Opium Harvest at Record Level in Afghanistan

new york times ^ | September 3, 2006 | Carlotta Gall

[kellynla]

KABUL, Afghanistan, Sept. 2 — Afghanistan’s opium harvest this year has reached the highest levels ever recorded, showing an increase of almost 50 percent from last year, the executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Antonio Maria Costa, said Saturday in Kabul.

He said the increase in cultivation was significantly fueled by the resurgence of Taliban rebels in the south, the country’s prime opium growing region. As the insurgents have stepped up attacks, they have also encouraged and profited from the drug trade, promising protection to growers if they expanded their opium operations.

“This year’s harvest will be around 6,100 metric tons of opium — a staggering 92 percent of total world supply. It exceeds global consumption by 30 percent,” Mr. Costa said at a news briefing.

He said the harvest increased by 49 percent from the year before, and it drastically outpaced the previous record of 4,600 metric tons, set in 1999 while the Taliban governed the country. The area cultivated increased by 59 percent, with more than 400,00 acres planted with poppies in 2006 compared with less than 260,000 in 2005.

“It is indeed very bad, you can say it is out of control,” Mr. Costa said Friday in an interview before the announcement.

President Hamid Karzai expressed disappointment at the results in a statement on Saturday and urged the international community to expand its commitment to strengthen the Afghan police and law enforcement agencies.

The Bush administration has made poppy eradication a major facet of its aid to Afghanistan, and it has criticized Mr. Karzai for not doing more to challenge warlords involved in opium production.

[kellynla]

Why weren't these fields destroyed when we invaded Afghanistan?

[kinoxi]

Special Ed says "YaaaaaaY".

[kuma]

Meanwhile this very same country is having problems with food shortages. *sigh*

[ndt]

"Why weren't these fields destroyed when we invaded Afghanistan?"

No point really, the poppies grow in just a few months. Destroying fields would be a wasted (an massive) effort unless you can remove the impetus to just replant them.

[soupcon]

Afghanistan was the good fight, the one everyone was 100% behind. How we're not succeeding there is a travesty.

[backtothestreets]

Pakistan has had similar gains in the cultivation of these crops and returned to the pre-Taliban levels of distribution of illegal drugs originating from both Afghanistan and Pakistan according to World Facts on the CIA web site.

[Darnright]

Weren't the Taliban against poppy farming, when they were in power? Ah, but now that they need money, all of a sudden, they are perfectly willing to encourage the cultivation of opium. Hypocrite religious fanatics.

[AmericanMade1776]

Let us all keep this in perspective, this is a statement from a UN worker , given to us by the New York Times.

[Zeroisanumber]

Why weren't these fields destroyed when we invaded Afghanistan?

Because our boys are warriors, not drug warriors.

[Bringbackthedraft]

Any Agent Orange around in the DOD warehouses?

[Zeroisanumber]

Any Agent Orange around in the DOD warehouses?

Maybe, but I think that most of it was destroyed back in the 70's and 80's. Nasty side-effects, or so I hear.

[Zhang Fei]

Why weren't these fields destroyed when we invaded Afghanistan?

I'm not sure you can destroy poppy fields - they are a hardy weed that can survive most efforts at eradication. Sowing the opium poppy after one crop is destroyed isn't such a big deal either. Short of permanently making the land unsuitable for any other crops - which would make us real unpopular with the Afghan population as a whole - there's not much we can do to prevent replanting.

Besides, we're not in Afghanistan to fight drug trafficking, we're there to kill Taliban and al Qaeda. Fighting drugs will be far more difficult, because whereas only tens of thousands of Afghans were involved with the Taliban and al Qaeda, millions of Afghans are involved in growing and processing the opium poppy. The bottom line is that the drug war is a separate problem (a problem of poverty and weak central government) and can't really be a priority for our troops until we've decisively stamped out the Taliban. That may not be for the next ten years.

[kellynla]

"I'm not sure you can destroy poppy fields?"

tell that to the U.S.A.F.
those of us who survived Viet Nam know better. LOL

[Blogatron]

Nasty side-effects, or so I hear.

Yeah?... So?

[Zhang Fei]

Afghanistan was the good fight, the one everyone was 100% behind. How we're not succeeding there is a travesty.

We're succeeding there, if by success, you mean preventing the Taliban from returning to power, and keeping al Qaeda from re-establishing its training facilities in-country. Unless you start to broaden your definition of what success means in the Afghan context. Our mission in Afghanistan is not to fight drugs. Or end poverty there. Or make Afghanistan a First World nation.

We need to keep our mission there tightly-focused. Welfare statism in the form of foreign aid, with Uncle Sam handing out massive sums to foreign countries, works even less well overseas than it works domestically - corruption is a far bigger problem abroad than it is at home, and foreigners are much less scrupulous about milking the system than the average American, who prides himself on self-reliance.

[Zeroisanumber]

Yeah?... So?

So, since opium production accounts for a large percentage of Afganistan's agricultural land, using agent orange would make it a race between starvation and lung cancer to see which would kill the Afghani's first.

I bet on starvation.

[Zhang Fei]

tell that to the U.S.A.F. those of us who survived Viet Nam know better. LOL

South Vietnam was a major producer of drugs until the Communists took over*. It is evident that eradication efforts worked for single crops, after which replanting began.

* The Communist view is that only Marxism should be the opiate of the people. Drugs interfere with that view.

[Zhang Fei]

Maybe, but I think that most of it was destroyed back in the 70's and 80's. Nasty side-effects, or so I hear.

The side effects are a myth.

[BipolarBob]

So when is the price of heroin going to go down?

[tortoise]

I have to say: I really do not care if they are growing opium in Afghanistan.