DEA sends more agents to Afghanistan

United Press International and NPR ^ | July 29, 2009 at 11:48 PM | staff

[gandalftb]

KABUL, Afghanistan, July 29 (UPI) -- The United States' top anti-drug agency will substantially boost its presence in Afghanistan to check opium trafficking, the Taliban's main revenue source.

"One year ago, we had 13 personnel in Afghanistan working counternarcotics," Jay Fitzpatrick, the DEA's assistant regional director based in Kabul. "We're in the process of increasing the number of personnel to 81."

The U.S. network reported the DEA also plans track the top 10 to 20 narcotics traffickers in Afghanistan with the help of Afghan authorities.

[gandalftb]

For the last five years, 93% of the heroin that is addicting millions of Americans came from Afghanistan. Of the thousands of DEA agents, 13 were at the place of origin.....

There are thousands of traffickers there....and we are now going to track the top 10....or 20.

[Lurker]

This is stupid on so many levels....

[sarasota]

This will be as effective as trying to stop drugs from Mexico. Watch the film “Traffic” for details.

[Rodebrecht]

Now we’re exporting a failed drug war.

[swarthyguy]

The processing labs, a good portion of them are run by the ISI.

Part of the deal is to turn a blind eye, the same it was done in the 80’s when supporting the muj.

If you don’t smash the Pakistani heroin processing labs, it’s another King Canute-ish endeavour.

[RBroadfoot]

I agree that the fictional story of “Traffic” accurately portrays the futility of the Thirty-Year War on Drugs.

However, the US WOD “strategy” on the Afghanistan front is even more insane than the WOD “strategy” on the Mexico front. At least one-third of the Afghani population derives some portion of their livelihood from opium. It’s just crazy to try to “win hearts and minds” while destroying a person’s livelihood. Consequently, there will be continued escalation of violence in Afghanistan and the US will continue to lose support among European allies and friendly Afghanis.

[Venturer]

When the state of Maryland plotted to stop the growing of tobacco, they took the tobacco money paid by cigarette manufacturers and used it to pay off tobacco farmers.

If the farmer grew 1,000 lbs of tobacco for the previous 5 years they paid those farmers $1.00 per lb for not growing tobacco, or $1,000 dollars a year for ten years.. Most farmers were in the 10,000 lb range and got paid $10,000 for ten years or $100,000 dollars. Some got over a million.
The farmers could take this money and still grow anything they liked on their land adding to that money.

Why not do the same with Afghanistan. Go there and make this offer to stop them from growing poppies.

Any poppies seen growing after this arrangement would be hit with agent orange or napalm destroying the crop.

It would be cheaper to buy these people off than pay troops to stay there and we wouldnt lose a soldier.