They did change policy since then, that's what caused the problem.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0413-01.htm

Wednesday, April 13, 2005

It was the first day of Afghanistan's new opium eradication program and the quiet town of Maiwand in Kandahar province had been chosen for action.

Hundreds of Afghan eradicators under the command of American private security contractors were going to head into the fields around the town and destroy the beautiful red and white blooms days before they could be harvested for their narcotic sap.

But instead of the peaceful, model operation that was promised as an example to demonstrate the Kabul government's serious intentions, Maiwand and its surrounding villages exploded into violence in what could be a foretaste of resistance to Western-backed efforts to bring Afghanistan's opium industry under control.

By the end of yesterday four government soldiers had been wounded by gunfire from farmers, American security contractors were said to be sheltering behind razor wire in a protected camp, and Afghan police and counter-narcotics forces had fought fierce battles which local people said left five dead. Plans to eradicate poppies were temporarily shelved in the area as political bigwigs shuttled to and fro trying to ease tensions and broker some kind of deal with the angry opium farmers.

Dense clouds of black smoke hung over the town from burning barricades, hundreds of shots rang out from gun battles, and American helicopter gunships flew low overhead.

One policeman said he had seen five bodies, but it was difficult to tell from the ambulances speeding out of the town towards hospitals one hour away in Kandahar how many had been injured in the disastrous operation.

The poppy eradication force had driven out of Kandahar two days earlier on their way towards Maiwand in a motley collection of Jeeps and trucks, bristling with firepower and wearing a remarkable array of uniforms and ethnic dress.

Friendly looking Americans chewing cigars - most of them are retired policemen hired by the security company - had waved lazily as the convoy thundered past.

Maiwan was being targeted first for eradication because it was regarded as a relatively peaceful area with effective government control. The hard cases have yet to be tackled.....

to not burn the crops of the wealthier growers? Do I assume correctly that NATO just turns a blind eye to the opium problem which I don't put under the classification of benign neglect, because they know the harmful effect of heroine. By pretending the poppy growing doesnt result in opium, it makes NATO commanders and troops complicit in the growing of it.

Do US mercernaries choose whose crops they will eradicate and whose they will leave to grow or how exactly is the selection made?

Huh? In 2004 NATO was turning a blind eye. In 2005 they changed their mind about it.

said, and you countered "They did change policy since then, that's what caused the problem."

I had wanted to know who was receiving bribes to not destroy poppy fields from the more afluent growers. Seems like the destruction was targeted at poorer farmers and the crops from more affluent growers were allowed to continue to grow. There had to have been money changing hands for that to take place. I don't expect NATO received any of it, but who did receive it? The economy of Afghanistan is based on poppy growing and the sale that turns into Opium.

Please give clarification. Thanks.

NATO will get its information on what fields to burn from various locals. You bribe them, they prioritize for NATO. Simple enough. Very few, if any, NATO officers will know enough about any locale in Afghanistan to do anything other than be led around by the nose. Nonetheless, it was official NATO policy to ignore the problem in 2004. In 2005 the official policy changed to trying to stop opium production - ie. to making the problem worse.

for the farmers that would pay them equal to poppy growing. The alternative is of course to license poppy growing, but that's complicated and NATO would have to study how that is done. It is possible to do and I've posted several articles in the past from the Senlis Council that explains how it can be implemented.

Last I heard JustPlainDave had e-mail correspondence with a Canadian military official who 'may' have begun studying the merits of the plans from Senlis.

...I was speaking with the head guy of this project by the Senlis Council (I can't recall his name right now) - NDHQ, them I don't talk with (they'd know better than to take my calls ;) ). My understanding is that there is support for this type of approach, personally among a minority of military and former military folks talking on the issue in open Internet fora, what that translates to at the policy level is opaque to me, but I suspect it's less than whole hearted support for licensing.

"We declared war on terror, it's not even a noun, so, good luck. After we defeat it, I'm sure we'll take on that bastard ennui." - Jon Stewart.

wouldn't you think there would be more popular support to try something different rather than repeating over and over and over again expecting a different result? Follow the money is usually at the root of corruption. Money fuels the Taliban with the funds they need to pay themselves, recruit others to the cause, and to bribe officials in the Afghanistan government, war/drug lords.

...the licensing proposal (one of the guys that knows the most about the global drug economy thinks pretty strongly that it wouldn't work - and it ain't just that he's mouthpiece for enforcement-side strategies, either [I'll try and dig up a link later]).

In that sort of ambiguous circumstance, many folks in green will be inclined to retreat to their perceived core competencies and leave the grand strategy to the headshed. The civvie side of that headshed worries a lot about the political image created by all this - me, personally, I think they don't have the balls for it. Doesn't mean that the idea doesn't have merit, and it doesn't mean that lots of the thoughtful folks in green wouldn't consider it (to be clear, many of those same folks would probably reject it), but it does mean that it's unlikely to get seriously considered at the policy level.

Combine that sort of issue with a type of conflict (COIN) that we're feeling our way towards fighting effectively, without an established formal doctrine and you can see that the guys have a lot on their plate to consider. As the old saw goes, tough to think about draining the swamp when you're up to your ass in alligators. The whole point of successful COIN is draining the swamp, of course, but it probably looks on the ground like there's a lot of other things that would also drain the swamp in line ahead of an ambiguous licensing proposal.

"We declared war on terror, it's not even a noun, so, good luck. After we defeat it, I'm sure we'll take on that bastard ennui." - Jon Stewart.

The problem that I see is that no one is serious about winning this war who can actually spend money and make decisions. It all boils back to that. So they've got it on simmer and are hoping that they can either walk away quietly one day, or that when it boils over it doesn't hit them.

As you note, draining the swamp is necessary. And that means cutting off the money and cutting off the rural support. Opium legalization isn't the only possibility, but operationally, it would be the easiest and cheapest since it doesn't require teaching them to grow something else, setting up markets and infrastructure, etc... Forcing farmers into the Taliban's hands, along with their opium revenue, is the opposite of draining the swamp - they've diverted a river of people and money into the swamp.

And eventually they won't just be ass deep in aligators, they'll be over their heads.

All it does is make the tax payers poorer and the drug lords richer.

I have argued this before. Putting most drugs on sale or available through pharmacies would give govt income through it's own licenced production system and taxes. Most deaths with drugs are caused by tainted or poisoned drugs.

By putting them on sale in pharmacies it not only makes them cheaper so that addicts no longer have as much need to rob and mug people, cutting down crime.

By making them easier to get and cheaper then you take away the business, (Million $) from the drug lords and crime networks. The argument that if they are legal from the pharmacy then drug use will grow does not hold water for me, as someone who has never taken cocaine, heroin or meth, I feel certain that the availability is not going to make me suddenly want to try. I think the same goes for most people.

And, all the billions of dollars saved from the WOD which currently goes to military and corporations like blackwater and halliburton could be ploughed into the police, education and social programs which will also help to reduce demand.

Of course there is a whole discussion and debate to be had on what is said above, but no debate happens. It's taboo, OMG you are crazy!

Just my two cents.

Carib

but there are lots of cases of prescription-drug dependency. Patients shop for doctors that will continue to prescribe them and if one doesn't supply enough they go to two, three, four or whatever the number it takes to feed their habit.

I don't know what the answer is, but legalizing all drugs isn't it.

Billions are spent every year on law enforcement, putting drug offenders in jail, rehabilitation programmes, and hospitalization. Methone treatments, and a wide variety of other treatments.

My brother's only son fried his brain with drugs. He was attracted to drugs before his teens, carried on with drug usage during his teens into adulthood. He's now on methone treatment for stabilization, but his brain cells will never grow back. He gets a pension because he can't work due to his impairment. He did this to himself...WHY, WHY, WHY? He broke the heart of my brother, and his Mother who are helpless to understand his behaviour. Will his children also be attracted to drugs? Is it partly hereditary that makes some people more prone than others...is there a gene responsible for something that is lacking?

Prescriptions would not have saved this youngster--he would have just shopped to fill the void.

Presently there is one drug that is legal. Alcohol. It's sold everywhere. Alcoholics never have enough! They reek carnage on the highways; alcohol destroys families. Prohibition didn't work and neither does selling it. What is the answer? Why do some people overindulge to the point of giving themselves cirrhosis of the liver and all the misery and pain they cause to themselves and others before their lives are ended? Some people have a sip of alcohol and never repeat the experience...others drown themselves in it.

There are millions of legal alcoholics, does the world need millions of legalized addicts too?

There is no evidence that legalization significantly increases the number of addicts. There is plenty of experience with what making drugs illegal does in terms of corruption, violence, bloated law enforcement budgets, bulging prisons and so on.

Prohibition doesn't work. Didn't work with booze, which is why it's legal (and I hate alcohol more than most people, but I wouldn't make it illegal). Doesn't work with marijuana, heroin or any other drug, either.

True addicts will do what they must in order to get their fix. That's the thing about addiction, especially psychological addiction - it becomes a drive.

OK, so they are not legal, but they exist already. I also don't think legalizing of all drugs is the answer, but I think it's part of it to an extent. I think it lies more in trying to control and limit the usage and developing social and education programs than what we have now.

I think it's a farce, like Faust trying to empty a pool with a shell that has a hole in it, like the WOT.

Carib

Now Afghanistan's primarily a rural country, and when it runs an insurgency against an invader, what it runs is a classic rural insurgency that Mao would find very familiar. The farmers are exactly the people you need to keep on your side.

Che Guevera could ahve told them what happens when you don't have the farmers on your side, too...

by both sides. Pre-9/11 the US was supporting the Taliban poppy eradication program. The Taliban have reversed this position to their advantage.

It's still religion that keeps this planet in the ideological dark age, despites all of the technological toys and marvels that the talking monkeys come up with... muslims vs the rest of the infidel world, muslim shia vs the muslim sunnis, muslims vs hindus, catholics vs protestants, militant catholics and their inquisitions vs enlightenment(Giordano Bruno) or indigenous peoples (Central America), right-wing bible-thumping psycho-christian fundies vs abortion clinics, evolution, science, and the rest of the damned unsaved world, etc, etc, etc.

Religion has destroyed more lives and more cultures than all the so-called evil drugs put together.

And you can rest assured that there are and always have been elements within the amerikan regime that profit enormously from opium/cocaine production despite all its hypocritical rantings to the contrary. And lets all give the cia a big hand for their help in getting it into our veins and up our noses!

Religion is the Opiate of the masses but the most dangerous masses, the poor and most younger men, need the most dangerous opiate: real, vein-poppng, drugs. For the rest of us, if religion is not your cup of tea, there is television including, but not limited to, watching sports.

I will never forget the shocked look on Senator Cohen’s face during a C Span broadcast in 1987 of the Iran Contra hearings while questioning a drug lord’s bookkeeper. The bookkeeper stated that planes owned by Air America/Southern Air landed at Homestead Air Force base loaded with Cocaine.

"Takes a bucket of blood for a barrel of oil"

Steven Bruton

of the plane they dubbed cocaine one:

...
In the two weeks since an American DC9 airliner was busted by Mexican troops at a small airport in the Yucatan, carrying 5.5 tons of cocaine packed neatly into 128 identical black suitcases (somewhat hilariously marked 'private') the search for the true owners of the plane has produced these startling new developments...
.
The busted DC9, dubbed "Cocaine One" in an earlier story, had an identical twin, a second airliner painted with the same distinctive blue-and-white-with-gold-trim of official U.S. aircraft, the MadCowMorningNews can reveal exclusively, and under the control of the same company. Or Company. Scoop

One would think such a large bust would be all over the news, but it wasn't. Ap had a blurb, but only offsites carry anything on it or seem to investigate it. Maybe the new Air America ;)