Marines ignore Taleban cash crop of opium

Source: AP

7 May 2008

GARMSER, Afghanistan - The Marines of Bravo Company's 1st Platoon sleep beside a grove of poppies. Troops in the 2nd Platoon playfully swat at the heavy opium bulbs while walking through the fields. Afghan laborers scraping the plant's gooey resin smile and wave.


Last week, the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit moved into southern Helmand province, the world's largest opium poppy-growing region, and now find themselves surrounded by green fields of the illegal plants that produce the main ingredient of heroin.

The Taleban, whose fighters are exchanging daily fire with the Marines in Garmser, derives up to US$100 million (Ð64.4 million) a year from the poppy harvest by taxing farmers and charging safe passage fees _ money that will buy weapons for use against U.S., NATO and Afghan troops.

Yet the Marines are not destroying the plants. In fact, they are reassuring villagers the poppies won't be touched. American commanders say the Marines would only alienate people and drive them to take up arms if they eliminated the impoverished Afghans' only source of income.



Read more: http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?xfile=data/subcontinent/2008/May/subcontinent_May137.xml§ion=subcontinent&col=

Karzai is as good as dead. That is how that system works. The Taliban and warlords leave him alone as long as the poppies grow.

Are you going to wage war on inert substances or on an abstraction?

:toast:

The Contras were cocaine smuggling nun murderers, but they were Ronnie's guys.

:shrug:

Secure the good will of the local population.

I have been in this area and I can tell you the surest way to help the Taliban win is for coalition troops to start destroying the poppy crop without giving the locals an alternative to grow that will make them as much money.

the surest way to help the Taliban win is for coalition troops to start destroying the poppy crop

The question about buying the opium is a good one, but considering that Afghan opium accounts for 95% of the world heroin market and generates almost $3 billion a year for Afghanistan, that may not be feasible.

Instead of destroying the crops, one suggestion has been to use them to produce LEGAL drugs such as morphine. Farmers get to keep their crops, hopefully make almost as much as they get for heroin, while contributing to world morphine supply. Sounds like a fairly decent option.

Would it not be cheaper in the long run, and just as effective, if the US bought the opium from the villagers? Such a program would maintain the goodwill of the villagers (vital in counterinsurgency), while denying the enemy a source of income.

Although I doubt the warlords would take that lying down.

Economics 101

There is a finate amount of arable land in Afghanistan, the supply can only increase so much. Then in areas that we have under control - and can monitor - we could start paying villagers to not grow poppies.

The idea is to keep the raw opium out of the Talibans hands without alienating the villagers.

The US sets Charlie Wilson up as a mystery drug baron who is cornering the market on Afghan dope. He and friends develop a network that buys up all the product and flushes it.

The Taliban grow poor and get other work.

The Marines go for long hikes in al Quedaville.

Taxpayers profit.

Have them sale the poppies to drug companies for their pain killers.

propose a system where they'd buy all the opium at market prices and then burn it?

---

Have the devil dogs make their lives a living hell.
Put those middlemen up against the wall marines !


jmo

Two NATO soldiers among 10 people killed in Afghanistan attacks
Last Update: 5/07 2:34 pm
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - ... http://www.wpsdtv.com/news/world/story.aspx?content_id=332010c0-08bb-4fab-99bd-a555a3861aec

years more. Afterwards, years of intense reconstruction would still be required to prevent the region collapsing again."

FEATURE-U.S., NATO battle on uneven Afghan patchwork
Thu May 8, 2008 3:03am EDT
By Luke Baker
MAIDAN SHAHR, Afghanistan, May 8 (Reuters) ... http://www.reuters.com/article/featuredCrisis/idUSISL235645

I am sick of this pussy-footing by our puppet Bush-run military. Taking a lesson from a Star Trek episode, "A Taste of Armageddon", round up the farmers and burn their poppy plants. Once the burn is completed, they will have to find a way to live without growing this garbage or perish.

http://www.startrek.com/startrek/galleryview?id=2316513&count=2&ads=1&clicks=17&episodeid=68706&expanded=false

He's probably next door, in Pakistan.

Two ways to get rid of the poppies: legalize drugs, so the crop drops to free market price, or break out the barrels of agent orange. I like option 1.

You think farmers are going to just sit there and starve to death after you burn their crops? More likely, they'll join their cousins in the Taliban and do their best to kill the foreign invaders.

Why don't you just get the fuck out of their country instead?

Why not just give them a piece of the action of the oil pipeline to buy food with? As you said, its their country. Why are we standing back and letting them get zero gain from this effort? Letting them grow a drug cash crop is unacceptable as long as we have boots on the ground there.
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/oil.html

the country where he was assigned to work. He was with the state dept. or something but not so high-level that he couldn't go out and talk to the people in the Asian country where he lived. I read it when it came out, more than fifty years ago, and don't remember what country it was, or if it was a fictituous Asian country, I think the latter. He liked the local people and tried to help them. He was physically ugly, at least to the local people, and so they called him "the ugly American."

Unfortunately, most people apparently didn't read the book, even in the Fifties when it came out, and started using the term to mean Americans behaving badly, the reverse of what the main character was.

Maybe you knew this but many people don't and it was an interesting book, you might enjoy it if you care about people in other countries. It might seem dated now, I don't know. I was a young kid reading adult novels then and there may have been a lot to it that I didn't understand at the time. I re-read some of them when I was older and then I understood the sexual references. I should re-read it and see if it's as good as I remember.

snip

"The Americans killed three civilians," said demonstrator Pizwan Khan. "They were my neighbours and I knew they were not Taliban," he told AFP above shouts of "Death to America, death to Bush, death to Karzai."

Others said the dead were
an elderly man shot in a mosque and two other men, employed as drivers, shot in their homes.

But the US-led military coalition said it had only killed militants who had attacked troops searching for a "foreign fighter network."

"During the operation, several militants were killed when they attacked coalition forces. Nine militants suspected of foreign fighter facilitation were detained," it said.




http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=3303929&mesg_id=3303929

Could be fallout from the War on drugs linked to the WOT.
Taliban funds their operations with the proceeds from the opium cash crop.

Maybe Obama will make the connection, maybe not, only time will tell by this time next year....

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=82e_1210713489

Wonder how well the Taliban would fight if they didn't light up ?

http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5jiPnjtPlNKLRVdnYt2fa8Hi_6R9A

to destroy the crops? I mean, heroin is a horrible drug, and I think that action should be taken to destroy the illegal heroin trade, but is it the responsibility of the marines or people fighting in Afghanistan to do it?

I'm asking because I don't know what the moral answer is to that question.

You might remember that the Taliban abolished all opium production in Afghanistan in the years leading up to 9/11.

They've since made a 'strategic withdrawal' from that position when they realized that poppies were practically the ONLY reliable source of income in that semi-arid country.

The poppy production will end when the world stops using psychoactive drugs.

Which is to say, never.