pressed Karzai to root out corruption in his administration.

The report was released nine days before an international conference on Afghanistan in London where Karzai is expected to face more calls to tackle graft from countries that have sent troops to help his government battle Taliban insurgents.

The London conference should set clear benchmarks for the Afghan government, Costa said. "We need above all surgery. We need to remove the officials that are corrupt, we need to confiscate the proceeds of crime," he told Reuters.

"We don't believe that a country which is so affected by bribery, corruption and bad governance can ever develop and therefore addressing corruption is key to unlock any development potential the country has," he said in an interview.

KARZAI PLEDGE

Karzai, when he was sworn in for a second five-year term in November after a tainted election, promised measures to fight graft. But he has also defended his record on corruption, saying the issue had been "blown out of proportion" by Western media.

The pioneering report, based on interviews with 7,600 Afghans conducted between August and October last year with people in 12 provincial capitals and more than 1,600 villages around Afghanistan, found that graft was part of everyday life.

In the past year, one Afghan out of two had to pay at least one kickback to a public official such as a police officer, judge, prosecutor or member of the government.

The average bribe was $160 in a country where economic output per capita is just $425 a year.

In total, Afghans paid out $2.5 billion in bribes over the previous 12 months, equivalent to 23 per cent of Afghanistan's Gross Domestic Product and similar to the proceeds of Afghanistan's opium trade, the report said.

A researcher gathering data for the report was gruesomely killed by Taliban insurgents when caught with evidence that he was working for an international organization, Costa said.

Costa urged Karzai to turn the High Office of Oversight and Anti-Corruption into "an independent, fearless and well funded anti-corruption authority. At the moment, this is not the case".

Public officials should be vigorously vetted, including through the use of lie detectors; public servants should disclose their incomes and assets; and governors and local administrators "with proven records of collusion with shady characters" should be removed, he said.

He called for transparency in public procurement, tenders and political campaigns, and for tighter regulation of financial institutions to prevent money laundering.


http://www.canada.com/news/report+finds+corruption+rife+Afghanistan/2460344/story.html

[lequebecfume]

Cultivation of opium restarts in FATA


PESHAWAR: The cultivation of opium has been resumed in federally administrated tribal areas of the country and report into this respect has been dispatched to NWFP Government and Federal Government by law enforcement agencies here on Sunday.

The cultivation of opium in federally administrated tribal areas especially in Mohmand agency has gone unchecked, sources informed Online. Cultivation of opium at 513 Kanal lands is underway in Mohmand agency and no action has been taken against responsible by Political administration.

The cultivation of opium would be ready by end of current month and its total cultivation would be more than 20,000 Kilogram. Report about cultivation of opium in Khyber agency, Bajaur agency, FR Peshawar and 25 controversial villages have also been sent to federal and Provincial Governments.




http://www.onlinenews.com.pk/details.php?id=157715

[lequebecfume]

Six Tons of Opium Destroyed, Senior Improvised Explosive Device Facilitator Killed

ISAF Joint Command
Courtesy Story

Date: 02.06.2010
Posted: 02.06.2010 04:16

KABUL, Afghanistan - A senior Taliban IED facilitator, and several of other insurgents were killed Jan. 28, during a coordinated operation near the Pakistan border, led by Afghanistan national security forces.

After the ANSF had been provided with information, and supported by their International Security and Assistance Force partners, the ANSF located the vehicle in which a senior Taliban leader was travelling.

When the ANSF signalled for the vehicle to stop, the insurgents responded by opening fire on ANSF troops. A couple of insurgents were killed, including the senior IED facilitator, after the ANSF took self-defensive actions.

As ANSF forces secured the area, two additional vehicles approached and a few additional insurgents were killed and one captured during a gun battle with the joint force.

The vehicles were searched and more than six tons of opium was found and destroyed on the spot.

This operation took place in open desert and no civilians were reported injured.


http://www.dvidshub.net/?script=news/news_show.php&id=45023

[lequebecfume]

Frightened Afghans flee offensive in opium valley

(AFP) –
LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan — Afghan men, women and children fearing imminent fighting between the Taliban and US troops, loaded up trucks on Monday and streamed out of one of the world's main sources of heroin.

Wrapped in blankets to fend off the winter chill, families packed up goats, furniture and clothes, clogging roads with taxis, cars and tractors in a major exodus to safety, dodging roadside bombs planted to kill US and NATO troops.

"We left the area because lots of aircraft were flying over and lots of forces were moving back and forth," Shir Ali Khan told AFP after reaching Lashkar Gar, the capital of southern province Helmand, with his 25 relatives.

War and battle are nothing new to the 80,000 people from Marjah, a fertile Helmand River valley in southern Afghanistan, one of the world's main sources of heroin and for eight years a major bastion of Taliban insurgents.

What the military calls "shaping operations" have been going on for weeks. Residents have described gun-battles to a beat of planes and helicopters bringing in men and supplies ahead of what is expected to be a bloody battle.

Taliban too are massing, gathering around the town and firing a constant barrage of missiles on the encamped foreign troops.
"Some people left the area six months ago, because military operations have been going on and the Taliban are so violent," said Khan, adding: "There are still lots of people left who can't leave, who have nowhere to go."

Beneath pearl-grey skies in the midst of a rainy season, men wearing turbans told reporters on the highway they feared for their safety as Afghan, NATO and US troops massed ahead of an offensive expected within days.

Nad Ali resident Abdul Rehman, just arrived in Lashkar Gah, said: "These operations are nothing new for us. There has always been military operations going on in Nad Ali, we're used to it now.

"People are bit more concerned and worried about this operation as there are more Afghan and foreign soldiers around Nad Ali than usual," he said.

Now concerns are growing for those left behind, exposed to the Taliban's reported violent control tactics and fearing bloodshed from what has been billed as the biggest offensive since the 2001 US-led invasion.

"There are Taliban in Marjah and I have not noticed any decrease in their movements to show they are deserting the place," said Rehman. "We are worried," he added.

Marjah was planned and built partly by the US government in the 1950s as a model agricultural area irrigated by a network of canals.

Today, those canals criss-cross fields of opium poppies, which at this time of year are tall and green, not yet blooming red and not yet oozing the sap that will be processed into heroin and shipped across the world.

The region has been under direct control of the Taliban, who work in tandem with drug traffickers to force local people to grow poppies, since US Marines flushed them out of other parts of Helmand more than two years ago.

What should be the bread basket of Afghanistan is instead one of the world's richest sources of opium and heroin, earning billions of illicit dollars each year that help fund the increasingly vicious insurgency.

For 38-year-old Mohammad Basir Khan, heading to safety with his family, his biggest fear was the crude bombs that the Taliban have made a staple of their arsenal in the fight against government troops.

"We worry about lots of roadside bombs," he said.
The area is expected to be laced with improvised explosive devices (IEDs), mostly planted by roadsides and detonated by remote-control, the biggest killer of foreign troops in Afghanistan but still managing to kill more civilians.


http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jpXV_TSijlBtf9dksH_3f-pDtt0w

[lequebecfume]

NATO warns Afghans to keep their 'heads down'

February 09, 2010 04:59 EST

KABUL (AP) -- NATO and Afghan officials are urging Taliban militants holding a southern town to lay down their arms and are warning civilians there to keep their heads down.

U.S. and Afghan troops are preparing their first major offensive of the U.S. troop surge.

NATO's civilian chief in Afghanistan says authorities are prepared to deal with an influx of refugees who may flee the fighting in Marjah, the biggest town in the south under Taliban control.

British Ambassador Mark Sedwill says civilian officials are prepared to follow up the military attack on the opium producing center with programs to improve public services and to restore Afghan government control.

International officials believe the insurgency has been able to capitalize on widespread public anger over President Hamid Karzai's corruption-ridden government and its failure to provide services.


http://www.wgme.com/template/inews_wire/wires.international/3bd98eb2-www.wgme.com.shtml

[lequebecfume]

Efforts to curb Afghan opium crop fail this year - U.N.

Wed Feb 10, 2010 11:16am

http://picturesofpoppies.com/images/pictures_of_poppies_.jpg


KABUL (Reuters) - Efforts to persuade Afghanistan's farmers to stop growing illegal opium have failed in the past year, the United Nations said on Wednesday, predicting as much land will be under poppy cultivation this year as in 2009.

A U.N. report found that a trend of curbing cultivation -- which had seen land planted with poppies cut by more than a third from 2007-09 -- had come to a sudden end.

Afghanistan produces more than 90 percent of the world's illegal opium, the raw ingredient used to make heroin, an industry which Western countries say funds the insurgency against NATO troops and the Afghan government.

Over the past several years, the country has consistently managed to produce thousands of tonnes more than the entire global demand for the illegal drug, despite an international effort to stamp it out. Declines in cultivation in recent years had been hailed as progress.

But the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) predicted in a preliminary report that it expects little or no change this year from the roughly 123,000 ha (304,000 acres) where opium was grown in 2009.

Most of the annual opium crop is planted before the winter and lies dormant underground this time of year, to be harvested in April or May. The report is based on surveys of farmers conducted late last year at the time of planting the 2010 crop.

CLEAR MESSAGE

"The message is clear: in order to further reduce the biggest source of the world's deadliest drug, there must be better security, development and governance in Afghanistan," said the head of UNODC, Antonio Maria Costa.

"The Afghan authorities must lead and own their drug control strategy: the rest of the world has a vested interest in its success," he said in a statement.

The report said the total amount of opium produced in Afghanistan may still fall because weather conditions are not as good as last year, when a bumper crop meant production overshot global demand despite a decline in cultivation from 2008.

Most of Afghanistan's opium is grown in Helmand province, the most violent part of the country.

Some 10,000 U.S. Marines arrived in Helmand last year and seized most of the lower Helmand river valley before the planting season. Their commanders had hoped that their presence would reduce cultivation by providing more security so farmers could have access to food seed and get other crops to market.

Thousands more Marines have arrived in the province since President Barack Obama ordered 30,000 more troops to the country in December, and are planning a massive assault on the last remaining large Taliban bastion in the province within days.

The report said restoring security to violent areas was the best way to combat drugs cultivation.

"There is a strong correlation between insurgency and cultivation. The UNODC assessment shows that almost 80 percent of villages with very poor security conditions grew poppy, while opium grows in only 7 percent of villages unaffected by violence," the agency said in its statement.

Previous bumper harvests in Afghanistan have led to a huge global opium glut that has caused prices to fall, persuading some growers to shift to other crops in recent years.

But prices for food crops fell even faster than opium prices last year, meaning the economic case for abandoning opium was no longer as strong, the report found.



http://in.reuters.com/article/southAsiaNews/idINIndia-46047720100210?sp=true

[lequebecfume]

Bloomberg

Afghan 2010 Opium Crop Forecast to Fall on Bad Weather, UN Says

February 10, 2010, 04:26 AM EST

By Jonathan Tirone

Feb. 10 (Bloomberg) -- Afghan opium farmers, whose crops help produce more than 90 percent of the world’s heroin, may face falling harvests this year because of poor weather, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime said.

“There is a good chance that Afghanistan will produce less opium this year,” UN Executive Director Antonio Maria Costa said in an e-mail from Vienna. “Bad weather during the current growing season may reduce the productivity of the crop.”

Afghanistan is the highest-yielding opium producer in the world, growing 56 kilograms (123 pounds) of the narcotic per hectare (2.47 acres) and 6,900 tons of the drug last year. The UN expects 123,000 hectares of opium cultivation in 2010, about the same as last year. The Office on Drugs and Crime collects its data by surveying Afghan farmers.

In Afghanistan’s southwestern Helmund province, where insurgents and drug traffickers are battling North Atlantic Treaty Organization troops, farmers have reduced planting because of lower prices. More than 10,000 tons of excess opium are hidden in stockpiles around the country, the UN has said.

The UN office warned that Afghanistan’s opium price trends are beginning to reverse, with wheat prices falling faster than illicit drug prices. Afghanistan’s 1.6 million opium farmers earn in excess of three times more money per hectare for poppies than for wheat, according to the UN.


http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-02-10/afghan-2010-opium-crop-forecast-to-fall-on-bad-weather-un-says.html

[lequebecfume]

Opium and Price Elasticity

by JOSHUA FOUST on 2/10/2010 ·

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNbExvU42q4&feature=player_embedded

Perhaps because of the appalling rhetoric of counternarcotics in this country it can be difficult to bring the discussion of drugs into a more empirical discussion. In Afghanistan in particular, we have the pervasive meme that opium=Taliban, with entire books (http://www.registan.net/index.php/2009/07/09/seeds-of-terror-how-heroin-is-bankrolling-the-taliban-and-al-qaeda-by-gretchen-peters/) written about the topic, despite copious data (http://www.registan.net/index.php/2009/09/29/maybe-reading-a-bit-too-much/) to the contrary. So even though opium provides at best 25-30% of the Taliban’s overall income (which is another way of saying they tax all agriculture but opium generates the most money), our leaders still labor under the belief that destroying opium will destroy the Taliban.

When we factor in the outsized role opium plays in driving the rural economy (http://blogs.reuters.com/pakistan/2009/07/21/the-virtues-of-doing-nothing-why-focusing-on-afghanistans-opium-makes-the-opium-problem-worse/), the discussion of opium only in terms of how it relates to the insurgency makes even less sense. That is because, despite some intimidation in some areas, most farmers grow opium as a last resort (http://www.cic.nyu.edu/peacebuilding/oldpdfs/Farmers.pdf) (pdf). It is literally the only way they can make money, establish credit, and sell their products. As a result, aggressive, rapid counternarcotics policies actually have devastating effects (http://www.brookings.edu/papers/2009/09_afghanistan_felbabbrown.aspx)on local communities.


For decades, Nangarhar has been one of the dominant sources of opium poppy. But over the past two years, as a result of governor Gul Agha Shirzai’s suppression efforts—including bans on cultivation, forced eradication, imprisonment of violators and claims that NATO would bomb the houses of those who cultivate poppy or keep opium—cultivation declined to very low numbers. This has been hailed as a major success to be emulated throughout Afghanistan.

In fact, the economic and security consequences were highly undesirable. The ban greatly impoverished many, causing household incomes to fall 90% for many and driving many into debt. As legal economic alternatives failed to materialize, many coped by resorting to crime, such as kidnapping and robberies. Others sought employment in the poppy fields of Helmand, yet others migrated to Pakistan where they frequently ended up recruited by the Taliban. The population became deeply alienated from the government, resorting to strikes and attacks on government forces. Districts that were economically hit especially severely, such as Khogiani, Achin and Shinwar, have become no-go zones for the Afghan government and NGOs. Although those tribal areas have historically been opposed to the Taliban, the Taliban mobilization there has taken off to an unprecedented degree. The populations began allowing the Taliban to cross over from Pakistan, and U.S. military personnel operating in that region indicate that intelligence provision to Afghan forces and NATO has almost dried up. Tribal elders who supported the ban became discredited, and the collapse of their legitimacy is providing an opportunity for the Taliban to insert itself into the decision-making structures of those areas. And all such previous bans in the province, including in 2005, turned out to be unsustainable in the absence of legal economic alternatives. Thus, after the 2005 ban, for example, poppy cultivation inevitably swung back.

In this context, it makes sense that when farmers over-produce opium and other food crop prices spike, they switch from growing opium to growing other things, like wheat. From the available surveys out there, few farmers actually prefer or enjoy growing opium, they just don’t have viable alternatives (and USAID, in particular, has been criminally negligent in not providing these alternatives in any sustainable way). And the data have backed this up: the last two years have seen significant reductions in overall opium production in Afghanistan, as a crashing opium price and a spiking wheat price have combined to make it a less attractive crop to grow. (It should also be noted that when a community switched to growing food instead of poppy, the Taliban still taxed its exports, because there is nothing unique to opium that makes the Taliban single it out for revenue save its ubiquity in places like Helmand.)

In other words, opium behaves like any other agricultural commodity: responsive to demand and supply, with a fairly normal price elasticity and a fairly normal elasticity of demand. Yet, neither the UNODC nor most Western governments seem willing to discuss this in any great detail. Well, maybe now? (http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iXN-WWcQApVCBjxmeOjM8el1MoQwD9DP6JI81)


After a major drop over the past two years, Afghanistan’s opium cultivation is unlikely to rise or fall dramatically in 2010, a U.N. report said Wednesday…

The report, which surveyed 536 Afghan villages, found that 35 percent said they had planted opium poppy for the 2010 cultivation season and that higher sales prices compared to other crops was the predominant reason for doing so.

While the price of dry opium has fallen 6 percent compared to a year ago, the price of wheat has decreased by 43 percent, the report showed. The price of maize dropped by 38 percent over the past year. In contrast, the cost of fresh opium dipped 13 percent.

Why, that almost sounds like opium follows typical and universal price behaviors. It’s almost like we could maybe think about that before blindly flailing about trying to kill all the poppies. Oh well.


http://www.registan.net/index.php/2010/02/10/opium-and-price-elasticity/comment-page-1/




LEQ
A lucid and well thought out Blog post...

[lequebecfume]

Bloomberg

U.S., U.K., Afghan Forces Drive to Oust Taliban From Stronghold

February 13, 2010, 06:29 PM EST

By Susan Decker and Eltaf Najafizada

Feb. 14 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. Marines joined by British and Afghan soldiers entered a Taliban stronghold in southern Afghanistan, and are working to clear the area of insurgents and explosive devices to set up a new government in the area.
Two service members from the International Security Assistance Force, one from the U.S. and one from the U.K., were killed, said U.S. Air Force Master Sergeant Sabrina D. Foster. No civilian injuries were reported, said Lieutenant Commander Iain Baxter of the Royal Navy.

In a mission dubbed Operation Moshtarak, which means “together” in the local Dari language, about 15,000 troops entered Helmand province, seeking to root out the Taliban and set up a functioning government. Much of the focus was on the plain of Marjah in Helmand province, where large-scale opium production has helped fund the Taliban.

“We’re trying to secure much of the area so it’s safe, for our forces and for the local population,” Baxter said in a telephone interview. “We’ve got to get in and expand the government presence in the area as quickly as we can.”

As the area is determined to be safe, a pre-formed civilian government is ready to step in, he said. Baxter said it appeared some of the Taliban fled the area before the forces entered, while others may be hiding amidst the local population.

Troops faced intense, sporadic fighting as they began door- to-door searches, the New York Times reported.

Major Combat Test

The offensive is the first major combat test for some of the 50,000 reinforcements President Barack Obama has authorized for Afghanistan since taking office. Their aim is to reverse Taliban territorial gains, protect civilians and train Afghan forces to start taking over parts of the country in July 2011.
Coalition forces led by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization have talked openly for weeks about the offensive in an effort to persuade Taliban militants to give up and warn the population so residents can flee. Marjah, an area centered about 28 kilometers (18 miles) southwest of the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah, is one of the biggest opium-production areas.
Daud Ahmadi, a spokesman for the province’s governor, said more than 450 families from Marjah have fled to Lashkar Gah, where authorities are providing food, blankets and other supplies. Baxter said many civilians also stayed in their homes to avoid any fighting.

Allied Goal

The offensive is the allied forces’ effort to consolidate their biggest previous attempt, in July 2009, to establish government control in Helmand, where opium and smuggling trails to adjacent Pakistan have provided the guerrillas with revenue and supply routes. The capture of Marjah would connect areas seized by U.S. and British forces last year, according to U.S. Army General Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan.

The Marines are driving into farmland cut by irrigation canals, built by a U.S. aid program in the 1950s, that are too deep to drive through.

Authorities in Lashkar Gah cited fleeing Marjah residents as saying Taliban have laced the dirt roads and the mud walls of farm fields and residential compounds with remote-controlled bombs. The Taliban have “probably no better ground in Helmand on which to fight a defensive battle,” said a Feb. 4 report by Stratfor, an Austin, Texas-based strategic analysis company.

Three Deaths

Three U.S. troops were killed by an improvised bomb in the area, NATO said yesterday.

A key part of the current phase in operations is to clear the area of bombs, Baxter said.

“It is a concern -- the Taliban has placed a lot of them everywhere,” he said. “We need to try to find them and deal with them so people don’t get hurt.”

A key challenge for Helmand may be for international donors to restart the farming economy to build support for the government and marginalize the Taliban, according to Richard B. Scott, a retired U.S. development specialist who has worked in the province since the 1970s.

The U.S. presence in Helmand has improved security and the economy since July, said Abdul Ahad Helmandwal, a tribal elder near Marjah, in a phone interview. Still, the accompanying aid effort -- which provided millions of dollars worth of seed and fertilizer to encourage farmers to grow wheat instead of opium -- has been undercut by a corruption scandal in which several top provincial officials have been arrested.

A Taliban commander in Afghanistan, Akhtar Mohammad, said such operations had been attempted before and failed.

Taliban Claim

“The Taliban have never been defeated,” Mohammad said.
Helmand’s governor, Mohammad Gulab Mangal, said he is confident the operation will succeed.

“The enemy did not resist heavily, but when they did resist they were defeated,” he said in an interview with Sky News.

“Development, good governance and stability is the most important thing for us to have. This is the main reason why we went to this area.”

The offensive had been ready for days and it was only after Afghan President Hamid Karzai consulted with local leaders and his cabinet that he gave the go-ahead to the operation, said British Major General Nick Carter, in an interview with BBC News. Karzai agreed only after being told the local residents wanted the help, he said.

“In Afghanistan, it’s not the clear phase that’s the decisive piece of this, it’s the hold phase,” Carter said. “Ultimately the population will remove the insurgents from amongst themselves. The public mood and the feedback we’ve had has been positive. If you get the population on your side, the insurgency will collapse.”

Operation Moshtarak will be the largest joint operation to date between Afghan and coalition forces, according to a Feb. 11 report by Jeffrey Dressler, an analyst at the Institute for the Study of War in Washington.

Marjah, whose population is probably less than 50,000, became “a major command and control” hub for the Taliban and narcotics traders “after U.S. Marines drove insurgents out of their previous sanctuary” to the south in Garmser in May 2008, Dressler wrote.

A three-day operation last May against one of two main bazaars that host the insurgency netted the largest drug cache in Afghanistan to date and resulted in the deaths of 47 militants, according to Dressler, who recently briefed a Marine Battalion at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, prior to deployment.


--With assistance from Jon Menon in London, Viola Gienger and Tony Capaccio in Washington, Brian Lysaght in London and James Rupert in New Delhi. Editors: Ann Hughey, Mark Rohner


http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-02-13/nato-forces-assault-taliban-stronghold-with-15-000-troop-force.html

[lequebecfume]

Narco cop flays US on Afghan drug trade issue

Last Updated : 2010-02-27 11:05 AM
Agence France Presse

MOSCOW: Moscow’s top anti-drug cop slammed Washington today over US policies on opium production in Afghanistan, news agencies reported, amid concern over a deadly wave of heroin use in Russia.

“US statements on its refusal to eradicate opium plantations ... sound like a solid guarantee of impunity for drug producers,” Viktor Ivanov, head of Russia’s Federal Narcotics Control Service, was quoted as saying.

After taking office last

year, US President Barack Obama made a major

policy shift by ending a military drive to destroy poppies, believing it alienated Afghanistan’s poorest who only grew the crop to make money. But the shift upset Moscow, which says some 30,000 Russians died in 2009 because of their consumption of Afghan heroin.

Ivanov also blasted

NATO for targeting poppy growers linked to the Taliban insurgency, deriding their production as a tiny fraction of the total opium produced in Afghanistan.

“NATO commanders have focussed their efforts solely on battling these producers, who are in the minority, while generously leaving the task of fighting the other 99 per cent to Afghan regional authorities,” he said.

War-ravaged Afghanistan is the world’s largest producer of heroin. In 2009 the potential gross export value of opium from the country was $2.8 billion, according to the UN drugs agency.

Much of that heroin is smuggled through Central Asia into Russia and on to Europe, contributing to Russia’s drug epidemic. Some 90 per cent of heroin consumed in Russia had Afghan origins, Ivanov said.

Ivanov also claimed that Russia’s arch-foe Georgia was a key smuggling route for Afghan heroin, calling the Georgian ports of Batumi and Poti and the city of Kobuleti major drug-trafficking centres.



http://www.thehimalayantimes.com/fullNews.php?headline=Narco+cop+flays+US+on+Afghan +drug++trade+issue&NewsID=230187




LEQ
labaroscopic surgery to remove the bleeder part of the intestines this tuesday

[lequebecfume]

Afghan farmers reap cannabis harvest worth £61m

Tuesday, 13 April 2010


Afghanistan, already the world's top opium supplier, is now the world's biggest producer of cannabis, according to United Nations drug experts.

There is large-scale cultivation of the drug in half of the country, resulting in 3,500 tons of hashish worth an estimated £61m annually, according to the first assessment of cannabis in Afghanistan by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime. It warns that the threat from the drug needs to be dealt with to deny the Taliban the millions they make in protection taxes paid by farmers and drug smugglers.

The focus on opium has resulted in cannabis being overlooked, according to Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of UNODC. "A concentration of cultivation in the southern part of Afghanistan shows that the Taliban and those insurgents that control the southern parts of the country are not only funding themselves by trafficking opium but also by trafficking cannabis. It's the same area."

Sporadic government crackdowns have merely resulted in a shift in production to the south of the country, with most cannabis now grown in regions where the insurgency is at its strongest. There are close links with the heroin trade, with more than 67 per cent of cannabis farmers also growing opium, according to the report, which is based on a survey of more than 1,600 villages across the country. UN experts estimate that 60,000 households are now growing cannabis.

Although cheaper than opium, cannabis can potentially earn a farmer more because it yields twice the quantity of drug per hectare and is cheaper and less labour-intensive to cultivate. Farmers can earn £2,173 per hectare – more than the £1,304 they get from opium. But since cannabis has a short shelf life and is grown only in the summer, when there is less water available, they continue to cultivate opium as their main drug crop.

A British-backed paramilitary unit is hunting down Afghan drug lords as part of a new strategy against the drug trade. Four helicopters have already been provided by Britain for airborne assault missions by the Afghan Special Narcotics Force, with another two being made available to an Air Interdiction Unit this year. Targets are being drawn up by an Interagency Operations Co-ordination Centre in Kabul, led by officers from Britain's Serious Organised Crime Agency and the US Drug Enforcement Administration. But efforts are hampered by high levels of corruption and drug use among police, with 68 per cent testing positive for cannabis.

Slamming the Afghan government as "pretty rotten", Mr Costa added: "Corruption has been a major lubricant of the very prosperous drug industry... it's throughout the system."



http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/world-news/afghan-farmers-reap-cannabis-harvest-worth-pound61m-14765178.html



LEQ
dry and in extreme pain

[lequebecfume]

Marines try unorthodox tactics to disrupt Afghan opium harvest


By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Tuesday, April 13, 2010

CAMP LEATHERNECK, AFGHANISTAN -- U.S. Marines are mounting an intensive effort to disrupt the opium harvest in the former Taliban enclave of Marja by confiscating tools from migrant workers, compensating poppy farmers who plow under their fields and collaborating with Drug Enforcement Administration personnel to raid collection sites.

The steps amount to one of the most novel U.S. attempts to crack down on a key part of Afghanistan's drug trade while seeking to minimize the impact on individual farmers, many of them poor sharecroppers who face economic peril if they cannot harvest or sell their crops.

The plan to pay farmers, who will receive $120 for each acre of tilled fields, prompted a tense debate among Marine officials and civilian reconstruction personnel, some of whom argued that it provides preferential treatment to those in Marja who planted an illegal crop.



But the Marines' program eventually won the approval of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. In a March 30 cable to the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, she called the effort "the best decision in the face of an array of less-than-perfect options."

The Obama administration ended a program to eradicate poppy fields, saying it would drive farmers into the hands of the insurgency. Instead, the military and DEA operations here have been directed toward catching traffickers and drug kingpins and toward interdicting shipments of opium and processed heroin.

"When we went into Marja, we didn't declare war on the poppy farmer," said Brig. Gen. Lawrence D. Nicholson, commander of the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade.

But the Marines were left with a dilemma: The poppy crop they think is providing significant income to the Taliban again began to increase after a significant drop last year.

Marja, a 155-square-mile area in Helmand province, remains home to the country's largest concentration of poppy fields. Leaving them alone did not make sense to the Marines.

Even if the Marines had done nothing, the farmers would probably have faced serious difficulties. In the past, an estimated 60,000 migrant workers descended upon Marja to help with the harvest, but many might not come this year because more than 3,000 U.S. and Afghan forces are in the area. Also, the opium bazaars, where farmers sell their crops, have been shuttered.

The Marines have said they will block main roads and turn back migrant workers arriving for the harvest, due to begin within a matter of weeks.

To avoid discriminating against those who did not plant poppies, the new program is open to all farmers in Marja. But poppy farmers do not have to prove they did not harvest their opium, only that their fields have been plowed under. Marine officials believe cash-strapped poppy farmers will be the program's principal beneficiaries.

Those are people the Marines need to win over if Marja is to become stable. "If we hadn't done anything, we'd be fighting farmers at a time when we need to establish governance," said John Kael Weston, the State Department political adviser to the Marine brigade.

Weston, who helped to develop the program, said the payments are designed to provide farmers some of what they would have made from selling their crops had the Marines not entered the area. The funds are also intended to help farmers transition to planting other crops.

"We've disrupted the economic cycle of Marja," he said. "If the farmers don't have money, it will affect the shopkeepers and everyone else."

Some officials at the Helmand provincial reconstruction team, which is run by Britain and the United States, argued that the Taliban would levy taxes on farmers who accept the payments. They also said the payments would create "a disequilibrium" with other parts of the province.

Marine officials insisted the payments are a one-time program because of the unique circumstances associated with the military operation. "If you don't do something special, we would have lost a very small window of opportunity," said Col. Michael Killion, the brigade's operations officer.



The Marines expect to spend about $12 million on the initiative, which will be paid for with funds from the Defense Department's Commander's Emergency Response Program.

As of Sunday, 730 farmers had signed up, Marine official said. Payments will be made only after U.S. or Afghan security forces verify that the land has been plowed.

Afghan soldiers and police, backed up by Marines, have begun setting up checkpoints on access roads to Marja to dissuade migrant harvesters from entering the area. The security forces intend to confiscate any harvesting tools, Marine officials said.

The DEA, which has steadily increased its presence in Afghanistan over the past year, intends to work with Afghan counternarcotics forces to identify and target buyers and traffickers seeking to smuggle opium out of Marja. That effort, which will involve extensive aerial surveillance, will be the agency's largest-ever operation in the country.



http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/12/AR2010041204176_2.html?hpid=topnews


LEQ
dry and up in extreme pain

at the risk of repeating myself...these morons don't have a clue!!!

There is a glut of medical grade opium of the market, pay Afghan farmers a fair price and have them supply the medical market.

[lequebecfume]

Marines pay Afghan farmers to destroy opium

Mark Chisholm

MARJAH, Afghanistan
Thu Apr 15, 2010 5:10am EDT



(Reuters) - With heavy fighting in the former Taliban stronghold of Marjah now largely reduced to sporadic gunfights, U.S. Marines in the area have turned their focus toward eliminating the insurgents' cash source: opium.

WORLD

But instead of eradicating the illicit poppy fields themselves, the Marines have begun piloting a new method over the past week -- paying farmers cash to destroy their own crops.

In February, thousands of U.S. Marines pushed into Marjah, an insurgent enclave in southern Helmand province. Weeks of intense fighting ensued as militants wrestled to hold on to a vital area where for years they had virtual free reign.

What makes Marjah so important is its strategic location. Lying just west of the provincial capital and surrounded by lush farmland crisscrossed by canals that water the opium poppy crop, it has become a hub for the narcotics trade in central Helmand.

Last year, Afghanistan produced 90 percent of the world's opium, the raw ingredient of heroin, with some 60 percent grown in Helmand alone. The Taliban are said to siphon off hundreds of thousands of dollars each year from the trade of the drug.

Now, with harvest time only a few weeks away and up to 60,000 migrant workers expected to flow into Helmand to work the poppy fields, the Marines have launched a new scheme in Marjah where farmers are paid to plough their own fields under.

"We've come up with this program, it's a completely voluntary program, that's the most important aspect. I'm not going to touch their poppy," said Major Jim Coffman, a Marine civil affairs officer who oversees the new project.

"If they choose to destroy or to clear ... their fields, we will give them $300 (per hectare)," he said.

Under the scheme, started just over a week ago, farmers enroll at one of the Marine outposts and are given a week to plough their fields. Once the empty fields are checked, farmers are paid and given fertilizer and seeds for alternative crops.

"So far it's been a pretty good reaction, a tempered reaction," said Coffman.

"We've seen about eight to ten guys here today. We're over 1,000 jeribs total just for our site here," he said, referring to the traditional unit of land measurement in Afghanistan equal to one fifth of a hectare.

PAYING FOR LAND, NOT DRUGS

The scheme marks a wider shift in policy by U.S. President Barack Obama's administration, away from forced poppy eradication which officials said only ended up hurting impoverished farmers. Eradication has largely been seen as a failure by the West.

According to the United Nations, less than 4 percent of poppy planted in Afghanistan over the last two years was eradicated, and at a great human and economic cost. Military commanders say it also drives farmers to join the insurgency.

The scheme in Marjah has caused some controversy though, with critics saying it amounts to buying drugs off the farmers with U.S. taxpayers' money. Coffman disagreed.

"The American government is not in the habit or process of paying anybody for drugs, so that's not what we're here for. It is an agricultural transition program," Coffman said.

"I'm really essentially paying money for the land not for the crop. So if they have wheat or cotton or poppy or anything else on their land, if they choose to destroy it, then they'll get the money ... they'll get the fertilizer and the seed," he said.

Coffman stressed the scheme was a one-off and that next year farmers would "not be allowed" to grow poppy, but did not say what would happen if farmers did revert to the illicit crop.

The Marines acknowledge the money they are paying the farmers per hectare is considerably less than they would get for selling the drug, but with troops allowed to seize the poppy once it is harvested, some farmers are cutting their losses.

"This is a very good program. I am sure this will succeed," said one farmer, Gulabuddin Khan.

Other farmers who trickled in to enroll for the scheme at Combat Outpost Hanson over the weekend, shied away from journalists, a sign of the Taliban's still influential presence in the area. A baker in a nearby village was recently beheaded by insurgents for selling bread to Afghan soldiers.

But despite the modest turnout since launching the scheme, Coffman remains optimistic.

"This whole society is based on word of mouth and I guarantee you, once the first group, once they clear the land, they get their money, they get their fertilizers and seed, this place will be inundated with folks," he said.

(Writing by Jonathon Burch; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE63E1BL20100415




LEQ
AFGHAN FARMERS DESERVE A FAIR PRICE FOR GROWING OPIUM: THERE IS A GLUT ON THE INTERNATIONAL MEDICAL MARKET TO TREAT CHRONIC PAIN PATIENTS

[lequebecfume]

Exclusive: Skyrocketing Heroin, Opium Use Ensnaring Afghan Children

State Department Finds Kids' Exposure to Drugs Could Create 'Whole Generation' of Addicts in Afghanistan
By MATTHEW MOSK and BRIAN ROSS
Apr. 20, 2010 —

Staggering levels of opium and heroin have been detected in Afghan children as young as 14 months by a team of researchers hired by the US State Department, revealing a fast-emerging problem that could cripple American efforts to bring stability to the war-torn country.

http://a.abcnews.com/images/Blotter/ht_afghanistan3_100420_mn.jpg
An Afghan adult smokes opium while a child who is being tested for opiate exposure sits nearby. Researchers have found children, even infants, becoming addicted to opiates through second-hand exposure.
(Spectre Group International)

"I think we've opened a can of worms," said Bruce Goldberger, one of the University of Florida scientists heading up the study, who spoke exclusively with Brian Ross for a report airing on World News with Diane Sawyer and Nightline tonight. "This was just totally unexpected. No one has ever seen this type of exposure in young children. It's never been documented. And it's laying a foundation for drug abuse for a whole generation."

This first-ever look at household exposure to opium and heroin is not yet complete, but State Department officials and contractors shared preliminary findings exclusively with ABC News in hopes of drawing attention to a problem they say has been largely overlooked. The researchers said what they uncovered is both shocking and tragic.

Their field testing of homes of known drug users found that small children, even infants, have been passively exposed to heroin and opiates by the adult users in their homes. Some have inhaled dangerous quantities of second-hand smoke. Others have ingested traces of the drugs settling all around them -- coating their pillows and blankets and leaving a film atop carpets and furniture.

The chronic exposure is leading to levels of addiction rarely seen in children so young, the researchers told ABC News. If the problem is left unaddressed, they said, the consequences could be dire.

"This is a doomed generation of children," Goldberger said. "These children are classic opium or heroin addicts. They crave the drug. If the drug is withdrawn, they go through withdrawal."

Goldberger said he believes similar levels of narcotics in the bloodstream of pregnant women may help explain why Afghanistan has one of the highest rates of infant mortality in the world.

How many children are affected is not known. U.S. officials said 2005 estimates that there are 900,000 drug users among Afghanistan's 30 million people are outdated  and that the numbers of heroin and opium users in particular have grown dramatically. So far, the samples collected by teams of American scientists have only been focused on answering the question of how adult drug use impacts children in the home. A former top U.S. Drug Enforcement official who helped the scientists gather hair, blood, and urine samples from homes around the country told ABC News that his teams found high levels of addiction flowing from one generation to the next.

A fact sheet prepared by the State Department has some of the raw numbers: In 31 of 42 homes where adult addicts lived, children tested showed signs of significant drug exposure.

Both American and Afghan counter narcotics officials said this is a new problem for the country. Afghanistan has for many years been a primary source of opium for the rest of the world. But only in recent years, as refugees from war fled to Pakistan and Iran, did a significant number of Afghans start using the drugs themselves. When they returned home, they brought both drug use and its noxious byproducts back with them, said Doug Wankel, who spent decades as the DEA's top man in Afghanistan and is now based in Kabul for the U.S. consulting firm, Spectre Group International.

Compounding the problem, Wankel said, is that the drug traffic originating in Afghanistan has changed, with more opium being converted into heroin before it leaves the country's borders.

Now, he said, "you've got enough heroin available to more than meet the demand of the international market& You actually have supply creating demand in a place like Afghanistan."


Dr. Mohammed Zafar, an Afghan counter narcotics official, confirmed that his country "did not have such a problem as we have it presently." And he said his government has few resources to fix it. "We have a very limited drug specialization centers, which is not enough for the drug population of Afghanistan which is more than one million," he said.

U.S. State Department officials have begun to establish drug treatment facilities in the most hard hit parts of the country. The Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs has established three programs in Afghanistan for addicted women and children, and expect three more to open their doors within the next month.

An international team that includes World Health Organization officials and experts from Johns Hopkins University and the Medical University of Vienna have designed the first-ever treatment regimes for young children.

But U.S. officials say there remain an array of challenges in treating a population that has be resistant to the physical and psychological rigors involved in kicking such highly addictive drugs.

Wankel said he believes the growing rate of addiction will increasingly prove to be a challenge for American troops who are attempting to stand up a police force and dissuade Afghans from becoming radicalized.

"It plays well into the hands of those who want to continue insurgency, certainly corruption, criminality," he said. "It's a serious, serious problem."


http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/exclusive-skyrocketing-heroin-opium-ensnaring-afghan-children/story?id=10423575


LEQ

What utter BS the War on Drugs is Far Greater a Danger to Afghan children !

[lequebecfume]

The Afghan War: "No Blood for Opium"

The Hidden Military Agenda is the Protect the Drug Trade

http://www.globalresearch.ca/coverStoryPictures/18768.jpg
by Dr. John Jiggens


Global Research, April 21, 2010


It was common during the opening of the Iraq war to see slogans proclaiming “No blood for oil!” The cover story for the war – Saddam’s links with Al Qaida and his weapons of mass destruction – were obvious mass deceptions, hiding a far less palatable imperial agenda. The truth was that Iraq was a major producer of oil and, in our age, the Age of Oil, oil is the most strategic resource of all. For many it was obvious that the real agenda of the war was an imperialistic grab for Iraqi oil. This was confirmed when Iraq’s state-owned oil company was privatised to western interests in the aftermath of the invasion.

Why then are there no slogans saying “No blood for opium!”? Afghanistan’s major product is opium and opium production has increased remarkably during the present war. The current NATO action around Marjah is clearly motivated by opium. It is reported to be Afghanistan’s main opium-producing area. Why then won’t people consider that the real agenda of the Afghan war has been control of the opium trade?

The weapons of mass deception tell us that the opium belongs to the Taliban and that the US is fighting a war on drugs as well as terror. Yet it remains a curious fact that the opium trade has tracked across Southern Asia for the past five decades from east to west, following US wars, and always under the control of US assets.

In the 1960s, when the US fought a secret war in Laos using the Hmong opium army of Vang Pao as its proxy, Southeast Asia produced 70% of the world’s illicit opium. After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Afghanistan production, controlled by US-backed drug lords, took off, till it rivalled Southeast Asian production. Since 2002, Afghan opium production, encouraged by both the Taliban and US-backed drug lords, has reached 93% of world illicit production, an unparalleled performance.

The graph below from the UN World Drug Report 2008 shows the astonishing increase in Afghan opium production that followed the US invasion.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/articlePictures/jiggens.JPG

In the 1980s the US supported Islamic fundamentalists, the Mujahideen, against the Soviets in Afghanistan. To pay for their war, the Mujahideen ordered peasants to grow opium as a revolutionary tax. Across the border in Pakistan, Afghan leaders and local syndicates, under the protection of Pakistani Intelligence, operated hundreds of heroin labs. As the Golden Crescent in Southwest Asia eclipsed the Golden Triangle in Southeast Asia as the centre of the heroin trade, it sent rates of addiction spiralling in Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan and the Soviet Union.

To hide US complicity in the drug trade, Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) officers were required to look away from the drug-dealing intrigues of the US allies and the support they received from Pakistan’s Inter Service Intelligence (ISI) and the services of Pakistani banks. The CIA’s mission was to destabilise the Soviet Union through the promotion of militant Islam inside the Central Asian Republics and they sacrificed the drug war to fight the Cold War. Their mission was to do as much damage as possible to the Soviets. Knowing the drug war would hasten the collapse of the Soviet Union, the CIA facilitated the operation of anti-Soviet rebels in the provinces of Uzbekistan, Chechnya and Georgia. Drugs were used to finance terrorism and western intelligence agencies used their control of drugs to influence political factions in Central Asia.

The Soviet army withdrew from Afghanistan in 1989, leaving a civil war between the US-funded mujahideen and the Soviet-supported government that raged until 1992. In the chaos that followed the mujahideen victory, Afghanistan lapsed into a period of warlordism in which opium growing thrived.

The Taliban emerged from the chaos, dedicated to removing the war lords and applying a strict interpretation of Sharia law. They captured Kandahar in 1994, and expanded their control throughout Afghanistan, capturing Kabul in 1996, and declaring the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan.

Under the policies of the Taliban government, opium production in Afghanistan was curbed. In September 1999, the Taliban authorities issued a decree, requiring all opium-growers in Afghanistan to reduce output by one-third. A second decree, issued in July 2000, required farmers to completely stop opium cultivation. Ordering the ban on opium growing, Taliban leader Mullah Omar called the drug trade “un-Islamic”.

As a result, 2001 was the worst year for global opium production in the period between 1990 and 2007. During the 1990s, global opium production averaged over 4000 tonnes. In 2001, opium production fell to less than 200 tonnes. Although it was not admitted by the Howard government, which claimed the credit itself, Australia’s 2001 heroin shortage was due to the Taliban.

Following the attack on the Pentagon and the World Trade Centre on 11 September 2001, the armies of the northern alliance, led by US Special Forces, supported by daisy cutters, cluster bombs and bunker-busting missiles, shattered the Taliban forces in Afghanistan. The opium ban was lifted and, with CIA-backed warlords back in control, Afghanistan again became the major producer of opium. Despite the official denials, Hillary Mann Leverett, a former US National Security Council official for Afghanistan, confirmed that the US knew that government ministers in Afghanistan, including the minister of defence in 2002, were involved in drug trafficking.

After 2002 Afghan opium production rose to unheard of levels. By 2007, Afghanistan was producing enough heroin to supply the entire world. In 2009, Thomas Schweich, who served as US state department co-ordinator for counter-narcotics and justice reform for Afghanistan, accused President Hamid Karzai of impeding the war on drugs. Schweich also accused the Pentagon of obstructing attempts to get military forces to assist and protect opium crop eradication drives.

Schweich wrote in the New York Times that "narco-corruption went to the top of the Afghan government". He said Karzai was reluctant to move against big drug lords in his political power base in the south, where most of the country's opium and heroin is produced.

The most prominent of these suspected drug lords was Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of President Hamid Karzai. Ahmed Wali Karzai was said to have orchestrated the manufacture of hundreds of thousands of phony ballots for his brother’s re-election effort in August 2009. He was also believed to have been responsible for setting up dozens of so-called ghost polling stations — existing only on paper — that were used to manufacture tens of thousands of phony ballots. US officials have criticised his “mafia-like” control of southern Afghanistan. The New York Times reported that the Obama administration had vowed to crack down on the drug lords who permeate the highest levels of President Karzai’s administration, and they pressed President Karzai to move his brother out of southern Afghanistan, but he refused to do so.

"Karzai was playing us like a fiddle," Schweich wrote. "The US would spend billions of dollars on infrastructure development; the US and its allies would fight the Taliban; Karzai's friends could get richer off the drug trade. Karzai had Taliban enemies who profited from drugs but he had even more supporters who did."

But who was playing who like a fiddle?

Was it the puppet President or the puppet masters who installed him?

As Douglas Valentine shows in his history of the War on Drugs, The Strength of the Pack, this never-ending war has been a phony contest, an arm wrestle between two arms of the US state, the DEA and the CIA; with the DEA vainly attempting to prosecute the war, while the CIA protects its drug-dealing assets.

During the Nineteenth and Twentieth centuries, European powers (chiefly the UK) and Japan used the opium trade to weaken and subjugate China. During the Twenty-First century, it seems that the opium weapon is being used against Iran, Russia and the former Soviet republics, which all face spiralling rate of addiction and covert US penetration as the Afghan War fuels central Asia’s heroin plague.


Dr John Jiggens is the author of “The killer cop and the murder of Donald Mackay”.


http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=18768

[lequebecfume]

Taliban fighters lay down their guns to harvest opium poppies

Senior soldier says number of attacks on British troops have fallen but he expects them to rise again in summer

Richard Norton-Taylor
guardian.co.uk, Friday 23 April 2010 18.54 BST

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/About/General/2010/4/23/1272045179861/Afghan-children-in-a-popp-001.jpg

Afghan children in a poppy field in Karez-e-Sayyidi, Helmand province.

Photograph: Asmaa Waguih/Reuters


The opium poppy harvest in southern Afghanistan means insurgents have temporarily laid down their weapons so there are fewer Taliban-led attacks on British troops, a senior army spokesman said today.

"The reduction in insurgent activity ... is a sign the poppy harvest is in full swing and therefore a great deal of young men are involved in harvesting," said Major General Gordon Messenger. He warned that attacks could be expected to rise once the harvest was over. Official figures show the number of British casualties is relatively low in the spring but increases significantly during the summer.

Messenger was speaking at a briefing in London on the latest situation in central Helmand province, where 9,500 British troops are engaged in counter-insurgency and reconstruction. He disclosed that Royal Marines were recently attacked there by a child suicide bomber.

The general conceded that revenue from the lucrative narcotics trade remained "as important as ever" to the Taliban-led insurgency. However, he said, disrupting it was not a matter for Nato troops, but for the Afghan authorities.

How to eradicate opium poppies in Afghanistan, which produce some 90% of the opium reaching Europe, has been a highly controversial and divisive issue ever since the collapse of the Taliban and the deployment of Nato troops in 2001. Initial Americans proposals to spray the crop were strongly opposed by Afghan leaders. Now Afghan governors in Helmand are eager to get rid of the poppies but Nato commanders are concerned about a backlash from the local population. A programme to distribute seeds for alternative crops is under way.

Messenger yesterday revealed that marines from 40 Commando patrolling in Sangin were approached on 14 April by a child suicide bomber aged between 12 and 14. The boy killed himself, and a marine and an interpreter suffered minor injuries. The threat from suicide bombers in Lashkar Gah, Helmand's provincial capital, was described by British military officials yesterday as "enduring".

In Marjah, the main target of Operation Moshtarak, the biggest Nato offensive so far, intimidation by Taliban supporters was still a key factor, Messenger said. But he added that the number of tip-offs to Nato and Afghan forces was increasing, schools were opening and main road routes were getting more secure.

Troops from the Royal Regiment of Scotland today hailed Ajab Han, a sergeant in the Afghan army, for discovering 177 roadside bombs in Helmand, a record for an individual soldier.

The praise came as Nato foreign ministers meeting in Tallin, the Estonian capital, agreed on conditions to start handing over security responsibility to Afghan forces later this year.

"The Afghan security forces will need our assistance for quite some time," Nato's secretary general, Anders Rasmussen, said, "so it will be a gradual process."



http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/apr/23/opium-afghanistan-harvest-taliban-nato

[lequebecfume]

Opium harvest a no-win situation for Canadian troops in Afghanistan


BY ETHAN BARON, CANWEST NEWS SERVICEAPRIL 25, 2010


http://www.vancouversun.com/news/2949703.bin
An Afghan villager scrapes opium from poppies at the start of the harvest in Khairo Kala, Afghanistan on April 23, 2010.
Photograph by: Ethan Baron , Canwest News Service

KHAIRO KALA, Afghanistan — Opium harvesting has just begun in the area where the Canadian Forces operate in Afghanistan, with boys and men collecting the drug that has become a primary revenue source for the Taliban.

“We know that in some of the areas, the profit does make its way into insurgent hands,” said Canadian Forces Maj. Wade Niven, whose area of command in eastern Panjwaii district contains two villages where poppies make up a third to a half of the cropland.

“The Canadian national policy prevents us from doing too much about it.”

The harvest begins about two weeks after the pink-and-white or crimson petals have fallen from the bulbous seed pods. Workers slit the swollen pods, and once the milky opium sap has bled out and congealed overnight into a sticky brown paste, they scrape it off with a tool resembling a short ladle with a sharp edge. Smears and blobs of the paste on the workers’ hands are diligently scraped into the tool’s reservoir. Pods are scored and scraped repeatedly over several days.

“It is the hard truth that as the Taliban becomes more well equipped and funded through the opiate industry . . . stabilization will become increasingly difficult and casualties will rise for NATO troops, Afghan civilians, police and military,” said a 2009 Atlantic Council of Canada report.

Afghanistan produces 90 per cent of the world’s opium, and the Taliban and other insurgent groups reap $90 million to $160 million a year from taxing poppy farmers and importers of chemicals used to refine the drug, and imposing fees on laboratory processors and transporters, the United Nations has reported.

Canada and the U.S. together account for six per cent of world consumption of heroin and opium from Afghanistan, the UN says. The RCMP in 2006 estimated Canadian addicts consume a combined one to two tonnes of heroin per year.

In western Panjwaii, legitimate crops dominate the farmland around the front line with the Taliban, but in an area of villages on the other side of a mountain, poppy makes up more than half the agricultural land, said Canadian Forces Maj. Wade Rutland.

“It’s a really damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t kind of subject,” Rutland said Sunday. “You eliminate the crop and possibly eliminate an insurgent source of funding, but you create grievances. This is a contest for the will of the populace. The insurgents won’t burn down their crops.”

Under Canadian policy, Canada’s troops don’t take part in poppy eradication.

Poppy farmers, Niven said, are usually paid by opium buyers before the seasonal planting so they can afford the supplies and labour to grow and harvest the crop. Eradicating poppies leaves farmers in debt with no income, Niven said. In western Panjwaii, the impoverished farmers say growing grapes or wheat brings in only 60 per cent of what opium nets, Rutland said.

When Canadian soldiers find opium caches, they turn them over to the Afghan army or police, or destroy them, Niven said.

Since 2007, Canada has allocated $55 million to support the Afghan National Drug Control Strategy, including $52 million for the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, which focuses on disruption of trafficking and seizures of opiates within Afghanistan, and $3 million for the Afghan government’s Counter Narcotics Trust Fund, which pays for poppy eradication and other anti-drug work. Canada has allocated another $47 million since 2005 to programs, such as wheat-seed distribution, intended to boost legitimate farming and reduce reliance on poppy growing.


http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Opium+harvest+situation+Canadian+troops+Afghanista n/2949692/story.html

[lequebecfume]

The UN's hopeless war against Afghan opium

By Howard Richman, Raymond Richman and Jesse Richman
web posted May 3, 2010

On September 11, 2001, al-Qaida, then sheltered by the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan, bombed the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. In response, during the winter of 2001-2002, we attacked Afghanistan, driving al-Qaida and their Taliban protectors out of the country. The Taliban had ceased to be an organized force. We had won!

http://www.enterstageright.com/archive/articles/0510/040310afghanopiumprod.gif

American troops had been welcomed as liberators in the Afghan countryside because the Taliban had banned the cultivation of the opium poppy in 2001, a disaster for the Afghan farmers whose chief crop was the poppy. The graph shows the 2001 drop-off in Afghan opium production.

As the supply went down, the price of opium poppies skyrocketed. According to the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC): http://www.unodc.org/pdf/afg/afg_opium_survey_2002.pdf

An abrupt decline of illicit opium poppy cultivation was recorded in Afghanistan in 2001, following the ban imposed by the Taliban regime in its last year in power. Despite the existence of significant stocks of opiates accumulated during previous years of bumper harvests, the beginning of a heroin shortage became apparent on some European markets by the end of 2001. Furthermore, the absence of the usual harvest in Afghanistan in spring 2001 and the subsequent depletion of stocks pushed opium prices upwards to unprecedented levels in the country (prices increased by a factor of 10), creating a powerful incentive for farmers to plant the 2002 crop. (p. 3)

There is an important economic lesson here. You can't stop an addictive drug by interdicting its supply. Addicts will demand the drug, no matter what the price. If you want to reduce consumption, you have to cut demand, not supply.

After the U.S. victory, the UN was anxious to prevent the resumption of opium planting. In February 2002, the UNODC (then called UNODCCP) conducted a quick survey which revealed the resumption of opium planting. That's when President Bush snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. With UN bureaucrats cheering (http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/03/16/90477/afghan-poppy-harvest-is-next-challenge.html) from the sidelines, he used American troops to conduct an unsuccessful eradication campaign which turned the countryside against both American troops and UN surveyors, as the UNODC noted:http://www.unodc.org/pdf/afg/afg_opium_survey_2002.pdf

In April 2002, at the onset of the opium harvest in eastern and southern Afghanistan, the Afghan Interim Administration (AIA) launched an eradication campaign (with compensations). Some farmers' reactions to this measure resulted in a temporary deterioration of the security situation for UNODCCP's surveyors who were withdrawn from the opium poppy growing area. (p. 13)

The UN inspectors left Afghanistan, because the countryside had become unsafe. From then on, they conducted their opium surveys by satellite. But the American opium eradication campaign continued, putting American troops and the American mission in danger.

Meanwhile, the Taliban decided to defend opium production while taxing it. As a result, they soon became the government of the Afghan countryside. By the end of November 2008, UNODC (http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=29099&Cr=Afghan&Cr1=UNODC) reported that the Taliban war machine was being almost completely financed by the Afghan opium trade:

The opium industry is largely funding the Taliban's war budget and is a major source of revenue for criminal groups and terrorists in Afghanistan…

"With so much drug-related revenue, it is not surprising that the insurgent's war machine has proven so resilient, despite the heavy pounding by Afghan and allied forces," said UNODC Executive Director Antonio Maria Costa.

The Bush administration eventually gave up on the hopeless strategy of eradicating opium in the fields, substituting, instead, the hopeless strategy of interdicting opium at the borders, a strategy being continued by the Obama Administration.

But Afghan President Karzai is not sufficiently enthusiastic about this war against the Afghan farmer. Here's a selection from an April 7 commentary (http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0410/blankley040710.php3) by Tony Blankley detailing Obama's escalating attacks against Karzai:

About five months ago, the New York Times also reported that Mr. Obama "admonished President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan that he must take on what American officials have said he avoided during his first term: the rampant corruption and drug trade that have fueled the resurgence of the Taliban."...

By first hesitating to support Mr. Karzai, then saying we will support him — but only for 18 months, then publicly admonishing him to end the endemic corruption, then leaking the fact that his own brother is a major drug smuggler, we have undermined and infuriated him, without whom we cannot succeed in Afghanistan....

The Obama administration threatens to depose Karzai within 18 months. If they do so, they will be repeating President Kennedy's mistake when he deposed South Vietnam's President Ngo Dinh Diem in order to install a more compliant puppet, thus destroying the credibility of the local government with whom we were allied.

The UN bureaucracy's war against opium has already turned the Afghan farmer against us, reinstalled the Taliban in the countryside, and given the Taliban a steady source of funding. Now it is ruining our relationship with the Afghan government.

We need to decide whether we want to fight the UN bureaucracy's hopeless war against Afghan opium, or win our war against Islamic terrorism.


http://www.enterstageright.com/archive/articles/0510/0510afghanop.htm

[lequebecfume]

Fungus hits Afghan opium poppies

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/47842000/jpg/_47842037_fungus.jpg
The fungus attacks the root of the plant and climbs up the stem

A serious disease is affecting opium poppies in Afghanistan, Antonio Maria Costa, the head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has said.

Mr Costa told the BBC that this year's opium production could be reduced by a quarter, compared with last year.

He said the disease - a fungus - is thought to have infected about half of the country's poppy crop. Afghanistan produces 92% of the world's opium.

Mr Costa said opium prices had gone up by around 50% in the region.

That could have an impact on revenues for insurgent groups like the Taliban which have large stockpiles of opium, he told the BBC's Bethany Bell.

The fungus attacks the root of the plant, climbs up the stem and makes the opium capsule wither away.

It was affecting poppies in the provinces of Helmand and Kandahar, the heartland of opium cultivation and the insurgency in Afghanistan, he said.

Nato 'blamed'

But farmers in Afghanistan are unsure about what is damaging their crops.

Some believe Nato troops are responsible for the outbreak, but Mr Costa denied that this was the case.

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/47837000/jpg/_47837893_009265770-1.jpg
A fungal disease is thought to have infected 50% of the country's poppy crop

"I don't see any reasons to believe something of that sort," he said. "Opium plants have been affected in Afghanistan on a periodic basis."

Farmer Haji Mohammad in Nawzad told the BBC that he had seen a dramatic reduction in the amount of opium he was able to harvest. He described the fungus as an "aerial spray".

He said that last year he harvested 450kg (990lb) of opium - but this year he had so far only been able to harvest 4kg.

"[It]... has affected my wheat cultivation and my chickens and other animals as well," he said.

"The powder sprayed has a white colour and I think it is chemical and if you squeeze it in your hand, water comes out of it."

A number of farmers in southern Afghanistan told the BBC they observed a white substance on their crops. They also reported extensive crop damage and also that livestock had been affected.

Opium economy

Mr Costa said this was an opportunity for the international community to bring in support to try to persuade farmers to turn away from planting opium.

He said the amount of opium produced by one hectare (2.47 acres) had almost doubled to 56kg (in the five years to 2009.
"Nature really played in favour of the opium economy; this year, we see the opposite situation," he added.

Mr Costa said that farmers now grew opium poppies in only five or six Afghan provinces, as opposed to all 34 five years ago.

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/47840000/gif/_47840223_opium_466.gif




http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8679203.stm



LEQ
GRRRRRR and now they conquering armies have made it impossible for afghan farmers to make a living

[lequebecfume]

May 13th, 2010 5:59 pm ET

President Karzai's brother recently mentioned that during the Taliban vs Soviet Troops in Afghanistan, Karzai was the major fund raiser and provider to the Taliban fighters. It appears both President Karzai and his brother have been on the CIA pay-roll long before the horrific Bush-Cheney administration hand-picked President Karzai based upon the CIA's approval. A great deal of that 'approval' appears to entirely come from the Karzai CLAN's huge alleged involvement with the Billions of untraceable dollars from the Opium-Heroin trade.

During the horrific Bush-Cheney administration, as much Opium Poppy's as possible were planted in all 35 provinces across Afghanistan. Now under President Obama's administration only 5 provinces in Afghanistan have Opium-Poppy fields and all of the current fields have become infested by a fungus that attacks the Opium-Poppy plants at their roots drying up the seed pod before it can be harvested for its Opium.

Yes, that cash cow is literally dieing on the vine by its fungus infested roots. It should come as no surprise that America is now looking at a exit strategy from further involvement with the Karzai CLAN whose usefulness appears to be declining directly in relation with the decline of Opium-Heroin being exported out of Afghanistan.


http://ricksanchez.blogs.cnn.com/2010/05/13/most-intriguing-person-may-13/

[lequebecfume]

May 22, 2010


In Afghan Fields, a Challenge to Opium’s Luster

By C. J. CHIVERS / Photo by Tyler HICKS
COMBAT OUTPOST HANSON, Afghanistan —

The annual Afghan opium harvest finished this month with production sharply down from last year, Afghan farmers and American military officers say. Now, growers and smugglers who had long been unchallenged here face tough choices created by the poor crop and new government and military pressure.

They describe an industry approaching a crossroads.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2010/05/23/world/23poppyspan2-cnd/23poppyspan2-cnd-articleLarge.jpg
An Afghan National Army soldier searched a farmer in Helmand Province last week. The United States is trying to persuade farmers to get out of the opium business and grow other crops.

As farmers around Marja, the heart of Afghanistan’s opium industry, confront harsh environmental conditions and new interdiction efforts, they are also receiving offers of aid in exchange for growing different crops. Both they and the military said that the start of a shift to other sources of income could be possible by the end of this year, when poppy planting would resume.

That result is a major aim of the American effort. It is also far from sure. The possibilities for crop transition are uncertain and are undermined by persistent fighting and the limited Afghan government presence. This year’s decline in production has also nudged up opium prices, providing an incentive for farmers to consider gambling on future cultivation.

Many Afghan farmers say they grow poppy because it earns them significantly more income than any other crop, and because opium, which is nonperishable in the short term, can be brought to market anytime after harvest, making it an ideal product in the uncertainties of a conflict zone.

Still, several farmers said in interviews that they were willing to plant other crops in the fall, perhaps wheat, and avoid the new risks and perennial turbulence of the opium trade.

To do so, they said, they would need seeds, fertilizer, agricultural equipment or money. “If the government of Afghanistan will help us next year, we will not grow poppy,” said Obidullah, 50, who said he cultivated about six acres of opium-producing poppy this year. Like many Afghans, he uses only one name.

His yield, he said, was just a quarter of last year’s, because of poor weather and blight.

With fighting around Marja heating up again with a seasonal uptick in Taliban activity and what Marines say is an influx of fighters, the state of the area’s opium trade is a central element of the conflict between the American and Afghan governments and a complex insurgent and criminal base. It is also a sector of the Afghan economy that the Obama administration hopes to uproot, and thereby demonstrate progress resulting from the so-called Afghan surge, which thus far has shown mixed results.

Afghanistan’s huge opium crop enriches both the Taliban and corrupt officials, serving as an economic engine for two persistent phenomena bedeviling the country: a resilient insurgency and a government too weak and discredited to defeat it.

The industry has also been a sore point with allies and potential allies in the American-led war, who have been alarmed that opium production soared after the Taliban were chased from power in 2001. Heroin derived from Afghan opium has flooded Europe and former Soviet states, causing public health problems, including addiction and the spread of H.I.V.

Marja and its environs, a network of irrigated farming villages that form a large green belt on an otherwise parched steppe, are now the center of the densest opium-producing zone in the world.

Before the Marines started their much-publicized offensive into the opium belt in February, their commanders recognized that efforts to reduce drug production in 2010 would meet limitations and risks.

Opium is derived from the sap of poppy seed pods, and the year’s poppy crop had already been planted months before the first helicopters touched down. Moreover, while Afghan law bans the opium trade, American military units here do not have the authority to enforce the country’s laws.

Even if they did have a mandate to confront the trade head-on, commanders decided that forced eradication would prove counterproductive, because, as one officer said, “in a population-centric campaign, we don’t want to turn the farmers against us.”

But doing nothing was deemed unacceptable, too. As their patrols fanned out and outposts grew and hardened, the Marines did not want to be seen as a foreign constable service guarding an illicit drug zone, especially if the crop underwrote the insurgents who were firing on them and planting hidden bombs.

What followed was a complicated end of the poppy season and an attempt by Western forces to position themselves and the farmers for a sharply reduced crop in 2011.

Marja is ringed by canals, and Marine units have established checkpoints near all of the bridges leading into and out of the region. American troops now supervise Afghan police officers and soldiers as they search every vehicle passing by.

This has made it more difficult to move opium away from the poppy fields, several poppy farmers said. The Marines have also located and destroyed processing labs as part of their operations.

For these reasons, poppy farmers said, few farmers have sold this year’s harvest. Farmers said they had stockpiled opium instead, hoping that they might more readily sell it later, perhaps after the Marines leave. (Opium, which takes the form of a dark paste, can be stored for years.)

In separate interviews, five poppy farmers from Marja or the fields at its edge said their harvest this year was down, depending on the location of the field, 20 to 75 percent. Cold winter weather, hailstorms and blight were all factors, they said.

The short supply caused by thinner harvests and interdiction efforts has driven up prices from recent lows caused by the production glut of previous years. This March, farmers sold dry opium for $94 per kilogram, compared with $79 one year ago, said Jean-Luc Lemahieu, representative in Afghanistan for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

That 19 percent increase was not offset by the sharp declines many farmers suffered in yields. The American military says these market conditions may have been a factor that led many farmers to participate in a Marine-sponsored program to destroy their poppy plants in exchange for cash payments.

The efforts, known as the Marja Accelerated Agricultural Transition Program, offered $300 to farmers for every hectare (2.47 acres) of poppy plowed back into the dirt. In all, nearly 1,900 farmers tilled roughly 17,000 acres of poppy into the soil by early May, in exchange for $2.1 million in payments, according to the military’s data.

The program required farmers receiving payments to pledge not to grow poppy again. That way, farmers will not be eligible for payments if they replant in the fall and try to collect payments again.

Assessing the program’s effect remains difficult. In many cases, according to Marines on patrols who had to verify that poppy fields were destroyed, farmers were paid based on estimates of a field’s size, which Afghans often inflated.

Marines and poppy farmers also agreed that many farmers waited until the end of the season to register for payments. Then they quickly harvested their opium, plowed under the stalks and collected payments nonetheless.

“That was the only bad thing,” said Cpl. David S. Palmer, who led the squad that provided security for the verification team. “A lot of people were double-taking on us, and there was nothing we could do about it.”

The more sure value of the program, many Marines said, was its role as a steppingstone. Until the program began, farmers were hesitant to meet with the Marines, officers said. The Taliban threatened to punish local men who cooperated with Americans. At least six men had been beheaded and others were beaten or shot for suspected collaboration.

But what began as a trickle of cooperative farmers, a few men registering each day, became a busy queue. By late April, as many as 120 farmers registered in a single day with the Third Battalion, Sixth Marines, one of two infantry battalions in Marja.

“The program has helped us reseize the momentum,” said Maj. James F. Coffman, the senior civil affairs officer in the battalion. “The Taliban’s murder and intimidation program is still ongoing,” he added, but through the subsidies, groups of farmers have begun to meet and cooperate with the Americans and Afghan troops.

Major Coffman also said the harvest-season engagement provided “much-needed assistance to some of the poorest people in the world” and helped prepare for the next phase: distributing seed, fertilizer and equipment to encourage farmers to diversify next year.

The ultimate hope, several officers said, is that if security can be improved as American and Afghan units continue to spread through southern Afghanistan, poppy production will fall further, as it has in other provinces where the government’s presence has grown and alternative programs have been able to operate.

No one can yet say how long it will take for such security conditions to take hold here. Skirmishes continued in the past week, and the sight of civilians moving away from the fighting — in tractors and trucks piled high with their belongings — showed that the Taliban were still a powerful presence in Marja. To succeed, any campaign to counter poppy cultivation may require substantial time, civilians and military officials said.

“If the surge succeeds, that may be the end of opium cultivation in the south,” said Mr. Lemahieu, the United Nations official. “If it doesn’t, there might be three, four years of fighting.”

Alissa J. Rubin contributed reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan.




http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/23/world/asia/23poppy.html?src=mv&pagewanted=print



LEQ

NOTHING GROWS BUT POPPIES IN SOME REGIONS OF AFGHANISTAN.

THERE IS A GLUT ON THE INTERNATIONAL MEDICAL OPIUM FOR USE IN CHRONIC PAIN MANAGEMENT

[lequebecfume]

Russia’s challenge to Afghanistan’s opium barons

By: Neil Hrab
Special to The Examiner
05/27/10 11:50 AM EDT

You may not have read much about it yet, but an unusual conference is set to take place in Moscow in about 2 weeks. The subject of the conference is the Afghan opium trade – an illicit business that could be worth up to $65 billion annually, some observers claim.

Russian drug experts believe that opium grown in Afghanistan and exported abroad kills about 100,000 people worldwide per year, including up to 30,000 Russians. The Russians also worry that the Central Asian states (who border on Russia) through which the opium travels on its way to lucrative markets elsewhere in the world are being wracked by drug-related corruption and crime.

The conference, entitled “Drug Production in Afghanistan: A Challenge for the International Community,” has not attracted much MSM attention yet, but hopefully that will change. The event will be held June 9-10 in Moscow, under the auspices of RIA Novosti, a Russian state-run news outlet.

You don’t need to be a drug war fan to hope this conference succeeds in drawing attention to the Afghan drug production problem. The subject matter to be highlighted in Moscow is important to anyone who cares about the success of the international effort to ensure the Taliban don’t return to power in Afghanistan.

Every time an American soldier dies from wounds caused by one of the Taliban’s improvised explosive devices, it’s worth recalling that parts of that deadly device were likely purchased with the proceeds of Afghanistan’s opium trade.

Ditto for any time a soldier from another country helping to stabilize Afghanistan is killed by the Taliban.

According to materials released by the conference’s organizing committee, the meeting will cover various topics, including how to increase international cooperation against criminal groups that launder the cash generated from the trafficking of Afghan opium.

One conference on its own won’t neutralize the scourge of Afghan opium. But the Moscow conference is a smart and timely idea, that will hopefully help initiate a wider discussion about how to nudge the international community towards a common understanding of why Afghanistan’s drug production problem should be a matter of global concern.

Similarly, one conference on its own won't spark the development of a common international strategy for fighting back against Afghanistan’s drug lords.

However, if this anti-opium conference can help raise awareness and help foster greater cooperation against the opium barons by law enforcement agencies, it will have been well worth the effort.


http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/Examiner-Opinion-Zone/Russias-challenge-to-Afghanistans-opium-barons-95023759.html#ixzz0pGCmYxMp




LEQ

LEGALIZE AND REGULATE OPIUM

THERE IS A SERIOUS NEED OF OPIUM FOR USE IN CHRONIC PAIN MANAGEMENT CLINICS WORLD-WIDE
(that is a verifiable fact!)

[lequebecfume]

Disease 'to cut Afghan opium by up to 70%'

By Sardar Ahmad (AFP) – May 16, 2010

KABUL — A mystery disease infecting opium poppies in Afghanistan could cut this year's illicit crop in some areas by up to 70 percent, an official said Sunday.

The disease has led authorities to expect a "significant" reduction in opium production this year, with the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) saying this week that the output could fall by up to 25 percent.

Daud Daud, Afghanistan's deputy interior minister for counter-narcotics, said that "in some areas up to 70 percent of the crops have been destroyed" by the disease.

"We'll have a significant reduction" in the opium production "this year," Daud said, refusing to give further details, saying that an overall survey of this year's output was still under way.

Afghanistan produces more than 90 percent of the world's opium, the raw material for making heroin, mainly in the provinces of Helmand and Kandahar in the south and Farah in southwest.

"Interestingly there is a natural disease that is infecting opium in five provinces," said Daud.

He could not confirm what disease had infected the crops but blamed it on an insect infestation. He said the disease was being investigated in government laboratories.

Antonio Maria Costa, the head of UNODC, has said the disease was a fungus, while some farmers have reportedly blamed the US and Britain for spraying their crops with a chemical in an effort to eradicate opium.

Daud ruled out suggestions that the crops had been sprayed with chemicals from the air.

"No no, it's not an aerial spray. It's a natural disease," he said, adding that opium poppies were the only crop to be infected.
Afghanistan's insurgency is largely funded by its opium industry, estimated to be worth 2.8 billions dollars a year.

The Taliban are believed to be closely tied to drugs gangs, acting as enforcers for production and providing protection along distribution routes.

Backed by Western allies, the Afghan government has launched a massive campaign against poppy cultivation as well as traffickers.

Daud, who leads a Western-funded anti-narcotics police force, said that in the past two months his unit had seized more than 15 tons of raw opium, 1.19 tons of heroin and scores of chemical used to refine heroin.

More than 204 alleged smugglers were also arrested, some of whom had already been tried during the past two months, Daud said.

Six police officers were also killed while eradicating opium crops or fighting drug dealers this year, he said.

Nearly a million Afghans were addicted to drugs and a recent survey of the police force showed that up to 1,200 officers were also addicted, mainly to opium and heroin, he said.

The police officers had been temporarily suspended from duty for treatment, he said.



http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5g9ojEQQS3w-6sNFWCrfZ4xSJZ_rA

[Shadimar]

Wow.

So according to the official story the world's single largest producer of opiates is now suffering dramatic losses at a time when 70-80% of the world has no access to narcotic pain relief. Furthermore it's said to be a fungus which the poppies evidently have little resistance for.

So what kind of a mess will we be in if that fungus spread to the rest of the opium producing nations, because despite the official story poppies do grow in far more places than a tiny corner of Asia. As it is the fungus thing sounds a little convenient, and the US is known for dropping things on other nations so the credibility is not really there, but I'm no poppy fungus expert so all I can do is tilt my head sideways and ask "Fusarium?".

I say let the Afghans grow their crops, buy it up before the heroin labs do and suggest they grow hash next year. Hell, let's just legalize hash over here and then the new market makes opium no longer worth the effort. Even if you wiped out 99% of the poppies, the labs will step in to buy the remaining 1% because 10k of overpriced opium still produces a kilo morphine worth far more than was paid for the latex. See the price of pharma opium lately? Not too far off from processed 3,6 DAM so it would appear the Afghans are the worlds finest poppy farmers. We need to either buy it from them at a fair price, or supply them with alternate crops that will flourish in Afghanistan and provide them with a greater income and higher quality of life.

I have to say, too. If we managed to succeed and rid Afghanistan of poppies, then the current morphine->morphine diacetate labs will realize the potential of the alkaloids they've been discarding for centuries and a surge of Fentanyl class drugs will appear to replace the morphine derivatives and remind people that heroin is far from the most potent opioid available, the current king is around 18,000 times the potency of morphine and I've read figures reaching 28-32K but the "scary part" is that these super narcotics aren't morphine derivatives and do not require papaver somniferum but can use other species of perfectly legal common ornamental non-opium poppies, albeit there's a tradeoff of starting material vs the years of training needed to run the lab.

Thanks for this thread. Poppies get demonized too easily as do the people who grow them simply to scrape a living out of a harsh land. Destroying their source income will do little to win the hearts of the poppy farmers, but providing farm equipment and mentioning that landrace beans are rather popular with amateur breeders would have a far more positive effect.

With everything they've been through in the last few decades I'm sure every last one of us would be poppy farmers had we been born there because something tells me the Afghan sugar-beet output isn't so high these days.

[lequebecfume]

Scores killed in Afghan anti drugs operation


Monday, 5 July 2010 05:57 UK

Afghanistan is the source of 90% of the world's illicit opium


More than 60 militants and drug traffickers have been killed in Helmand province during a three-day raid, the Afghan government says.



They said more than 16 tonnes of drugs were seized, together with weapons, explosives and suicide vests.

Afghan troops destroyed two sites at which drugs were produced.

They also freed several villagers who had been kidnapped by the militants for allegedly co-operating with the government.

Afghanistan produces 90% of the world's opium and the drugs trade is a key source of funding for the insurgency.

Coalition forces are battling militants in opium-producing areas of the south.

Last year the UN said corruption, lawlessness and uncontrolled borders result in only 2% of Afghan opiates being seized locally.

UN findings say an opium market worth $65bn (£39bn) funds global terrorism, caters to 15 million addicts and kills 100,000 people every year.



http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/south_asia/10504995.stm



LEQ


AS I HAVE OFT POSTED: THERE IS A GLUT ON THE INTERNATIONAL SCENE AS THE TWO LEGALLY PRODUCING COUNTRIES, INDIA AND TURKEY CANNOT PRODUCE ENOUGH TO BE USED AS MEDICINE FOR CHRONIC PAIN PATIENTS

[lequebecfume]

Globalist Analysis >
Global Society

Opium-Addicted Children: Paying a Heavy Price for the Afghan War

By César Chelala | Monday, July 05, 2010

The revelation that the number of opium-addicted Afghan children has reached new highs is a sad unintended consequence of that war. It dramatically illustrates how adult war games can doom generations of children to a miserable life, argues César Chelala. Worse, it is a growing problem in neighboring Iran and Pakistan as well.

A group of researchers hired by the U.S. Department of State found staggering levels of opium in Afghan children, some as young as 14 months old, who had been passively exposed by adult drug users in their homes.

In 25% of homes where adult addicts lived, children tested showed signs of significant drug exposure, according to the researchers.


No other country in the world produces as much heroin, opium and hashish as Afghanistan.

According to one of the researchers, the children exhibit the typical behavior of opium and heroin addicts. If the drug is withdrawn, they go through a withdrawal process.

The results of the study should sound an alarm. Not only were opium products found in indoor air samples, but their concentrations were also extremely high. This suggests that, as with second-hand cigarette smoke, contaminated indoor air and surfaces pose a serious health risk to women's and children’s health.

The extent of health problems in children as a result of such exposure is not known. What is known is that the number of Afghan drug users has increased from 920,000 in 2005 to over 1.5 million, according to Zalmai Afzali, the spokesman for the Ministry of Counter-Narcotics (MCN) in Afghanistan.

A quarter of those users are thought to be women and children. Afzali stated that Afghanistan could become the world’s top drug-using nation per capita if current trends continue.

According to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), no other country in the world produces as much heroin, opium and hashish as Afghanistan — a sad distinction for a country already ravaged by war.

This may explain why control efforts so far have been concentrated on poppy eradication and interdiction to stem exports, while less attention was paid to the rising domestic addiction problem, particularly in children.

Both American and Afghan counter narcotic officials have said that such widespread domestic drug addiction is a relatively new problem. Among the factors leading to increased levels of drug use is the

Among the factors leading to increased levels of drug use is the high unemployment rate throughout the country.

high unemployment rate throughout the country, the social upheaval provoked by this war and those that preceded it, as well as the return of refugees from Iran and Pakistan who became addicts while abroad.

In both those countries, the high number of opium-addicted children is also a serious problem, particularly among street children. In Tehran, although the government has opened several shelters for street children, many more centers are still needed to take care of them.

According to some estimates, there are between 35,000 and 50,000 children in Tehran who are forced by their parents or other adults to live and beg in the streets or to work in sweatshops.

These children are subject to all kinds of abuse, and many among them end up in organized prostitution rings and become part of the sex trade. They are transported to other countries where they are obliged to work as prostitutes, while others simply disappear.

The situation is equally serious in Pakistan, where in Karachi alone there are tens of thousands of children who are addicted, as drug trafficking prevails all over the city. In Karachi, the main addiction is to hashish.

According to Rana Asif Habib, president of the Initiator Human Development Foundation (IHDF), due to the increase in the number of street children, the street crime rate is also on the rise as children get involved in drug trafficking activities in the city.

Injecting drug users face the additional risk of HIV-infection through the sharing of contaminated syringes. “Drug addiction and HIV/AIDS are, together, Afghanistan’s silent tsunami,” declared Tariq Suliman, director of the Nejat’s rehabilitation center to the UN Office for Humanitarian Affairs.


In Iran and Pakistan, the high number of opium-addicted children is also a serious problem.

There are about 40 treatment centers for addicts dispersed throughout the country, but most are small, poorly staffed and under-resourced.

For the first time ever, an international team including World Health Organization (WHO) officials and experts from Johns Hopkins University and the Medical University of Vienna have joined efforts to design a treatment regime for young children.

The United States and its allies have the resources to rapidly expand and adequately fund and resource such treatment and rehabilitation centers throughout the country. Anything less will be yet another serious indictment of an occupation gone astray.


http://www.theglobalist.com/printStoryId.aspx?StoryId=8472




LEQ
yeah right .....!?!

[lequebecfume]

Afghan govt corrupt, overrun by opium sale: US Lawmaker


Posted: Tue Jul 13 2010, 12:49 hrs
Washington:

http://static.indianexpress.com/m-images/Tue%20Jul%2013%202010,%2012:49%20hrs/M_Id_162337_opium.jpg
An US lawmaker said that the Afghan govt has to take responsibility of their country's security completely.

Afghanistan is being run by a corrupt government overrun by opium sales and insensitive to the need to take care of its people, an influential US lawmaker has said, pressing for a July 2011 withdrawal deadline and for the government to take ownership of the conflict.

"I saw a corrupt government overrun by opium sales, not understanding the need to take care of the people and making them stakeholders in their own victory," Congresswoman Sheila Jackson-Lee told the MSNBC in an interview.

Jackson-Lee, who has just returned from a visit to the war-torn Afghanistan, said the current situation in that country is troubling.

"My assessment is that, as the military remains resilient, but lives are ascending in loss as our allied forces continue to work with us, we cannot be detracted by phony comments about typographing our departure to the enemy," she said.

She argued that the US forces should leave the country by July 2011 and that the Afghan government has to take responsibility of their country's security completely.

"We must leave. We should leave by July 2011. We should hand over the enforcement of security to the Afghan national security forces, which will be upwards of 300,000 by that time," she said.
"We need to continue to work with the Afghan people on reconstructing. But this is a civil war. Al Qaeda is not there. And we cannot continue to undermine the United States military by staying in this war," Jackson-Lee said.

Disagreeing with the argument that Afghanistan will not be ready by then, she said the government must prepare itself, reform and fight corruption.

"The central government has to take ownership of this conflict. President (Hamid) Karzai must stand against corruption.
"Families earning USD 900 million of our money, individuals losing USD 3 million in Las Vegas and laughing about it from the Afghanistan hierarchy," she said.

She said the Afghan national security forces have to be trained to take over and that "they've got to take charge".

"What I believe is that we have the technical help to put the Afghan troops forward and to let them take charge.

"As long as we continue the Vietnam trail of saying we have not declared victory, we're typographing to the enemy, you will see the same kind of evacuation that we tragically saw with helicopters leaving Vietnam as it did some 30, 40 years ago. I don't want that," she said.


http://www.indianexpress.com/news/afghan-govt-corrupt-overrun-by-opium-sale-lawmaker/645791/

[lequebecfume]

Drug Use Has Increased in Afghanistan, U.N. Report Says

By ALISSA J. RUBIN
Published: June 21, 2010


KABUL, Afghanistan — The last several years of poverty, conflict and widely available opium are taking a toll on the Afghan population, with roughly 800,000 Afghan adults now using opium, heroin and other illicit drugs, a jump from five years ago, according to a study by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.


In a report released Monday, the United Nations detailed the results of a study to determine the prevalence of drug use and found a jump in the use of every type of drug, with heroin use rising the most sharply, making Afghanistan one of five countries with the highest percentage of drug users.

“Many Afghans seem to be taking drugs as a kind of self-medication against the hardships of life,” said Antonio Maria Costa, the executive director of the United Nations office on Drugs and Crime.

The study found that close to 7 percent of the adult population of 14 million were drug users, defined as someone who regularly used opium, heroin, opiate derivatives or tranquilizers both in the last year and in the past 30 days. Of those, 90 percent said they were in need of drug treatment.

The report was a collaboration of the United Nations, the Afghan Counter-Narcotics Ministry and the Public Health Ministry. It reflects more than 5,000 interviews nationwide, including in conflict areas, although the report notes that interviews were not possible in all districts of Helmand Province, which has seen particularly heavy fighting this year. The method is the same one used in other countries where the United Nations surveys drug use.

The report also found that the most commonly used drug was opium, with 80 percent of those surveyed saying they had used it in the last year and most saying they were regular users. Of all drug users, 30 percent had taken heroin in their lives and nearly all of those said they had taken the drug within a month of speaking to United Nations data collectors.

In other Afghanistan news, 14 detainees were released over the weekend, 12 of them from the Detention Facility in Parwan, which is run by the American military. The other two were released from an Interior Ministry detention facility.

The Afghan government took credit for the releases, saying they were following through on one of the promises of the national consultative peace jirga that met earlier this month, said Fazil Ahmad Faqiryar, deputy attorney general and a member of the committee reviewing detainee cases.

But the American military said that the committee did not have jurisdiction over Afghans held in American detention facilities and that the releases were part of “a structured process” of review by a military board.

President Hamid Karzai formed the committee to look into cases in which detainees were held without sufficient evidence to try them in court and those involving opponents of the government. The commission is headed by the justice minister.

Abdul Waheed Wafa contributed reporting.


http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/22/world/asia/22afghan.html?src=mv

[lequebecfume]

DEA boosts Afghan anti-opium force

Submitted by WW4 Report on Sat, 07/24/2010 - 00:07.

By the end of 2011, 81 US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) special agents will be deployed in Afghanistan, up from 13 just three years ago, according to the agency's chief of operations Tom Harrigan. "Afghanistan is the most prolific producer of opium," said Harrigan. "We are working very closely with our Afghan counterparts. We're there to extend the rule of law." (Federal News Radio (http://www.federalnewsradio.com/?nid=206&sid=2010266), July 23)


Counter-terrorism officials claim that the Taliban are funding their insurgency through a taxation system that generates money from the production, processing and transport of opium from Afghanistan. The UN Office on Drugs and Crime says that between 2003 and 2008, the Taliban made an estimated $18 billion from drug production and trafficking.


Last week's landmark international conference in Kabul, attended by 40 foreign ministers and international delegates from more than 70 countries, ended with the official endorsement of President Hamid Karzai's reconciliation program with armed insurgent groups, including the Taliban. Karzai's Afghan Peace and Reintegration Program aims to reintegrate up to 36,000 Taliban fighters into Afghan society. Fighters are to be offered jobs, land and protection in a bid to persuade them to change sides. But critics fear that the opium economy could make it more lucrative for fighters to remain in insurgency. (The Austrialian (http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/reconciliation-plan-unlikely-to-bring-peace/story-e6frg6ux-1225895825085), July 23)




LEQ

DISBAND THE DEA !

LEGALIZE OPIUM AND PAY THE FARMERS A JUST RATE !

[lequebecfume]

Afghanistan war logs: Massive leak of secret files exposes truth of occupation

Nick Davies and David Leigh
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 25 July 2010 22.03 BST
Article history

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2010/7/25/1280087885361/US-soldier-in-Afghanistan-006.jpg
The war logs reveal civilian killings by coalition forces, secret efforts to eliminate Taliban and al-Qaida leaders, and discuss the involvement of Iran and Pakistan in supporting insurgents. Photograph: Max Whittaker/Corbis

A huge cache of secret US military files today provides a devastating portrait of the failing war in Afghanistan, revealing how coalition forces have killed hundreds of civilians in unreported incidents, Taliban attacks have soared and Nato commanders fear neighbouring Pakistan and Iran are fuelling the insurgency.

The disclosures come from more than 90,000 records of incidents and intelligence reports about the conflict obtained by the whistleblowers' website Wikileaks in one of the biggest leaks in US military history. The files, which were made available to the Guardian, the New York Times and the German weekly Der Spiegel, give a blow-by-blow account of the fighting over the last six years, which has so far cost the lives of more than 320 British and more than 1,000 US troops.

Their publication comes amid mounting concern that Barack Obama's "surge" strategy is failing and as coalition troops hunt for two US naval personnel captured by the Taliban south of Kabul on Friday.

The war logs also detail:

• How a secret "black" unit of special forces hunts down Taliban leaders for "kill or capture" without trial.

• How the US covered up evidence that the Taliban have acquired deadly surface-to-air missiles.

• How the coalition is increasingly using deadly Reaper drones to hunt and kill Taliban targets by remote control from a base in Nevada.

• How the Taliban have caused growing carnage with a massive escalation of their roadside bombing campaign, which has killed more than 2,000 civilians to date.

In a statement, the White House said the chaotic picture painted by the logs was the result of "under-resourcing" under Obama's predecessor, saying: "It is important to note that the time period reflected in the documents is January 2004 to December 2009."

The White House also criticised the publication of the files by Wikileaks: "We strongly condemn the disclosure of classified information by individuals and organisations, which puts the lives of the US and partner service members at risk and threatens our national security. Wikileaks made no effort to contact the US government about these documents, which may contain information that endanger the lives of Americans, our partners, and local populations who co-operate with us."

The logs detail, in sometimes harrowing vignettes, the toll on civilians exacted by coalition forces: events termed "blue on white" in military jargon. The logs reveal 144 such incidents.

Some of these casualties come from the controversial air strikes that have led to Afghan government protests, but a large number of previously unknown incidents also appear to be the result of troops shooting unarmed drivers or motorcyclists out of a determination to protect themselves from suicide bombers.

At least 195 civilians are admitted to have been killed and 174 wounded in total, but this is likely to be an underestimate as many disputed incidents are omitted from the daily snapshots reported by troops on the ground and then collated, sometimes erratically, by military intelligence analysts.

Bloody errors at civilians' expense, as recorded in the logs, include the day French troops strafed a bus full of children in 2008, wounding eight. A US patrol similarly machine-gunned a bus, wounding or killing 15 of its passengers, and in 2007 Polish troops mortared a village, killing a wedding party including a pregnant woman, in an apparent revenge attack.

Questionable shootings of civilians by UK troops also figure. The US compilers detail an unusual cluster of four British shootings in Kabul in the space of barely a month, in October/November 2007, culminating in the death of the son of an Afghan general. Of one shooting, they wrote: "Investigation controlled by the British. We are not able to get [sic] complete story."

A second cluster of similar shootings, all involving Royal Marine commandos in Helmand province, took place in a six-month period at the end of 2008, according to the log entries. Asked by the Guardian about these allegations, the Ministry of Defence said: "We have been unable to corroborate these claims in the short time available and it would be inappropriate to speculate on specific cases without further verification of the alleged actions."

Rachel Reid, who investigates civilian casualty incidents in Afghanistan for Human Rights Watch, said: "These files bring to light what's been a consistent trend by US and Nato forces: the concealment of civilian casualties. Despite numerous tactical directives ordering transparent investigations when civilians are killed, there have been incidents I've investigated in recent months where this is still not happening.

Accountability is not just something you do when you are caught. It should be part of the way the US and Nato do business in Afghanistan every time they kill or harm civilians." The reports, many of which the Guardian is publishing in full online, present an unvarnished and often compelling account of the reality of modern war.

Most of the material, though classified "secret" at the time, is no longer militarily sensitive. A small amount of information has been withheld from publication because it might endanger local informants or give away genuine military secrets. Wikileaks, whose founder, Julian Assange, obtained the material in circumstances he will not discuss, said it would redact harmful material before posting the bulk of the data on its "uncensorable" servers.

Wikileaks published in April this year a previously suppressed classified video of US Apache helicopters killing two Reuters cameramen on the streets of Baghdad, which gained international attention. A 22-year-old intelligence analyst, Bradley Manning, was arrested in Iraq and charged with leaking the video, but not with leaking the latest material. The Pentagon's criminal investigations department continues to try to trace the leaks and recently unsuccessfully asked Assange, he says, to meet them outside the US to help them. Assange allowed the Guardian to examine the logs at our request.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jul/25/afghanistan-war-logs-military-leaks

[lequebecfume]

Letters; Wednesday, 4 August 2010

Production

4 Aug 2010
Buying poppies from Afghan farmers would starve Taliban of its core funding

I agree entirely with David Crawford (Letters, August 3) that logic dictates it would be cheaper and less destructive to both sides in the Afghanistan conflict if the occupying forces simply guaranteed to buy all the heroin-base that the indigenous population can grow at a price that is higher than they currently receive from the drug barons. Sadly, solutions that seem simple and obvious to us in our armchairs in Europe are unrealistic in the remote countryside of that unhappy mountainous country.


Unfortunately, the powerful drug barons intimidate poppy growers to resist any such development. To secure their incomes, they dictate the going rate and they control who buys local crops.

One of the major policy recommendations to come from the International Council on Security and Development (ICOS) is the licensing of opium in Afghanistan for pharmaceutical purposes. It is based on the premise that there are two problems that need to be solved: Afghanistan’s reliance on opium and the worldwide shortage of opiate-based medicines available for pharmaceutical purposes. It contends that this would be a short- to medium-term solution to address the opium crisis that is currently occurring in Afghanistan, since alternative livelihoods programmes in the country will take many years to come to fruition and no crop matches the agronomic properties of opium. Meanwhile, there is a shortage of morphine in developed countries and this is an even greater humanitarian problem in developing nations, compounded by the growing rates of HIV/Aids and cancer around the world. ICOS has several partnerships with organisations working with health, development and security problems. It works in partnership with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC).

There is no single, simple reason why NGOs from the west and armed forces from Nato are in Afghanistan. The futile efforts of Nato forces to destroy poppy crops, one of their many diverse tasks, have simply threatened Afghan farmers with loss of livelihood. It has driven them towards the Taliban for protection. The Taliban’s approach to opium has varied from earlier outright prohibition to current support for the opium trade upon which much of its funding relies.

The failure of the west to support and enforce the implementation of the ICOS Poppy for Medicine programme in Afghanistan seems incomprehensible but it is based on the impossibility of enforcement because the Taliban controls so much of the country. It is all part of the complexity that is Afghanistan today.

Michael Hamilton,

Kelso.

It is a deliberate act of coalition policy not to reveal numbers of civilian deaths in the killing fields of Afghanistan. That’s why the revealing Wikileaks data are so important.

The absurd idea that bombing civilian targets in the hope of killing one Taliban leader is not "regrettable", as Nato claims, but rather insane, for it recruits a dozen more to the enemy. No coalition general has succeeded in getting the bombings to cease – the relentless killing by rockets (and unmanned drones), including last week’s 45 civilians culled in Helmand, would be a war crime if committed by infantry and not airmen.

The Wikileaks data also confirm that the Afghan war is an unmitigated political disaster. One justification – that our troops in Afghanistan prevent terrorism in Britain – has been undermined by Eliza Manningham-Buller, the former head of MI5, who told the Chilcot Inquiry that Iraq and Afghanistan had "radicalised" a whole generation of young UK Muslims. MI5 was "swamped by such evidence", said Manningham-Buller.

Chris Walker,

West Kilbride.


http://www.heraldscotland.com/comment/herald-letters/letters-wednesday-4-august-2010-1.1045653


LEQ

dry and in hospital again...

our politicians sure have nothing new to say...

[lequebecfume]

No to opium poppy crops in Afghanistan


Aug 4, 2010 18:38 Moscow Time

for the clip on this post refer here (http://english.ruvr.ru/2010/08/09/14631234.html)

© Flickr.com/fatboyke (Luc)/cc-by-nc-sa 3.0

A group of US Senators has called on Barack Obama’s administration to resume destruction of opium poppy crops in Afghanistan, according to a report by seven legislators specializing in international drug control.

It is evident to anyone with common sense that preventing a crime is easier than fighting its consequences. In this context, the destruction of all opium poppy crops in Afghanistan is a preventive measure in the struggle against drug trafficking. Discovering drug laboratories and drug paths across the Afghan border is much more difficult. From this viewpoint, the US Senators’ report and their appeal to the White House Administration looks natural and well-grounded. At the same time it is a blow to the position of the US representative in Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke. As The Los-Angeles Times reminds its readers, Holbrooke is convinced that destruction of the poppy crops sets the local population against the Afghan authorities and against the international military contingent and pushes them into the ranks of armed extremists.

We can note in this connection that the initiative of the US Senators to use all methods of fighting drug trafficking coincides with Russia’s attitude to the problem. Moscow has for a long time been persuading Washington to take this stand on the issue, with no result so far. Russian Deputy Secretary of the Security Council Vladimir Nazarov spoke about this in Washington last week. He had talks with his American colleagues and representatives of the State Department, and also with Mr. Holbrooke. During the talks he demonstrated all the evidence of the advantages of a preventive struggle against the drug danger coming from Afghanistan. A more detailed version of Russia’s position on the issue was described by President Dmitry Medvedev in Moscow this summer at a large international conference dedicated to this problem.

Hard to say, whether the Russian leader’s arguments and some of the US Senators’ opinions will influence the White House’s attitude to this problem. As they say, water constantly dropping wears away a stone. But, hopefully, it will not take a very long time. Incidentally, for the time that international coalition troops were deployed in Afghanistan, the area of the opium poppy crops has grown by 40 times. This is the sad data provided by the UN.


http://english.ruvr.ru/2010/08/09/14631234.html




LEQ

in extreme shitty patin and DRY

[lequebecfume]

Afghan farmers buying into anti-poppy campaign, top U.S. official says

http://beta.images.theglobeandmail.com/archive/00814/afghan-opium11nw_814582gm-a.jpg
Number of poppy-free Afghan provinces could grow this year to 25 from 20, UN reports


Bill Curry
Ottawa — From Wednesday's Globe and Mail
Published on Tuesday, Aug. 10, 2010 8:04PM EDT


Trading poppies for pomegranates is a tough sell in Afghanistan, but a top U.S. official says there are signs of progress in the campaign to convert the world’s opium capital into a land of fruit, nuts and other legal crops.

Many have written off the anti-poppy campaign by allied forces in Afghanistan, but in his first visit to Ottawa Tuesday, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack insisted these projects are working.


“We know that there is – in some areas of the country – there’s a reduction in poppy production and there’s a greater interest in pomegranates and saffron and table grapes, things of that nature, which could potentially create a much brighter future for Afghan farmers,” he said in an interview with Canadian reporters.

Farming is far and away the main source of income for Afghans, with an estimated 80 per cent of the population working in agriculture. Afghanistan produces almost all of the world’s opium, which is used to make heroin, morphine and other drugs.

United Nations statistics show opium cultivation dropped dramatically in 2001 when the Taliban regime imposed a ban in its last year of power before it was overthrown. By 2007, however, production had significantly increased.



“ It’s necessary for the United States, Canada and other countries to provide an alternative that addresses the risks of traditional agriculture and minimizes those risks and maximizes the return.”
— U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack

Officials with the U.S. Department of Agriculture stress, though, that the same UN reports show cultivation has since dropped by a third and the number of poppy-free Afghan provinces could grow this year from 20 to 25. They also point to increases in wheat production.

They do not, however, mention another UN report on cannabis released this year, which concluded Afghanistan is the world’s biggest producer of hashish and that large-scale cannabis cultivation is taking place in exactly half of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces.

In April, the U.S. Department of Defence issued a report to Congress that concluded the anti-poppy campaign from 2004 to 2008 “was counterproductive and drove farmers to the insurgency,” but spoke more positively of a new approach aimed at helping farmers with loans and seeds and arresting area drug lords.

Mr. Vilsack’s visit was mainly to promote U.S. agricultural products, but he said he intended to thank Canada for its military and civilian efforts in Afghanistan in a subsequent meeting with Canadian Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz.

Mr. Vilsack said he can understand farmers’ temptation to grow opium, given that the seeds are offered for free and the crops are picked up at the gate – not to mention the financial rewards.


“So in order to change that mentality it’s necessary for the United States, Canada and other countries to provide an alternative that addresses the risks of traditional agriculture and minimizes those risks and maximizes the return,” he said.

Liberal Senator Colin Kenny, a former chair of the Senate national security and defence committee, said allies should have far more limited goals in Afghanistan.


“You can’t do reforms like that with people who are illiterate and have a medieval culture in the middle of a civil war,” he said.

http://beta.images.theglobeandmail.com/archive/00814/afghan-opium-gra_814642artw.jpg

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/afghan-farmers-buying-into-anti-poppy-campaign-top-us-official-says/article1668683/


LEQ

DRY and in EXTREME PAIN

IN hospital for my C thearpy

[paddyk]

Sure wonder where cannabis would come in on that chart, especially after trellissed (lol). My guess is it would top the chart.:D
peace

[lequebecfume]

Win war in Afghanistan by burning opium fields

Gene_Dougherty
Posted August 17, 2010 at 1 a.m.


The first thing that I would do to win the war in Afghanistan is to burn and salt every opium field in that country. Opium is the No. 1 industry of the Afghans.

Forty to 60 percent of the Afghan opium is used to barter weapons from the Russian mafia at bazaars just north of the Afghan border in Tajikistan. One kilogram of opium paste can buy up to 30 weapons at these bazaars.We need to burn these bazaars to the ground also.

Many of the arms are of Czech or Slovak manufactured because they don’t have many customers due to the fall of the Soviet Union.

The second most important thing to do to win the war is do not give any arms to our “allies” in Pakistan or Afghanistan. The weapons that we give our allies somehow seem to get into the Taliban’s hands.

An estimated 87,000 U.S. weapons and 130,000 NATO weapons are unaccounted for, and some of these same weapons are being found on the bodies of the Taliban that we’ve killed.

If we follow the money, in this case the opium, we can still win the war in Afghanistan.

Gene Dougherty

Port St. Lucie


http://www.tcpalm.com/news/2010/aug/17/letter-win-war-in-afghanistan-by-burning-opium/

[lequebecfume]

1bln dollars of heroine seized in Afghanistan




Aug 26, 2010 17:09 Moscow Time


http://english.ruvr.ru/data/2010/08/26/1218412695/3Packets_of_opium_epa.jpg
Opium. Photo: EPA

Coalition forces in Afghanistan have taken more than one billion dollars worth of heroin in what is the world’s biggest seizure of the drug, British news agencies reported on Thursday.

The haul of 5,7 tons was seized with 11,3 tons of opium and 841 tons of marijuana, officials said, adding that during last month’s operation in the Helmand province, 63 terrorists were killed, 10 drug traffickers of national and foreign citizenship arrested and 14 Afghan hostages released.

The officials also said that all the drug and two processing plants have been destroyed.



http://english.ruvr.ru/2010/08/26/17400389.html

[lequebecfume]

Afghan Journal

Lifting the veil on conflict, culture and politics


A drop in Afghanistan’s drug ocean
AUG 31, 2010 01:03 EDT

http://blogs.reuters.com/afghanistan/files/2010/08/burn1.jpg


By Andrew Hammond

U.S. private security guards mingled in the crowd, while Afghan security forces stood on guard on surrounding hilltops and access roads. Afghans in dirty robes ran back and forward with paraffin canisters, two of them with the unfortunate task of climbing over the pile of wood, and seized sacks of drugs to pour on the fuel.

Cameramen, outnumbered by foreign and Afghan diplomats and officials, crowded around for close-ups as bags were slit open,
spilling out the cumin-coloured powder. “Today is a big day for the people of Afghanistan,” said General Mohammad Daoud Daoud, the Interior Ministry’s anti-narcotics chief. He said the haul was the result of five drug networks that had been busted in the past five months in Kabul and Nangarhar to the east.


”It has a big impact,” a British diplomat said as the pyre was torched.
“It’s a message; they have to show that the effort is having an effect. They made a lot of big busts recently.”

What was left unsaid was that, impressive as the haul was, it amounted to a drop in the ocean. Afghanistan produced something like 6,900 tonnes of opium last year, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). That alone is far more than the 5,000 tonnes consumed by the world’s addicts a year. It was also about 90 percent of the world’s opium, a thick black paste made from poppies and which is then turned into heroin.

Western governments, with more than 140,000 troops in the country, fear that the Taliban-led insurgency still receives a
lot of its funding from the opium. Even more worryingly, they fear that the Taliban has hoarded so much opium — thousands of tonnes — that they can control the world price for years to come.

Ordinary Afghans suffer the most. The United Nations said in June that Afghanistan is not only the world’s top opium exporter but rivals Iran for the highest rates of addiction.


“We have almost one million addicts, it’s a big disaster for the people of Afghanistan,” the general said.
“Unfortunately, the first victim is the people of Afghanistan.”


http://blogs.reuters.com/afghanistan/2010/08/31/a-drop-in-afghanistans-drug-ocean/

[lequebecfume]

Afghan insurgents' opium earnings cut in half, says U.S. general


http://beta.images.theglobeandmail.com/archive/00814/afghan-opium11nw_814582gm-a.jpg
Poppy eradication efforts have significantly disrupted the opium trade, and insurgents are feeling the pinch.

Jim Wolf
Reuters
Published on Thursday, Sep. 02, 2010 1:09PM EDT


Insurgents in Afghanistan’s Helmand province, the Taliban’s opium-producing heartland, are operating with less than half the cash they had a year ago, the commander of coalition forces in the area said Thursday.

U.S. Marine Corps Major General Richard Mills said Afghan government-led poppy eradication efforts, supported by the 30,000 troops he leads from six countries, had disrupted the opium trade significantly amid the current summer fighting season.


“We believe that the local insurgency here within the province has less than one-half of what they had last year in operating funds,” he said in a video briefing from the province to the Pentagon press room, citing what he called sensitive intelligence.

Helmand, Afghanistan’s largest province, produces more than half of the opium cultivated in Afghanistan, the source of about 90 percent of the global supply, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. The drug crop is closely tied to the insurgency and the Taliban are funded in a large measure by the opium trade.

Gen. Mills said the insurgents were feeling the pinch, with less money available to buy sophisticated roadside bombs, their weapon of choice.

http://english.ruvr.ru/data/2010/08/26/1218412695/3Packets_of_opium_epa.jpg

Instead they have been relying more on bullets, he said, adding that the insurgent groups were getting smaller each month.

The insurgents have been “driven to desperation” around Marjah, a longtime Taliban stronghold that the Afghan government and international forces are fighting to take back, Gen. Mills said. As a result, the insurgents were resorting to “murder and intimidation” of local residents to promote their goals, he said.

Coalition forces have not engaged in crop eradication for fear of angering local farmers. Gen. Mills said his forces attacked the poppy trade “only when it crosses over into the insurgency,” for instance to root out the networks used to smuggle drugs out to pay for weapons.

Such efforts, he said, have combined “to significantly deprive the insurgency of the money they so desperately need to operate.”

The Afghan Taliban last month rejected comments by U.S. Army General David Petraeus, the commander of NATO and U.S. forces in Afghanistan, that their progress had been reversed, including in their Kandahar and Helmand provincial strongholds.

Violence across Afghanistan has reached record levels despite the presence of almost 150,000 U.S. and international troops.

Fighting against foreign forces has been particularly tough in the south, with thousands of U.S. and British troops engaged in clashes around Marjah in Helmand province. Helmand’s population is mainly made up of Pashtuns, Afghanistan’s largest ethnic group, from which the Taliban movement draws most of its followers.

http://beta.images.theglobeandmail.com/archive/00814/afghan-opium-gra_814642artw.jpg


http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/africa-mideast/afghan-insurgents-opium-earnings-cut-in-half-says-us-general/article1694110/


LEQ
from the hospital , in extreme pain and bleeding alot...

[lequebecfume]

US needs to scrap July 2011 Afghan deadline: Gen David Petraues


PTI, Sep 18, 2010, 12.48pm IST

WASHINGTON: Describing the leadership of Gen David Petraues, the American Commander in Afghanistan, as reassuring, a top US expert on South Asia has said President Barack Obama needs to scrap his "arbitrary" deadline of July 2011 for the drawdown of troops from the war-torn country.


"He (Obama) needs to renounce the arbitrary July 2011 withdrawal deadline and remind the American people that if the US departs the region before the situation in Afghanistan is stabilised and the government is capable of resisting the Taliban on its own, the result will be a downward spiral of violence, leading to the eventual collapse of the government and the reassertion of Taliban rule," Lisa Curtis of the Heritage Foundation said.

The Taliban would again be in a position to provide sanctuary to al-Qaida and affiliated terrorist groups intent on attacking the US and to project their influence back across the border into nuclear-armed Pakistan, she felt.

Curtis said Gen Petraeus' no-nonsense, methodical approach to assessing the US strategy in Afghanistan will be unwelcome to those hoping the American leaders would soon decide that the war is unwinnable and thus begin a rapid drawdown of US troops.


"It will also take the air out of the room for those calling on the US to strike a grand bargain with the Taliban leadership," she said while terming Gen Petraeus' leadership as reassuring.

"Rather than striking an early political deal with the Taliban before the new US counter-insurgency strategy has had time to bear fruit, Petraeus is focussed on 'reintegration' of Taliban at the local level.


"His distinction between 'reintegration' at the local level and 'reconciliation' with the top leadership will be welcomed by the Afghan people, most of whom do not support the Taliban's ideology but are incapable of resisting them on their own militarily," Curtis said.

Some Afghans worry that "a politically weak" Karzai will seek a deal with the Taliban leadership and Pakistan Army that would sacrifice Afghan national interests - particularly relating to rights of women and ethnic minorities -- to save his own skin, she said.


"The fundamental point is that any reintegration or reconciliation process should not legitimise the Taliban's ruthless ideology nor allow Afghanistan to backtrack from the gains it has made with regard to human rights and democracy over the last nine years," Curtis said.





http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/US-needs-to-scrap-July-2011-Afghan-deadline-Gen-David-Petraues/articleshow/6578635.cms#ixzz0zxkVtCrk

[lequebecfume]

Saturday, September 18, 2010

Obama for cooperation in counter-narcotics with Pakistan

* Obama says US govt support focuses especially on upgrading institutional capacity of Pakistan’s law enforcement agencies

WASHINGTON: Acknowledging Pakistan’s resolve to regain a poppy-free status soon, US President Barack Obama has reaffirmed the United States’ counter-narcotics cooperation with the key regional country.

“The Pakistan government remains concerned about opium poppy cultivation in Pakistan and is working towards an opium poppy-free status soon,” he said.

A joint US-Pakistan survey in 2009 estimated that 1,779 hectares of opium poppies were under cultivation in Pakistan, approximately 130 hectares less than was under cultivation in the country during the previous year, Obama noted in a memorandum for the US secretary of state.

The memorandum was a presidential determination on major illicit drug transit or major illicit drug producing countries for the fiscal year 2011.

“The range of US-Pakistan initiatives, which include programmes to defeat the insurgency on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border and prevent safe-havens for terrorists, have the spin-off effect of helping Pakistan to fortify its land borders and seacoast against drug trafficking and terrorists, support expanded regional cooperation, and encourage

Pakistan to return to an opium poppy-free status,” Obama said in the document released by the White House on Thursday.

Obama noted that the US government support “focuses especially on upgrading the institutional capacity of Pakistan’s law enforcement agencies”.

Pakistan has been identified as a major transit country for opiates and hashish for world markets, especially for narcotics originating in Afghanistan. According to the determination, Afghanistan remains the world’s largest producer of opium and a major source of heroin.

Other countries identified in the US list as major drug transit or major illicit drug-producing countries include The Bahamas, Bolivia, Burma, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, India, Jamaica, Laos, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, and Venezuela.

The presidential determination clarifies that “a country’s presence on the majors list is not necessarily an adverse reflection of its government’s counter narcotics efforts or level of cooperation with the US”.

Obama noted that Pakistan had “still been challenged by terrorist groups who have power over parts of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), particularly where most of Pakistan’s poppy is grown”.

The memorandum claims that these groups are also found in the settled areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa such as its capital, Peshawar, and the Swat valley and expresses the understanding that the Pakistan government is forced to divert law enforcement resources and equipment from poppy eradication efforts to address these incursions.

The memorandum says Afghanistan continues to be the world’s largest producer of opium and a major source of heroin.

app


http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2010%5C09%5C18%5Cstory_18-9-2010_pg7_12à



LEQ
DRY AND IN SHITTY PAIN TOO

[lequebecfume]

Can biofuels beat drugs crops and save lives in Afghanistan ?

By Dean Irvine, CNN
September 20, 2010 --

http://i.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2010/WORLD/asiapcf/09/16/afghanistan.biofuel.eco/t1larg.poppy.jpg
Is there a place for home-grown biofuels in Afghanistan ?



(CNN) -- Among environmentalists, biofuels are almost as divisive an issue as NATO military operations in Afghanistan are in wider public discussions.

Yet two American businessmen believe that home-grown biofuel in Afghanistan could be a "green" solution to some of the larger problems the country is experiencing including military casualties, energy security and the opium trade.

Wayne Arden, who has a background in technology and finance, and John Fox whose career has been in the renewable energy field, published a White Paper on producing and using biodiesel in Afghanistan earlier this summer.

While the authors discovered many benefits to a biofuel industry in Afghanistan the reason for their work came in December 2009 with news of more U.S. troops being sent to the country.

The advantages would be manifold. Less illicit poppy, less money to fuel narco-terrorism, and an impact on pollution.
--Marc Grossman, former U.S. diplomat

Environmental Issues and Protection


"The main customer here is the U.S. military so we want to make the logistics as easy as possible for them to use the biodiesel," Arden told CNN.

Arden and Fox suggest that casualties from protecting fuel convoys in the country (one death from every 24 convoys, according to their report) could be drastically reduced if home-grown biofuel was used in place of imported diesel.

With the creation of a biofuel plant near the military bases of allied forces around Kandahar, they also suggest the high cost of importing fuel used for military transportation and generators would be seriously reduced.

A medium-sized power plant, they say, would cost $90 million.
As well as the environmental benefit of reduced CO2, Arden and Fox argue biofuels would fit well with the U.S. military's $1.5 billion annual environmental program.

Whether Afghanistan's opium production -- estimated to be worth $2.8bn in 2009, and employing 1.6 million people, according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime -- could be switched to biofuel production is another question.

However prior to Arden and Fox's report there have been direct calls for poppies to be turned directly into green biofuel.

Marc Grossman, the former U.S. ambassador to Turkey, suggested in a report in July that counter-narcotics goals and environmental concerns could be matched by such a project.
"The advantages would be manifold: less illicit poppy, less money to fuel narco-terrorism, and perhaps some small impact on the amount of pollution put into the air by trucks in the region," Grossman wrote in a report for The German Marshall Fund for the United States.

Poppy seeds as a biomass for fuel are in limited production; the Macquarie Oil Company has a refinery in Tasmania, Australia that has produced biofuel to power agricultural vehicles.

Arden and Fox admit biofuels could have a role to play in reducing opium production but say that poppy seeds are not as good a biomass for fuel as other crops.


"You can extract oil from poppies and make diesel from it. The issue is it doesn't necessarily do the job of moving the country away from an illicit drugs trade," said Arden.

Instead the report authors suggest the use of a different crop, safflower, as the main biomass, as it native to Afghanistan, works almost as well as petroleum in cold weather and can be used as 100 percent biodiesel in generators.


"[Safflower] is very drought resistant. It doesn't use more water than poppy, which is the crop we're trying to replace," said Fox.

"And we expect unintended consequences. A case where a farmer could rip out a crop like wheat and plant safflower, or there's too much production and in that case if safflower oil is consumed, it is a very healthy oil."

Looking beyond the military action in Afghanistan, the white paper authors are confident biofuels would have future when allied troops left the country.


"The [proposed] plant is sized to provide electricity to 5,000 soldiers, but also it's also sized to provide biodiesel to the local electrical utilities that are currently using petroleum diesel. Someday the U.S. military will leave, but that plant can still serve the region," said Arden.


http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/asiapcf/09/16/afghanistan.biofuel.eco/index.html


LEQ

OH ! GRRRRRRRRR!

THERE IS A GLUT OF OPIUM ON THE INTERNATIONAL SCENE FOR MEDICAL USE OF THOSE WITH CHRONIC PAIN !

HOW CAN ANYONE THINK THIS WOULD BE A BETTER SOLUTION THAN LEGALIZING AND REGUALITY OPIUM THERE AND PAYING THE FARMERS THERE A JUST PRICE FOR THE ONLY CROP THAT DOES GROW THERE !

[lequebecfume]

Opium price jump may tempt back Afghan farmers

UN fears price surge due to squeeze in supply could drive farmers back to opium cultivation



Mark Tran
guardian.co.uk,
Thursday 30 September 2010 09.49 BST

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/About/General/2010/9/30/1285836534154/Opium-poppies-in-Afghanis-006.jpg
Opium production in Afghanistan is down 48% from last year due to a plant infection, leading to a steep rise in prices.

Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

Soaring opium prices in Afghanistan this year may encourage farmers to go back to opium cultivation, the UN office on drugs and crime warned today.


The sharp rise in prices followed a slump in production due to a plant infection that hit the main poppy-growing provinces of Helmand and Kandahar particularly hard. Both provinces are Taliban strongholds. Opium production in Afghanistan this year is estimated at 3,600 tonnes, down 48% from 2009, according to the UN agency's 2010 opium survey on Afghanistan.


As a result of the squeeze in supply, the average farm-gate price of dry opium jumped to $169 (£106) a kilo, a 164% increase over last year, when the price was $64 a kilo. The total estimated farm-gate income in 2010 of opium-growing farmers was $604m, compared with $438m last year. Such high prices have not been seen since 2004, when disease also struck the poppy crop.


This year's steep price rise followed a steady decline in prices between 2005 and 2009, which dissuaded farmers from growing opium. The sudden surge in prices may reverse that trend, UN officials fear, particularly as prices are low for wheat, an important alternative crop. The opium crop is of direct concern to Nato troops as the Taliban use money from opium trade.



"We are concerned that in combination with the high price of opium, a low wheat price may also drive farmers back to opium cultivation," said Yury Fedotov, a former Russian deputy foreign minister who became executive director of the UN office on drugs and crime earlier this year.


The current opium blight attacks the root of the plant, climbing up the stem and causing the opium capsule to wither away.


Now that opium is commanding high prices again, the gross income for farmers per hectare has jumped by 36% to $4,900.


Afghanistan produces 92% of the world's opium. Cultivation is at its most intense in the south, where the Taliban are at their strongest. Helmand accounts for 53% of total opium cultivation in Afghanistan. Kandahar, where Nato forces have moved against Taliban forces as part of Operation Dragon Strike, is the only province in southern Afghanistan that has shown a significant rise in cultivation.


This year poppy eradication fell to its lowest level since UN monitoring started five years ago. Eradication teams suffered 28 deaths in 2010 against 21 last year. This has been the bloodiest year for Nato forces since 2001, when US-led forces overthrew the Taliban in the weeks after the September 11 attacks on the US.


Fedotov called for a comprehensive strategy to deal with opium cultivation that would involve a strengthening of the rule of law, and security and development.



"Corruption and drug trafficking feed upon each other and undermine any development effort in Afghanistan," he said.
"We must continue to encourage the Afghan government to crack down on corruption."



http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/30/opium-price-afghanistan-farmers



LEQ

LEGALIZE OPIUM IN AFGANISTAN and PAY THE FARMERS FAIR TRADE PRICE

[lequebecfume]

Opium crop grows near troop base

Dan Oakes
October 12, 2010

MORE than half the fields surrounding the main Australian base in Afghanistan are being used to grow opium poppies, as coalition forces struggle to ween locals off the lucrative crop.

Locals question why troops and police have failed to crack down on the semi-open sale of the poppies, according to the report of a respected non-governmental organisation.

While the allied forces in Oruzgan province have had some success in convincing locals to grow wheat, fruit and saffron, opium poppies are still the province's biggest cash crop.



''Locals find it hard to comprehend why military forces or Afghan National Police have not intervened into poppy cultivation or sale so close to the district centre of Tarin Kowt, and blame it on corruption,'' The Liaison Office says in its report, which analyses the four years of Dutch control of the province.


''There are indeed allegations that several pro-government strongmen, and not just the insurgency, are involved in the drug trade."

''Furthermore, the fact that there are semi-open poppy bazaars in both Deh Rawud and Tarin Kowt adds to the perception of impunity.''

As long as opium fetches higher prices than other crops, the report says, it will be difficult to stamp out.

Meanwhile, a prominent academic has accused the federal government and opposition of exaggerating progress of the war in Afghanistan, which he instead compared to a quagmire of Vietnam War proportions.

Professor Amin Saikal, director of the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies, lashed out at the US strategy in Afghanistan in a speech at the Australian National University last night.

The stated aim of Australia's troop deployment was to train the Afghan national army in Oruzgan province, but Professor Saikal said it would be years before the Afghan army could engage in a major battle on its own because of internal ethnic divisions.
''How many troops have we trained in Oruzgan that have been proven to be reliable?'' he asked.

The evidence pointed to the situation continuing to favour the Taliban and its supporters, including Pakistan's military intelligence agency, he said.


''The Australian government and the opposition are exaggerating the level of Australia's achievement in Afghanistan,'' he said in an interview with The Age.

Professor Saikal said the political system in Afghanistan needed massive reform to create an institution the majority of Afghan people could identify with. The corruption of the current parliament meant more people were likely to identify with the Taliban.

''The Taliban's projection of themselves as the forceful defender of faith, country and honour, as well as provider of better security and living conditions, has increasingly gained wider … resonance among the Afghan people,'' he said.

Professor Saikal said the number of US and NATO troops in Afghanistan now surpassed the troop levels of the Soviet Union during its decade-long occupation.

With KIRSTY NEEDHAM


http://www.theage.com.au/national/opium-crop-grows-near-troop-base-20101011-16g0l.html

[lequebecfume]

October 19, 2010 3:31 PM

Weaning Afghan Farmers off Opium Will Take Time

Posted by Terry McCarthy

http://i.i.com.com/cnwk.1d/i/tim/2010/10/19/shura.wide.jpg
The Marines, the Afghan Army, and local elders discuss whether or not to plant poppy in Gorgak, Afghanistan. (Credit: CBS)

As part of our continuing coverage of "Afghanistan: the Road Ahead," - CBS News correspondent Terry McCarthy follows the Third Battalion, First Marines at home, and abroad in Afghanistan.


When we first came to Garmsir in southern Helmand with the 3/1 Marines in April, there were poppy fields everywhere. Each patrol we went out on, we tramped through fields of the recently harvested plant, the bulbs scored diagonally to allow the resin to ooze out. After a couple of weeks the farmers returned to gather seeds from the dried-out pods and set them aside for the next planting season. That starts next month if they go ahead and plant poppy again.


In the village of Gorgak we went to a "shura", or meeting, between the Marines, the Afghan Army, and local elders to discuss that very issue. The district governor has said that he will not allow any poppy to be grown this year, and will eradicate any poppies that are planted. The Marines are more cautious - they say they will not destroy crops in the field, but will confiscate any large stashes of opium that they find. The concern is that over the years growing opium poppy has become a way of life in Helmand, supporting many farmers and their families. To simply forbid the growing of poppy without providing any alternative source of income will alienate many of the farmers, potentially pushing them back into the embrace of the Taliban.


The shura in Gorgak was well-attended - some 65 local elders turned up, all of them curious to find out how the new anti-opium policy would be implemented. USAID was offering seed packets for the farmers to grow vegetables instead - which may be of some use to them, but at most would help supply their own household food needs. Without any real infrastructure yet for storing and then transporting agricultural produce to market, few farmers stand to make any actual money from growing vegetables as cash crops.


Growing opium, on the other hand, is easy. The Taliban will supply farmers with seeds, and will give them cash advances against their future crop. The poppies require little water, and once the opium resin is harvested it can be stored for long periods of time without refrigeration. Blocks of opium resin - compact and easy to carry - can be used as currency in much of the area. The Taliban will pick up the opium from the farmer and take it themselves across the border to Pakistan, where much of it is refined into heroin for shipment and sale around the world. More than 80 percent of the world's heroin originates in Afghanistan.


The farmers are caught in a bind - they don't like being dependent on the Taliban for their income, and they are aware that growing opium goes against the Koran. But they also have families to support, and it is undeniably true that the poppy is perfectly suited to the arid climate of southern Helmand. The big opium/heroin traders may be invidious, but the farmers at the beginning of the chain are simply trying to survive.


At the shura, the elders all nodded at the imprecations against growing opium, their faces as inscrutable as their intentions. The Marines will not know for a couple of months how much poppy will be planted this year - the most they are hoping for is a reduction from last season. They expect that less opium will be grown in the north of the district, which was cleared of Taliban first, and that more will be grown in areas to the south, where the Taliban held sway until recently and still have some residual influence.


Perhaps the main lesson is that the opium poppy is not the root of the problem, it is merely a symptom. In areas under Taliban control, where there is little freedom of movement, it makes sense to grow opium. But in areas where the government is in control, where merchants and trucks can move freely, where farmers have access to seeds, where irrigation is properly managed, where there is an infrastructure for storing produce - even refrigerating it if necessary - then it makes sense to grow other crops. Weaning the farmers off opium will take some time. They have been doing it for 30 years. The elders at the shura all listened politely to the official message banning opium growing - but they will make up their minds on opium according to their own self-interest. It will be interesting to see how many pink poppy flowers grace the fields of Garmsir next spring.


http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503543_162-20020079-503543.html

[lequebecfume]

Afghans wonder why opium crackdown has not worked

Dan Oakes
DEFENCE CORRESPONDENT
October 12, 2010

http://images.smh.com.au/2010/10/11/1980150/australian_soldier_oruzgan1-420x0.jpg

Continued growth ... an Australian soldier on patrol in Sorkh Morghab, Oruzgan province, whose main crop is poppies. Photo: Neil Ruskin

MORE than half the fields in the area surrounding the main Australian base in Afghanistan are growing opium poppies, as coalition forces struggle to wean locals off the lucrative crop.


Afghans have apparently questioned why troops and police have failed to crack down on the semi-open sale of the poppies, according to a non-governmental organisation.


Allied forces in Oruzgan province have had some success in convincing locals to grow wheat, fruit and saffron, but opium poppies are still the province's biggest cash crop.


The Liaison Office says in its report: ''Locals find it hard to comprehend why military forces or Afghan National Police have not intervened into poppy cultivation on sale so close to the district centre of Tarin Kowt, and blame it on corruption.


''There are indeed allegations that several pro-government strongmen, and not just the insurgency, are involved in the drug trade."


''Furthermore, the fact that there are semi-open poppy bazaars in both Deh Rawud and Tarin Kowt adds to the perception of impunity.''

The report says that as long as opium fetches higher prices than other crops, it will be difficult to stamp it out. But locals in Tarin Kowt have said that more farmers would be growing opium if the coalition forces had not provided them with alternative crops.

Locals have also said the recent floods in wheat-producing areas of Pakistan represent an opportunity to steer farmers towards other crops, as the world price of wheat will undoubtedly rise.

The report was more optimistic about the general economic conditions in the three of Oruzgan's seven provinces controlled by the coalition forces. It points to the growth of the number of businesses in Tarin Kowt bazaar from 900 to 2000 within the past four years covered in the report, which analyses the period of Dutch control of the province.

There has also been a doubling in the number of media outlets in the province, with five radio stations, a TV station and two combined TV and radio stations broadcasting, and every district is connected to a mobile phone network.


http://www.smh.com.au/world/afghans-wonder-why-opium-crackdown-has-not-worked-20101011-16fys.html

[lequebecfume]

Hamid Karzai criticises Russian drug raid


Hamid Karzai has accused Russia of breaking international law by sending its own drugs agents on a raid against drug laboratories inside Afghanistan which seized large quantities of heroin.

By Ben Farmer in Kabul
Published: 6:35PM GMT 31 Oct 2010

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/telegraph/multimedia/archive/01750/hamir_1750635c.jpg
Hamid Karzai's palace released an angry statement following the raid
Photo: AFP/GETTY


The Afghan president said the joint American and Russian raid on four laboratories in Nangahar province on Thursday was unsanctioned and violated Afghan sovereignty.


Moscow officials said they were baffled by the angry response, maintaining the operation had taken place with Kabul’s knowledge.


Following the raid, Mr Karzai’s palace released an angry statement claiming:
“Such unilateral operations are a clear violation of Afghan sovereignty as well as international law, and any repetition will be met by the required reaction from our side.”


The Russian embassy in Kabul however said the raid, which seized more than 2,000lb of heroin from four separate drug laboratories, had been planned for three months with Afghan assistance.


A source at the Russian federal anti-narcotics agency said the outburst from Kabul was “not very understandable” while a source within the Kremlin dismissed it as “incomprehensible”.
Moscow regularly blames Nato for weak and ineffective drug policies in Afghanistan which it says are to blame for an epidemic of heroin use across Russia.


Afghanistan supplies more than 90 per cent of the world’s opium and Afghan heroin kills more than 30,000 Russians each year.


Ties between Moscow and Kabul have strengthened in recent years as Russia seeks to re exert its influence as Nato forces leave. However memories of the 1980s Russian occupation mean the Russian presence is still controversial.


Alexey Milovanov, representative of the Russian anti-drugs service in Kabul, said the operation was conducted by the Afghan government and Russians
“simply acted as advisers, according to an agreement between our two countries permitting the presence of Russian advisers during a drug raid.”



http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/8100478/Hamid-Karzai-criticises-Russian-drug-raid.html

[lequebecfume]

29 October 2010

Russia and US collaborate in Afghanistan drug raid

Russian and US agents have taken part in a joint operation to destroy drug laboratories in Afghanistan, the head of Russia's drug control agency says.


http://www.cnn.com/video/world/2009/12/03/magnay.afghan.opium.trade.iran.cnn.640x480.jpg

More than a tonne of heroin and opium was seized during the raids, which took place on Thursday close to the border with Pakistan, Viktor Ivanov announced.

Mr Ivanov said the haul had a street value of $250m (£157m) and was believed to have been destined for Central Asia.

Correspondents say it is the first time there has been such a joint operation.

Russian officials have in the past accused coalition forces in Afghanistan of doing "next to nothing" to tackle drug production, and thereby helping to sustain the estimated 2.5 million heroin addicts in Russia alone.

Much of the heroin enters the territory of the former Soviet Union through Afghanistan's northern borders with Tajikistan and Turkmenistan.

It then travels westwards across Kazakhstan, before entering the central and Ural regions of Russia, where there are large numbers of addicts.

'Major hub'
Mr Ivanov said the operation involved about 70 personnel from both countries - including four Russian counter-narcotics agents - backed up by attack helicopters.


Afghanistan produces 90% of the world's opium, the main ingredient in heroin

They were on the ground for several hours, destroying a "major hub" for the production of heroin, located in a mountainous area about 5km (three miles) from the Pakistani border near the eastern city of Jalalabad, he said.

Along with 932kg (2,055lb) of high-grade heroin and 156kg (345lb) of morphine, a large amount of technical equipment was destroyed.

Mr Ivanov said the raids were based on intelligence Russia had shared with the US, and that he wanted to increase co-operation in the fight against drug trafficking.


"We are ready and we want to send an additional number of our officers for posting to the international information centres functioning in Kabul, Bagram and Kandahar," he said.

The BBC's Richard Galpin in Moscow says the joint operation is yet another sign of Russia's growing involvement in Afghanistan.

Since the two countries decided to reset their relations, Russia has allowed its territory to be used as a supply route for US and Nato forces in Afghanistan, our correspondent says.

It is now also offering to provide military equipment for the Afghan army.



http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-11651469

[lequebecfume]

Afghanistan jails 11 officials over drugs charges

Mon Nov 1, 2010 10:51am EDT
By Sayed Salahuddin

KABUL (Reuters) - Under pressure to combat endemic corruption and the rich trade in illicit drugs, Afghanistan announced on Monday it had jailed 11 government officials including a senior policeman for links with the narcotics trade.

Afghanistan has long been the producer of about 90 percent of the world's opium, a thick paste harvested from poppies to produce heroin. U.S. and Afghan officials worry that profits from the industry are used to fuel Afghanistan's raging insurgency.

Corruption and weak governance are also seen as threats to Afghanistan's stability and will likely weigh heavily on deliberations at a NATO summit next month and when U.S. President Barack Obama reviews his Afghanistan war strategy next month.

Afghanistan ranked 176th, ahead of only Somalia, in Transparency International's corruption index issued last month.

Releasing its latest quarterly figures, the Afghan Criminal Justice Task Force (CJTF), formed specifically to deal with the narcotics trade, said it had jailed 155 people, among them 11 government officials, in the past three months.

The most senior of the 11 was a police general in charge of several provinces in Afghanistan's northwest bordering Turkmenistan and Iran, CJTF spokesman Khalil Ul-Rahman Mutawakil told a news conference in Kabul.

The general, identified only as Molhem, was jailed for 10 years over links to the drugs trade. Other officials were given sentences of up to 18 years and heavy fines, another CJTF official said.


"No doubt that those people who have not been arrested in this case and are involved will be prosecuted if evidence and proof are obtained against them," Mutawakil said

Last year, the CJTF tried nearly 600 people, including several dozen government officials, among them an army general, on drugs charges, he said.

Kabul has been under pressure from Western allies fighting the resurgent Taliban to crack down on the drugs trade, which nets the Taliban millions of dollars a year.

Last week, U.S. and Russian officials trumpeted a joint counter-narcotics raid with Afghan forces in eastern Nangarhar province that destroyed four drug laboratories and almost a metric ton of heroin.

The unprecedented raid was hailed as the result of efforts to improve ties between the United States and Russia, which has a huge drug problem and may be seeking to increase its influence in Afghanistan.

However, Afghan President Hamid Karzai condemned the raid as a violation of Afghanistan's sovereignty and demanded an explanation. Russian involvement in Afghanistan is still a sensitive issue. Soviet forces occupied the country for a decade up to 1989.

(Editing by Paul Tait and Alex Richardson)


http://ca.reuters.com/article/topNews/idCATRE6A01AE20101101

[lequebecfume]

Afghanistan poppy production could skyrocket due to spike in prices, drought


NEW DELHI – Monitors are warning that 2011 may see a surge in Afghanistan’s poppy production as high prices at the farm gate, coupled with a crippling drought that has ravaged wheat production, provide powerful incentives for farmers to grow the outlawed crop.


While poppy provides Afghan farmers some security net from war and drought, money from the trafficking helps finance insurgents and fuel corruption inside the government. Sap from the colorful bulbs is used to make narcotics such as opium and heroin.


Afghan farmers planted the same amount of poppy in 2010 as the previous year, but the United Nations raised concerns this week that rising poppy prices will push up production in 2011. The farm-gate price of dry opium jumped 164 percent in 2010.


“We cannot continue business as usual,” Yuri Fedotov, executive director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), said in a statement accompanying the Jan. 20 release of his office’s 2010 opium survey.
“If this cash bonanza lasts, it could effectively reverse the hard-won gains of recent years.”


Prices spike, but only in Afghanistan


Cultivation of poppy has fallen by a third since the highpoint of 2007, driven partly by declining prices from 2005 to 2009. Those years also saw international spending to boost licit agriculture and markets, changes in the security landscape, as well as a temporary – and controversial – spike in eradication efforts in 2006 and 2007. As such, Afghanistan's share of the global opium supply dropped to 80 percent in 2009 from 90 percent in 2008.

The falling prices ended last year, as traffickers paid more at the farm gate for poppy due to a blight that sent yields tumbling by 49 percent. Yet the sale price of opiates on the other side of Afghanistan’s borders did not jump nearly as much.



“This could indicate that traffickers’ revenues are down,” the UNODC report found.


Not everyone seems to agree. Afghanistan’s deputy counter-narcotics minister, Mohammad Ebrahim Azhar, has claimed that insurgents earned $602 million in 2010 from the trade, up from $430 the previous year, according to Pajhwok Afghan News.


Nobody really knows how much the insurgents make on the drug trade, says Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy, author of “Opium: Uncovering the politics of the poppy,” from Harvard University Press. A 2009 Congressional report pointed out miscalculations in UNODC figures, with US intelligence estimating poppy revenues at $70 million a year.


It is plausible that farm-gate prices – but not cross-border prices – rose rapidly.


“It takes time
for the price of opiates outside Afghanistan to increase, and the farm-gate price hike is never completely passed at the wholesale or retail market,” says Chouvy. Sales from stockpiles could also have curbed price rises, he adds.


Ongoing drought is incentive to plant poppy


But if the price differential is partly a time lag, this year could be a feast for traffickers, especially if farmers rush to grow poppy this winter, bringing the farm-gate prices down with rising supply.


And farmers may do just that. First, the currently high farm-gate prices make the crop more attractive. Drought conditions are an added incentive, warns Azhar.



“When farmers buy water or when they bring water from somewhere else, it is very expensive for them and they do not make good profit to grow legitimate crops,” he said, according to a Noor TV translation from BBC Monitoring.

Poppy not only fetches higher prices, but requires less water than many crops.



“Opium production is largely resorted to as a way to cope with food insecurity,” says Chouvy. Poor wheat yields spur greater poppy cultivation in the winter, which is what may be happening now.
“Less wheat means more opium both because opium is needed to buy wheat and because the price of wheat rises and requires more opium to pay for it.”


These variables are all constantly in flux, however, complicating both predictions and short-term responses.


One solution: raise wages


Fedotov with the UNODC urged the international community to continue investing in alternative livelihood programs as well as efforts to improve security and fight corruption.


While Chouvy emphasizes that the problem requires decades of effort, he says some near-term approaches include raising employment and wages, which puts competitive pressure on the labor-intensive cultivation of poppy.



“The best way to kill poppy is to put laborers into other jobs,” agrees Allison Brown, an agricultural expert in Afghanistan.


She adds that poppy is not a no-brainer for farmers, whose decisions can be shifted by seasonal and market dynamics.
“If poppy were such a sure-fire cash earner then Afghans would be growing it all year round. They don’t because lots of other crops make more money in the summer.”


http://www.tehrantimes.com/index_View.asp?code=234616

[420grower]

amazing that this continues,who's paying the graft to keep this industry alive,wow

[lequebecfume]

Customs officers seize opium at LAX

January 25, 2011



Customs officials at Los Angeles International Airport confiscated 8 pounds of opium, the second seizure of the drug at the facility in little over a week, authorities said Tuesday.

The opium, valued at $52,000, was found late last week hidden in the linings of two suitcases belonging to a 28-year-old citizen arriving from Amsterdam, the Department of Homeland Security said.

The suitcases were unusually heavy, federal authorities said, and officers found five packages wrapped in carbon paper and cellophane. The man was arrested and turned over to federal officials.

On Jan. 13, an Iranian national was arrested at LAX after officers found nearly 5 pounds of opium hidden in a false bottom of a handbag, according to federal authorities.


http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2011/01/customs-officers-seize-opium-at-lax.html

[lequebecfume]

Opium prices threaten campaign on Afghan drug production: UN
APP
January 21, 2011 (6 days ago)



http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2006/09/03/world/03afghan.600.gif


"Afghan traffickers are heavily involved in shipping opiates - morphine and heroin - abroad, notably to Iran and Pakistan." —



UNITED NATIONS: Rising opium prices may encourage farmers in Afghanistan to plant more narcotic crop, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said in a survey released on Thursday, warning that the higher prices could reverse recent gains in the fight against drug production in the Asian country.


The 2010 Afghanistan Opium Survey says that the soaring prices are the result of market speculation that there will be shortages because of the opium blight that reduced production by half last year, and ongoing military operations which have created uncertainty among opium farmers regarding future cultivation.

“There is a cause for concern. The market responded to the steep drop in opium production with an equally dramatic jump in the market price to more than double 2009 levels,” said Yury Fedotov, the Executive Director of UNODC.

“We cannot continue business as usual,”he said, noting that the prices were rising again after a steady decline from 2005 to 2009. “If this cash bonanza lasts, it could effectively reverse the hard-won gains of recent years.”

The cause of the decline in production was a naturally occurring plant disease that ravaged the crop in Afghanistan’s major opium poppy-growing provinces of Helmand and Kandahar. Poppy-growing households have seen a cash windfall.

In 2010, the average farm-gate price of dry opium at harvest time was $169 per kilogram b a 164 per cent increase over 2009, when the price was $64 per kilo. Despite the drop in production, the gross income per hectare of opium cultivated increased by 36 per cent to $4,900.

The average annual income of opium-growing households in 2009 was 17 per cent higher than for households that had stopped opium cultivation. However, the dramatic opium price increases at the local level did not translate into similar price increases in neighbouring countries, according to the UNODC report.

Afghan traffickers are heavily involved in shipping opiates – morphine and heroin – abroad, notably to Iran and Pakistan, and to a lesser extent, Central Asia. As a result of falling production and stable cross-border prices, funding from the opium economy to Afghan criminal groups halved in 2010. The total value of exported opium and heroin was $1.4 billion, compared with $2.9 billion in 2009 – a 50 per cent drop.

The gross export value in 2010 amounted to 11 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP), compared to 26 per cent in 2009.

On the positive side, rural development has encouraged the cultivation of licit crops, and this year, a distinct correlation was seen between the provision of agricultural assistance and a drop in opium cultivation. Giving farmers access to markets also helped them shift away from opium poppy cultivation. In villages located close to agricultural markets, farmers planted less poppy crop than in those that had no access to markets.

“We encourage donors and the Afghan community to continue to invest in alternative livelihood programmes and increase market access for farmers. But security, stability and an environment free of corruption remain the key elements to making such initiatives effective and sustainable,” said Fedotov.

http://www.dawn.com/2011/01/21/rising-opium-prices-threaten-campaign-against-afghan-drug-production-un.html





LEQ ZEPPELIN

[Shadimar]

Customs officers seize opium at LAX Rather unusual to find Opium itself at customs as it's an average of 10% morphine so it only amounts to a 2oz seizure of purified alkaloid. I guess this shows there's a market for the latex.

I'd trust it over a narcotic tablet any day of the year. If you check the drug profiles of morphine and the semi/fully synthetic opioids, morphine usually comes out on top as far as overall safety and effectiveness, outclassed in potency by drugs such as oxycodone and fentanyl. Opium carries with it other alkaloids which reduce blood pressure and relax muscles. Something like how Cannabis is better than THC caps.

In the US Darvon was pulled from the market after years and years of pressure. Darvocet accounts for 1/3rd of drug overdoses in Florida and the paracetamol in it does lasting damage to the liver. The UK has pulled it from being prescribed to any new patients for some time now. And this is just one synthetic, imagine the rest.

The one odd thing I noticed, while reading about the Darvon/Darvocet ban, most of the articles I read mentioned the alternatives Tramadol (causes siezures and is an opioid SSRI)and Hydrocodone but seemingly forgot completely about Codeine (3-methyl M), which interestingly many people are unaware owes its activity to metabolism to morphine (and morphine in turn to Morphine-6-glucuronide).


In 2010, the average farm-gate price of dry opium at harvest time was $169 per kilogramAccording to Wikipedia, the retail price of Rx opium is $16,000 per kilo ($3,000 wholesale). The average cost from Indian licensed farmers is $29 per kilo. I was surprised to read that as it basically means someone is making HUGE profits with the blessing of world governments.

I also can't help but remember reading about how Afghan warlords were said to have been hoarding opium in order to keep prices up, now we see that although yields were down prices have not risen at retail because stockpiles are being tapped to make up the difference.

I say just license it already, they're obviously good at what they do and I'm sure the farmers would appreciate a reliable customer and pay raise.. but then again if big pharma can get Indian opium at $29 a kilo then we won't see that happen any time soon.

[lequebecfume]

31 January 2011

Afghan opium poppy crop: Mixed results from drugs war

By David Loyn
BBC international development correspondent

http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/49310000/jpg/_49310199_010301263-1.jpg
Afghanistan produces 90% of the world's opium, the main ingredient in heroin


The growing of opium poppies in the Afghan provinces of Helmand and Kandahar is predicted to be down for the second year running.

But a UN drugs forecast released on Monday says that poppy growing will increase elsewhere in Afghanistan.

Forecasting the Afghan crop is a tricky business, and the groundwork for this UN survey is based on the sample of only a few villages in each province.

But matched with satellite imaging, it suggests poppy growing will spread.

And that spread this year will even extend into provinces that had become poppy-free in recent years.

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has (http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/frontpage/2011/January/high-opium-prices-threaten-drug-control-efforts-of-recent-years.html?ref=fs2)expressed concern in particular about a predicted increase in Nangahar, a large province bordering Pakistan where poppy growing had been all but eradicated in recent years.

It is a strange market that does not conform to usual market forces.

Although the price to farmers more than doubled last year to $164 a kilogram - because of a cut in output caused by crop disease - the price paid by buyers abroad did not go up.

Silver lining


"When you see more conflict, when you see more poverty, you will see more opium cultivation”

http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/51037000/jpg/_51037243_51037242.jpg
Jean Luc Lemahieu
UNODC head in Kabul

So Afghanistan's drug barons were squeezed in the middle.

The higher prices paid to farmers played a big part in encouraging more to plant this year.

The UN survey predicts more planting across a wide swathe of central Afghanistan - from Herat and Ghor in the west to the provinces east of Kabul along the Pakistan border.

Their forecast for the northern region will come out later in the year, as the season starts later in the north.

The predicted rise in poppy planting tallies with other evidence suggesting that the Taliban insurgency has spread across a wider region of the country.

The UNODC's head in Kabul, Jean Luc Lemahieu, said tough measures were needed so that the forecast did not become a reality.


"When you see more conflict, when you see more poverty, you will see more opium cultivation. That is why we continue saying this is not business as usual. We need to put extraordinary measures in place today," he said.

The silver lining in the forecast is that for the third year running, Helmand's crop is forecast to reduce this year - and for the second year, Kandahar too will grow fewer poppies.

Foreign troops

http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/51039000/gif/_51039481_afghan_provinces_loyn_31.01.11.gif

These two provinces are by far the largest poppy-growing regions in Afghanistan - accounting for more than a third of the world's opium between them.


The surge of US troops along with British troops in the main population centres in Helmand played a big part, as did weather conditions - too cold and dry at the time farmers wanted to plant.

But the deputy head of the British mission in Helmand, Leo Tomlin, said the forecast showed that a set of policies were working.

They include public information, strong leadership from the Governor Gulab Mangal, tougher policing and better job opportunities.

"It's almost an aligning of the stars. That's also why counter-narcotics takes a long time. It's not something you can start one year and expect to see immediate results," he said.

"It's something that needs a long-term investment, a continued investment with a very similar type of predictable programme."

Even these predicted reductions will leave more than 65,000 hectares under cultivation for poppies in Helmand and some 25,000 hectares in Kandahar.

It may have been pushed onto marginal land, out of sight, but it still remains a potent threat to stability and security in Afghanistan.




http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-12329142



LEQ

and again,

there is a glut of opium on the international markets that is used to synthesize to pharmaceuticals , meaning chronic pain patients have to wait longer delais...

Legalize , Regulate , Educate and Maedicate