Afghan government considers herbicide to combat runaway opium yield

AP via NewsPress ^ | Sept 30, 2006 | JIM KRANE

[jdm]

JALALABAD, Afghanistan (AP) - With profits from this spring's record opium crop fueling a broad Taliban offensive, Afghan authorities say they are considering a once unthinkable way to deal with the scourge: spraying poppy fields with herbicide.

Afghans including President Hamid Karzai are deeply opposed to spraying the crop. After nearly three decades of war, Western science and assurances can do little to assuage their fears of chemicals being dropped from airplanes.

But U.S. officials in Kabul and Washington are pushing for it. And on Thursday the country's top drug enforcement official said he would contemplate spraying opium crops - even with airborne crop-dusters - if other efforts fail to cut the size of the coming year's crop.

''This year, we'll wait and see how it goes. Next year, the 2008 season, we will consider it,'' said Lt. Gen. Mohammed Daoud Daoud on the sidelines of an anti-poppy gathering in Jalalabad, the ancient and verdant capital of Nangahar province, once the heart of Afghanistan's poppy belt.

This year Nangahar was a success. Poppy cultivation stayed low amid a boom that saw Afghanistan produce 82 percent of the world's opium, providing for 90 percent of its heroin, according to U.S. and United Nations figures.

Opium eradication is one of the great failures of the five-year period since the U.S.-led invasion in 2001. In 2000, under the Islamist Taliban government, Afghanistan produced virtually no opium.

Planting has skyrocketed since then, jumping 59 percent this year, enough to produce 6,700 tons of opium that fetched around $750 million for Afghan farmers and eventually sold for $50 billion on the street, mainly in Europe, according to a U.N. report.

[Lexington Green]

Chemical warfare?? Our great leaders are nuts.

[JoeFromSidney]

Re-legalize the stuff (remember, it was legal once, and we didn't have any serious problems with it). Then the price will drop below the price of other crops, like food.

[G-Man 1]

Spraying poppies with Roundup is not chemical warfare. You can buy it in Home Depot.It,s just the anti-American everything want get their opium cheap.