Afghanistan's Drug Problem

[tequila]

Obviously you don't

I don't see anywhere in your post where you have a different solution other than the destruction of Afghan farmland where poppies are grown - just moral arguments about how poppies must be destroyed.

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.

Yes, we both agree with that. But those people did not really become an Iranian or a Pakistani problem. The Iranians and Pakistanis ensured that they remained a major Soviet/Afghan government problem. How would your plan differ from the Soviet one, and why would it have different results?

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).

The logic is this: the people involved in poppy production are not just a few hillbillies, isolated from society - it is a large percentage of the population of southern Afghanistan. Destroying their agricultural land would represent a major effort and would likely encounter severe opposition from both the Afghan government and the Taliban, not to mention the people themselves.

Assuming that we are successful in destroying all this land and wrecking the southern Afghan opium economy, we will have accomplished what?

- We will likely have killed a lot of Afghans and convinced many others that our presence is actively harmful.

- We will have disrupted some Taliban funding and opium planting for at least a year or so.

- Opium planting will displace elsewhere, most likely Central Asia or Pakistan, but previous episodes in drug eradication (including the Taliban's own ban on opium in 2001) have shown that the opium supplies to the drug markets of Europe and America will not be interrupted significantly.

I doubt any of these factors will either (1) defeat the insurgency or (2) impact the world supply of illegal opium.

So why should we do it, if it will have little to potentially negative effect?