Quote Originally Posted by tequila View Post
JMA - So let me see if I understand.
Obviously you don't

Basically your solution to the insurgency/opium problem, assuming they are the same thing, is to threaten the Afghan farming population with the destruction of their farmland if they do not comply with our directives?
Let me help you here... the 'opium problem' is a significant source of funding for the Taliban. Without poppies there would be no druglords. 90% of the world's heroin production comes from Afghanistan and it kills tens of thousands each year.

So it is no only insane, but criminally insane, to allow poppy cultivation to flourish. (Remembering Vietnam I wonder if each and every US aircraft out of Afghanistan is given the once over on arrival in the States. Its just a question of how far up the line it goes.)

Allow me to point out two things.

1) Population clearance as COIN tactic has been tried in Afghanistan before. The Soviets pursued this strategy in both the south and the east post-1984 - it generated over five million Afghan refugees and killed tens of thousands, if not more. This did not work for them because the Soviets, just like the U.S. now, could not control the Pakistani or Iranian borders. These refugees came back across the border and continued the insurgency unabated.
As I stated, tens of thousands are being killed by heroin produced under the 'protection' of the US military in Afghanistan. This is criminal.

The Soviet invasion created the environment where poppy cultivation flourished. The flow of opium derivatives ever since has been outwards.

Now I would have thought that a nice coulurful field of poppies would be relatively easy to deal with rather than packets of the derivatives.

Now it appears that the Soviets did attempt to destroy agriculture so as so draw people into the cities where could be better controlled or force them out of the country where they became other peoples problem.

But despite common sense the US has chosen to cosy up to a corrupt/criminal/illegitimate regime and every low down druglord in town. Its criminal behaviour plain and simple.

2) Assuming your program was adapted successfully, would opium production not simply move to Tajikistan and Uzbekistan and destabilize those polities? When supply fell in Colombia during the Uribe war against the FARC, it increased correspondingly in Bolivia and Peru. It is currently behind a resurgence in Peru of the Shining Path.
So the logic is just let it flourish where it is currently being grown? Poppies are grown in the open. Personally I don't care about any loss of earnings those who currently grow poppies incur (just as most people would not care if some hillbilly family were bust over their marijuana field or moonshine still).

One day someone will study how the US sleepwalked into bed with the scum of Afghanistan.