goesh, you hit upon the problem with your plan when you talk about coercion of the farmers or the more likely option (IMHO) that they would just kill the farmers and install their own sharecroppers.
goesh, you hit upon the problem with your plan when you talk about coercion of the farmers or the more likely option (IMHO) that they would just kill the farmers and install their own sharecroppers.
Yup, it's a farmer's market all right - the Talimen/buyers would have to give them a higher premium for their crop, say a 10% increase over last year's price and they'd be out with the hoes and donkeys seeding and planting away as usual, then along comes the other side and ups their ante to beat the competition's price. Soon every poppy farmer would have a new 4DW Toyota and lots of other nice things. But on a small scale with a target group in one of the more secure areas, it would be worth a shot simply to see what shakes loose. Such a project would flush out into daylight all kinds of people in the drug food chain offering all kinds of reasons why such a project should not be tried/implemented. It would do that much if nothing else. There is quite a divers crowd between the farmer's market in the field and the addict on the street. I think I saw somewhere in this thread that the Afghan opium trade was valued at 2.6 billion - so what are the farmers getting - 10 million? What would be the buy-out cost at ground level for a target group of farmers? 200K maximum? I don't have a clue
U.S. under fire over Afghan poppy plan. - Financial Times, 25 May07.
The US is proceeding with plans for a big crop-spraying programme to destroy opium poppies in Afghanistan, in spite of resistance from the government of President Hamid Karzai and objections from some senior US military officers who fear it will fuel the Taliban insurgency.
A US delegation will soon leave for Kabul to persuade Mr Karzai that glycophate, a herbicide that is widely applied by US farmers, is safe to use and that trial ground-spraying should begin for the first time since the US ousted the Taliban regime in 2001.
But controversy over the proposed spraying is causing rifts within the Nato alliance. Some governments, including Germany, want nothing to do with the eradication programme and are threatening to reconsider their posture in Afghanistan, diplomats say. Afghan security forces trained by Dyncorp, a private US defence contractor, are to carry out the spraying ...
Has spraying in any of the South American narcotic producing countries worked at all?
Everyone's a Winner at Helmand's Drug Bazaars - IWPR, 1 June.
... Sayed Gul is new to the retail trade. Until now, he has been a poppy farmer. But lured by the hope of large profits, he decided to sell his own crop this year.
“I got 36 kilos of poppy paste from my land this season, so I decided to go into business,” he told IWPR.
It is a difficult market – Helmand’s farmers have grown so much poppy that prices are down, so buyers like “Hajji Sahib” must be courted assiduously.
Afghanistan is by far the world’s largest producer of opium poppy. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, UNODC, the country produced over 90 per cent of the world’s heroin in 2006, with Helmand alone accounting for close to 45 per cent of that figure.
Like most of the other merchants at the Chan Jir bazaar, Sayed Gul is paying the police to leave him alone while he sells his highly illegal wares. The monthly fee for protection hovers around 6,000 Pakistani rupees, or approximately 100 US dollars.
...
Farmers also pay informal “taxes” to police and local officials from the beginning of the process all the way up to the harvest.
“The government makes a lot of money at harvest time,” said Shah Mahmud, 40, a landowner in Nadali. “We paid about 1,500 afghani per jerib to the police not to destroy our poppy during the eradication campaign. Now we’re paying the government to allow us to sell the product without interference - we are giving them 220 grams of poppy paste per jerib.”
...
The arrangements are quite open and operate semi-officially, according to Hajji Aligul, 55, a tribal leader in Nadali.
“I attended a shura [council] where we negotiated with the government,” he told IWPR. “We agreed that we would give 220 grams of poppy paste per jerib. The police commander told us, of course, that if we did not reach agreement, they would take the paste by force.”
...
The Taleban are another major player in the drugs game. While evidence is sketchy, many observers assume that the insurgency is being funded by international drug profits. It is undisputed that the Taleban are receiving funds locally from farmers, shopkeepers, and traffickers.
“Local people collect money for the Taleban,” said Shah Mahmud 40, a landowner in Nadali. “The Taleban contact tribal leaders and say, ‘don’t forget us, we need money too’. Most people give voluntarily.”
Others pay out of fear, say some residents.
But cooperation has been so close that farmers say the Taleban scaled down their “spring offensive” this year so as not to interfere with bringing in the crop.
“It is not beneficial to have fighting during the harvest,” said Shah Mahmud. “The Taleban and the government both receive money from poppy – they lose out if the crop is destroyed by bombing or fighting.”
In several places, villagers have requested that the Taleban leave the area until after the harvest.
“We told the Taleban, ‘This year the government was very good to us and did not destroy our poppy,” said one tribal leader who did not want to give his name. “We said, ‘Stop your fighting during harvest time, otherwise we will turn against you, take up arms against you and kick you out of the area.’”
Najmuddin, 25, a landowner in Zarghon village in Nadali, agreed.
“The Taleban treat us very kindly and we will support them forever,” he told IWPR. “They left so that people could get their harvest in. The government has also treated us kindly, and helped us set up markets where we can sell our poppy ...”
From 4100 to 6100 Metric Tons
- that's what the MSN article is reporting. Opium production is up that much from 2005:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19431056/
"U.N.: Opium production soaring in Afghanistan
Nation’s record poppy harvest has boosted global supply to new record high
..
In 2006, Afghanistan accounted for 92 percent of global illicit opium production, up from 70 percent in 2000 and 52 percent a decade earlier. The higher yields in Afghanistan have brought global opium production to a new record high of 6,610 metric tons in 2006, a 43 percent increase over 2005."
that's beau-coup smoke - no wonder the taliban keeps coming across the border in force.
Last edited by goesh; 06-26-2007 at 01:54 PM.
ISN, 17 Jul 07: Addicted in Afghanistan
...Experts warn that high levels of unemployment in Afghanistan, war trauma and wide-scale bereavement are fuelling the population's appetite for the drug.
"Thirty years of war and social disintegration," Dr Suleman says, "have left ordinary Afghans extremely vulnerable to anxiety, chronic depression and post-traumatic stress disorders. And in such a scenario, the easy and cheap availability of opium, heroin and other drugs is creating a rapid dependency on these harmful pharmaceuticals."
For treatment of women, a team of female doctors and counselors from the Nejat Centre visit their homes. The trend of opium uses so entrenched, Nadira Yusuf told ISN Security Watch, a female counselor at the clinic, that women use opium as "medicine" to silence a wailing child, or even alleviate medical conditions such as tuberculosis, asthma or the common cold....
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