Can pomegranates replace poppies (heroin) in Afghanistan?

[underpants]

Afghanistan diary: Pomegranates not poppies
The fairs, because they are well guarded and removed from the heat and chaos of Kabul, attract huge crowds, mostly families looking for a safe place to walk in the open with their children. The farm also has tremendous views of the capital, so lines of concrete benches have been built to allow people to gaze at the fields and the cityscape beyond.

It is such a good idea that you might wonder why it has taken this long, more than seven years after the fall of the Taliban, for it to take off. There are no good answers. It is just one of a litany of wasted opportunities of the George Bush era. At first, the Bush administration, and Donald Rumsfeld's Pentagon in particular, were dead set against anything that looked like "nation building". Later on, the lion's share of resources went to Iraq. Even when money started to flow through USAid, the CIA kept control of projects, so they could be used to support allies like the regional warlords.

Now, with the departure of the neocons, the realisation is sinking in that the Afghan war is going to be a slow grind that will be won as much in the poppy field as on the battlefield. Loren Stoddard, a USAid agricultural expert in charge of Badam Bagh said: "Poppy is a quick crop. You plant it, you it, you're done. Pomegranate is a five-year investment, but it makes more money per hectare than poppy."

Last year, 100 tonnes of pomegranates were sold to the Carrefour supermarket in Dubai. Now the French-owned chain wants Afghan pomegranates in all its Middle Eastern branches. "We're still shipping 50,000 tonnes of pomegranates out of places like Kandahar despite everything else, so it's sort of like the business that won't quit," Stoddard says. "if we can just give it a break; if we can help the police not to take so many tolls on the road, get electricity out to the farmers so they can keep things cold, it will get better."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/blog/2009/mar/02/afghanistan-obama-administration

Pomegranates could kill off Afghanistan’s opium trade
Feb 12 2009
http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/2009/02/12/pomegranates-could-kill-off-afghanistan-s-opium-trade-91466-22910009/