The Opium Wars in Afghanistan (Alfred W. McCoy)

[Octafish]

The Opium Wars in Afghanistan

Can Anyone Pacify the World's Number One Narco-State?

by Alfred W. McCoy
Published on Wednesday, March 31, 2010 by TomDispatch.com

EXCERPT...

After a year of cautious debate and costly deployments, President Obama finally launched his new Afghan war strategy at 2:40 am on February 13, 2010, in a remote market town called Marja in southern Afghanistan's Helmand Province. As a wave of helicopters descended on Marja's outskirts spitting up clouds of dust, hundreds of U.S. Marines dashed <1> through fields sprouting opium poppies toward the town's mud-walled compounds.

After a week of fighting, U.S. war commander General Stanley A. McChrystal choppered into town with Afghanistan's vice-president and Helmand's provincial governor. Their mission: a media roll-out for the general's new-look counterinsurgency strategy based on bringing government to remote villages just like Marja.

At a carefully staged meet-and-greet with some 200 villagers, however, the vice-president and provincial governor faced some unexpected, unscripted anger. "If they come with tractors," one Afghani widow announced <2> to a chorus of supportive shouts from her fellow farmers, "they will have to roll over me and kill me before they can kill my poppy."

SNIP...

These three eras of almost constant warfare fueled a relentless rise in Afghanistan's opium harvest -- from just 250 tons in 1979 to 8,200 tons <6> in 2007. For the past five years, the Afghan opium harvest has accounted for as much as 50% of the country's gross domestic product (GDP) and provided the prime ingredient for over 90% of the world's heroin supply.

<7>The ecological devastation and societal dislocation from these three war-torn decades has woven opium so deeply into the Afghan grain that it defies solution by Washington's best and brightest (as well as its most inept and least competent). Caroming between ignoring the opium crop and demanding its total eradication, the Bush administration dithered for seven years while heroin boomed, and in doing so helped create a drug economy that corrupted and crippled the government of its ally, President Karzai. In recent years, opium farming has supported <8> 500,000 Afghan families, nearly 20% of the country's estimated population, and funds <9> a Taliban insurgency that has, since 2006, spread across the countryside.

CONTINUED...

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/03/31-0

For those new to the subject: Dr. McCoy is a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of history, author of The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia. That work spotlighted the United States' dilemma of historic proportions in Vietnam, Laos and that war-torn region: Secret Government, money, power and control. We the People would be wise to pay heed to what he has to say about the parallels to our current situation.

[Echo In Light]

1. Prof Peter Dale Scott: Obama and Afghanistan: America’s Drug-Corrupted War

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?aid=16713&context=va

[Lilith Velkor]

2. Rec 5 + kick

[fascisthunter]

3. I will not forget what an insider told me

he and other soldiers were to go out and burn poppie fields. Most were relatively small in comparison to a field they had come across. Once the soldiers had reported the large field, they were told emphatically to stop! The field was owned by an Afghan with power!

This ex-soldiers claim seems very plausible from what little I have already read.

[troubledamerican]

8. More than plausible

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x8074242#8078920

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x8074242#8078925

[frylock]

4. knr

[Robb]

5. It's a long path to get there, but I sort of support his conclusions.

I think it's unrealistic to attempt a rural rebuilding like he's advocating without some semblance of security. Whether we can be the ones to bring that security is open for debate, of course, and he does talk about a staged withdrawal and parallel rebuilding/planting/what-have-you effort. We can only hope the political will for that second part is there as it wasn't in 1989.

Really good read, thanks for posting. K&R.

[troubledamerican]

6. Damning: NATO rejects Russia's demands to destroy Afghan poppy fields. WHY?

NATO rejects Russia’s demand to destroy Afghan poppy fields

28 March 2010

NATO and Russia clashed on 24 March over how to tackle the drug problem in Afghanistan, where Western nations have been fighting a Taliban-led insurgency for eight years. The country is the world’s largest producer of poppy seeds, a key ingredient in the manufacture of heroin. Russia is keen to pursue an aggressive eradication strategy, while Western allies fear that such an approach risks antagonizing the local population, who rely on selling poppy crops to survive, Deutsche Presse-Agentur (dpa) reported.

The different points of view came to a head at a meeting of the NATO-Russia Council attended by the head of Russia’s Federal Drug Control Agency (FSKN), Victor Ivanov and NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen. “Afghan opiates led to the death of 1 million people by overdose in the last 10 years, and that is United Nations data. Is that not a threat to world peace and security?” Ivanov asked journalists after the meeting.

In his speech to NATO diplomats, a copy of which was handed to the press, Ivanov stressed that “NATO is fully responsible for normalizing the situation in Afghanistan, including the elimination of drug production.”

The Russian official presented a seven-point plan that foresees, among other things, an extension of the UN mandate for NATO troops in Afghanistan that would oblige them to eradicate poppy fields, as well as targeting the Taliban-led insurgency. Ivanov said at least 25 per cent of the opium crop should be destroyed as part of the proposed joint NATO-Russia plan. He added that Marjah, the former Taliban stronghold that NATO troops cleared in recent weeks, offered a “unique opportunity” to start the effort.

But NATO spokesman James Appathurai indicated that allies were not ready to follow Russia’s suggestions. “We cannot be in a situation where we remove the only source of income for people who live in the second poorest country in the world without being able to provide them an alternative. That is simply not possible,” he told journalists. However, he stressed that there was “a very positive mood” in the talks with Ivanov and said that the two sides agreed to boost an already existing program that involves joint training of Afghan counter-narcotics police.

Heroin addiction is a big problem for Russia. According to figures cited in Ivanov’s speech, Russia was the single largest consumer of heroin in 2008, with 21 per cent of world production ending up in its territory. “In Russia up to 30,000 people are killed annually from Afghan drugs ... almost every family in Russia has been affected,” the head of the FSKN stated.

http://www.neurope.eu/articles/NATO-rejects-Russias-demand-to-destroy-Afghan-poppy-fields/99913.php

[troubledamerican]

7. Damning: Russia Says U.S. Aiding Afghan Heroin Trade

Russia: U.S. Aiding Afghan Drug Trade

March 28, 2010

Russia has accused the United States of "conniving" with Afghan drug producers by not destroying opium crops as U.S. troops advance in Helmand Province, one of the major opium growing regions.

The allegation, which came in a statement from the Russian Foreign Ministry, was the second time this week that Moscow has criticized the West over the opium issue. NATO rejected the charge and said Russia could help by providing more troops to combat the insurgency.

U.S. Marines in Helmand Province have told villagers that they will not destroy this year's crops. In the Taliban stronghold of Marjah, which was captured by U.S. troops last month, the U.S. offered to pay poppy farmers to destroy their own crops and provide seed for them to plant other crops next year.

Afghanistan produces over 90 percent of the world's opium.

http://www.rferl.org/content/Russia_Says_US_Colluding_With_Afghan_Drug_Trade/1995972.html

[Gabi Hayes]

9. speaking of opium wars, here's a fun question:

What do the Roosevelt and Bush families have in common?