Quote Originally Posted by tequila View Post
No. Defeating poppy production is not key to defeating the insurgency in my opinion.
You see this is what I find so strange about the attitude towards and understanding of COIN amongst serving age men of today.

When someone says you need to get out there and kill the Taliban the response is that COIN is a 80:20 ratio where direct military action is only 20% of the effort required. Then when someone raises the matter of acting against opium production (which has been proven to a substantial part of the insurgency and significant source of funding for the Taliban) the shutters come down and its treated as a separate and insignificant aspect of the Afghan situation which should be virtually ignored even though it is one of the more important aspects of the 80%.

All very strange.

The warlords who the Taliban defeated also profited enormously from opium. Yet the Taliban did not seek to destroy opium (the main source of funds for their enemy - the warlords depended on opium to a far greater extent than the Taliban does) until they were fully in control.
So what's your point? That you finally agree that the US government and its military is actually protecting the warlord/druglord side of the Afghan drug trade? And you are OK that thousands of US soldiers are being killed/maimed/wounded in the process? Shameful!

The Taliban are able to profit from opium because they have power in the countryside and over smuggling routes, not the other way around. That power did not come from opium money. It came from ideological commitment, successful organization, backing from the Pakistani military, and most importantly the lack of effective competition from the Afghan government or other Afghan actors.
Oh boy, I guess somehow it is lost on you that the poppy crop is in the fields right under the noses of the ISAF and ANA forces. This is unlike stuff grown elsewhere which is partially hidden under jungle canopy it is in the open and and can be easily identified from the air prior to harvest.

Now I accept that the problem is to get an honest buy in from the current Afghan government. This can be used to leverage a quicker withdrawal from Afghanistan in the form of a demand for total compliance from the Karai regime - rather like the ultimatum Bush gave the Taliban over handing over AQ.