You have commented 339 times on Rantburg.

Your Name
Your e-mail (optional)
Website (optional)
My Original Nic        Pic-a-Nic        Sorry. Comments have been closed on this article.
Bold Italic Underline Strike Bullet Blockquote Small Big Link Squish Foto Photo
Submit your comments on this article
Afghanistan
Afghanistan regains its title as world’s biggest heroin dealer
2003-06-22
Afghanistan is still the source of almost all of the heroin sold in London, even though Britain has poured millions into trying to stamp out the war-wrecked country's resurgent drugs production business. Opium poppies are springing up from the plains to the mountains of Afghanistan in far higher quantities than in the final year of the Taliban, which the US and Britain overthrew, while vowing to end the region's narcotics trade. Opium - from which heroin is extracted - is produced on farms only a few dozen miles from the capital city of Kabul. Local Afghans say that bags of heroin are used in lieu of currency in some parts of the lawless countryside where - more than two years after the Taliban was toppled - the US-backed interim government of Hamid Karzai has failed to establish control. After the war, Britain assumed responsibility for co-ordinating the international effort to crush Afghanistan's opium trade. It is spending £70m over three years on a project to eradicate poppy production by providing Afghan farmers with another livelihood and by training the fledgling and badly under-manned police force. But this bleak picture suggests that its efforts have so far failed to turn the tide.
That's about $110 million. Wonder where it all went?
HM Customs and Excise, which is running a programme in Kabul, has admitted that 95 per cent of the heroin sold on London's streets is still of Afghan origin. This has prompted George Osborne, a Tory MP who sits on the Public Accounts Committee, to call for an investigation into what has been happening to the money. Mr Osborne, who fears that much of it may have been pocketed by regional warlords, wants an investigation by the National Audit Office. Figures released by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime show Afghanistan now grows more than nine times as many opium poppies as during the final year of the Taliban. The roaring opium trade runs counter to one of the main aims declared by Britain for joining the US in the war on Afghanistan.
I wondered where the Talibs were getting the money to finance their resurgence...
In October 2001, a few days before the start of the Afghanistan war, Tony Blair told the Labour Party conference that "the biggest drugs hoard in the world is in Afghanistan, controlled by the Taliban". He said then that 90 per cent of the heroin on London streets was from Afghanistan: "The arms the Taliban are buying today are paid for with the lives of young British people, buying their drugs on British streets." The Prime Minister repeated this claim a week later in the Commons, when he announced that the military campaign had begun, telling MPs that the Taliban "is largely funded by the drugs trade".
And somebody thinks that's not the case now?
The cultivation of opium reached its peak in 1999, when 225,000 acres - 350 square miles - of poppies were sown, with the complicity or encouragement of the Taliban, who were accused of using part of the proceeds to buy arms. The following year, the Taliban responded to international pressure to start reducing the opium harvest. It banned poppy cultivation, declaring it to be "un-Islamic" - a move which cut production by 94 per cent, although it continued to allow trading. By 2001 only 30 square miles of land were in use for growing opium poppies. A year later, after American and British troops had removed the Taliban and installed the interim government of Hamid Karzai, the land under cultivation leapt back to 285 square miles, with Afghanistan supplanting Burma to become the world's largest opium producer once more. One of the reasons that aid workers have been unable to persuade Afghan farmers to switch to growing crops appears to be the continuing security problem in the country, deepened by the slow rate of recruitment to the national army and police. The Karzai administration has tried offering cash to farmers as compensation for not growing opium, but the money - £1,850 per acre - proved far less than the profits available from staying in the poppy business.
And they still need international aid for groceries...
Mike O'Brien, a Foreign Office minister, admitted that "security in Afghanistan remains a serious concern". A Foreign Office spokeswoman said there was no "quick fix" to the drugs production problem in Afghanistan. But Britain was involved in a "very ambitious" anti-narcotics programme, she said, "especially when you think of the lack of government infrastructure in large parts of the country outside Kabul".
Only way to stop this is to start drying up demand. Growing poppies is just too ingrained in that part of the world, and too profitable.
Posted by:Steve White

#5  Penguin, it's already done. What do we get from the war on drugs? Jack shit.

The only way to end it is to legalize it and flood the market, then superimpose heavy taxation on the remaining players.
Posted by: Brian   6/22/03 2:42:11 PM  

#4  After the war, Britain assumed responsibility for co-ordinating the international effort to crush Afghanistan's opium trade.

Heh! Not such a good deal for Blair. I'm surprised he allowed us to dump that lost-cause on him. Maybe it was a principled move rather than a political one.

Dumping it on the British was smooth political move on the part of the Bush administration, though. It was becoming apparent before/during the war, that the left was gearing up (NPR, the Vanity Fair piece, etc.), to try to make the Heroin trade an issue for name-calling and the blame game. IE: with all of our technology, sattelites, intelligence, and spec ops, why can't the Bush administration reduce the Heroin trade?

Somebody in our government sidestepped that one nicely by getting the British to take responsibility. Great idea, since Blair, being from the left, won't have to suffer the politcal harping that that the Bush administration would no doubt have endured from the "quagmire" that is sure to be the result of this issue.
Posted by: Becky   6/22/03 10:04:11 AM  

#3  "Local Afghans say that bags of heroin are used in lieu of currency in some parts of the lawless countryside where - more than two years after the Taliban was toppled - the US-backed interim government of Hamid Karzai has failed to establish control."

More than two years? Not according to Earth calendars.
Posted by: Arthur Fleischman   6/22/03 7:34:11 AM  

#2  As long as there is a demand each time you close a source of drugs the only thing you do is having the price raise and thus get other people to enter the trade. So the only way is to reduce the demand ie round junkies and tell them "desintoxicate or we send you to the fire squad".
Posted by: JFM   6/22/03 1:57:18 AM  

#1  I wonder what would happen if the administration decided to add all the ODs, junkies, and associated drugs into the costs of the WOT.

I wonder what would happen if they decided to expand the patriot act to include heroin traders and dealers as terrorist organizations.
Posted by: Penguin   6/22/03 12:03:56 PM  

00:00