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| Afghanistan |
| Taliban Receives $100 Million to Protect Heroin Market |
| 2008-06-25 |
| According to the World Bank, Afghanistan produces 90 per cent of the world's illegal opium. The Taliban in Afghanistan made more than $100 million in 2007 from imposing taxes and providing protection to the country’s huge opium trade, the United Nations anti-narcotics chief said Tuesday. Speaking to BBC radio, Antonio Maria Costa of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime [UNODC] said Afghan insurgents collected a 10 per cent tax on the earnings of opium poppy farmers and processors in Taliban-controlled areas. There were also other ways that the group skimmed money from the more than $1 billion generated last year by Afghanistan's opium trade, Costa said. Afghanistan now trades very little raw opium; it is a heroin producer. One source said they rake in $3.5 billion. 'One is protection to laboratories and the other is that the insurgents offer protection to cargo, moving opium across the border,' he said. Since the Taliban were forced from power in Kabul by a U.S.-led invasion in 2001, Afghanistan has become the world’s leading producer of opium. Why refer to same as a 'US led invasion' when it operated under UN sanction, and NATO's collective security provision? Afghanistan NEVER stopped producing Heroin under the Taliban. In exchange for UN aid, they torched some Tajik owned fields. By some estimates, more than 90 per cent of the world’s heroin originates in the opium poppy fields that can be found in almost all 34 Afghan provinces. Baloney. The UN website reports near total success in opium eradication in all but Karzai's protected Pashto areas. U.S. troops ignore poppies in south True, and they don't like it. There is no way a John McCain government would put up with an enemy being allowed to use profits from a drug, to finance the murder of NATO troops. Once a soldier... In the last years of Taliban rule in the country, the extremist militia had all but wiped out opium production, calling it un-Islamic and punishing drug dealers. But poppy farming has surged since then and Afghan militants are using money from the drugs trade to fight NATO troops in the country, officials say. Anti-narcotics efforts in post-Taliban Afghanistan have failed to stem the narcotics trade with farmers and processors last year producing a record 8,000 tonnes of opium. U.S. troops in the south of the country are now instructed not to interfere with poppy crops, according to a report this week by the Associated Press from Helmand province, one of the prime sources of Afghan opium. 'Poppy fields in Afghanistan are [like] the cornfields of Ohio,' U.S. Marine Staff Sgt. Jerry Stover told an AP reporter embedded with his platoon in Helmand. 'When we got here, they were asking us if it’s OK to grow poppy, and we said, ‘Yeah, just don’t use an AK-47 [assault rifle].’' Production is expected to be lower in 2008, the UN’s Costa told the BBC, because of drought and a glut on world markets from record harvests in earlier years. 'Last year, Afghanistan produced about 8,000 tonnes of opium,' he said, 'The world in the past few years has consumed about 4,000 tonnes... This leaves a surplus. It is stored somewhere and not with the farmers.' Probably Pakistan. That country has 2 million users; as does Iran. Pakistanis did much of the Heroin production, prior to the Karzai protection racket. It is not known whether these stockpiles are held by traffickers, corrupt Afghan officials and politicians, or the Taliban themselves, but they represent hundreds of millions of dollars, Costa said, raising fears that even more money could be spent on fighting NATO and Afghan troops. I smell an election issue. |
| Posted by:McZoid |
| #4 I found this on "Defense of the Realm" website, part three on how to win the war in Afgan. "Interestingly, there is anecdotal evidence that wheat production, in times of high demand, is more profitable than poppy growing. The gross income from selling raw opium might be higher, but the process is highly labour-intensive, requiring more inputs. Thus, with commodity prices at record highs, the current "global food crisis" provides a unique opportunity to promote a long-term switch from opium to food." If you are not familiar with this website it is very good information on the UK military. |
| Posted by: bman 2008-06-25 12:06 |
| #3 That's good to know, bman. All I've seen are reports of lost crops in rain soaked and flooded areas. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2008-06-25 11:45 |
| #2 I read about the switch to wheat somewhere. There is also a nasty virus that has crippled wheat production in Egypt and has spread to Iran and Pakistan. I believe Iran is a big producer and if the reports are true it should increase discontent about the inflationary price of food in that country. Meanwhile here in Kansas wheat production may set new records as yields are high even on dry land farms in the south west. |
| Posted by: bman 2008-06-25 11:14 |
| #1 I thought part of the reason for the drop in the poppy crop was farmers switching over to more lucrative (to them) wheat production in response to current shortages world wide. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2008-06-25 06:16 |