Home | Community | Message Board
You are not signed in.
Sign In New Account
Forum Index Search Posts Trusted Vendors Highlights Galleries FAQ User List Chat Store Random Growery

PlanetSpores.ca
This site includes paid links. Please support our sponsors.

Feedback and Administration > Shroomery News Service
Threaded Mode Threaded  Previous topic Previous  View all topics Index  Next topic Next 

Welcome to the Shroomery Message Board! You are experiencing a small sample of what the site has to offer. Please login or register to post messages and view our exclusive members-only content. You'll gain access to additional forums, file attachments, board customizations, encrypted private messages, and much more!

Shop: North Spore North Spore Mushroom Grow Kits & Cultivation Supplies   MagicBag.co All-In-One Bags That Don't Suck   Original Sensible Seeds Bulk Cannabis Seeds   Unfolding Nature Unfolding Nature: Being in the Implicate Order   Sporeworks.EU Spores for European Microscopy

Jump to first unread post Pages: 1
Poppy profits fuel Taliban
    #6948866 -

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- Profits from Afghanistan's thriving poppy fields are increasingly flowing to Taliban fighters, leading U.S. and NATO officials to conclude that the counterinsurgency mission must now include stepped-up anti-drug efforts.

This year's heroin-producing poppy crop will at least match last year's record haul and could exceed it by up to 20 percent, officials say, meaning more money to fuel the Taliban's violent insurgency.

"It's wrong to say that you can do one thing and not the other," Ronald Neumann, who recently stepped down as U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, said of the link between anti-drug and anti-terrorism efforts. "You have to deal with both at the same time."

Afghanistan accounts for more than 90 percent of the world's heroin supply, and a significant portion of the profits from the $3.1 billion trade is thought to flow to Taliban fighters, who tax and protect poppy farmers and drug runners.

Drug control has not been part of the official mandate of international forces in Afghanistan. But there is a growing push for NATO's International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF, to play a more active role in sharing intelligence and detecting drug convoys and heroin labs, said Daan Everts, NATO's senior civilian official in Afghanistan.

There is "increasing international interest in seeing a more assertive supportive role in ISAF in the counternarcotics strategy implementation," he said before quickly adding that it would not include eradication.

International forces also might provide support for operations targeting senior drug traffickers, Neumann said.

Military commanders who viewed drugs as a minor irritant in 2002, when poppy production was much lower, have reassessed the importance of the vast fields of red and white poppies their soldiers drive past in security convoys, said a Western official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he didn't want to be seen as criticizing the military.

It's too early to say definitively what this year's crop will be. But another Western official with knowledge of the drug trade said it could exceed last year's record 407,000 acres by as much as 20 percent. The official declined to give his name because of the nature of his work.

Gen. Khodaidad, Afghanistan's deputy minister for counter-narcotics, said that estimate is likely accurate. "The problem is a lack of security, a lack of governance, the Taliban, druglords, warlords and corruption," said Khodaidad, who goes by one name. "It's a bad list with very bad results."

Thomas Schweich, a senior State Department official, said he has briefed NATO ambassadors and Gen. Dan McNeill, the top NATO general in Afghanistan, on the need for increased military cooperation on the drug front.

There is a growing recognition that "counternarcotics and counterterrorism are effectively the same thing," said Schweich, the U.S.-based coordinator for counternarcotics and judicial reform in Afghanistan. "I think everybody recognizes that with the Taliban receiving funding from narcotics, much more so than in the past, that there has to be a coordinated effort."

While poppy production is falling in north and central Afghanistan, where security is stronger, that decline is expected to be overwhelmed by a surge in production in the southern province of Helmand, the most violent region.

Helmand is expected to account for more than 50 percent of Afghanistan's poppy crop for the first time, meaning the province by itself would be the world's largest opium-producing region.

"The amount of production in Helmand has undone successes in other parts of the country," Neumann said. "What you see is that where you have a reasonable level of peace and a little bit of government, you can start to make progress against the poppy. Where you are in the middle of the insurgency, it's much harder."

The United States would like to see Afghanistan undertake ground-based spraying of poppy fields with herbicides. The new U.S. ambassador here, William Wood, oversaw U.S.-backed coca field eradication efforts in Colombia as ambassador there.

But some Afghan Cabinet members have expressed reservations about the impact on legitimate crops or livestock. President Hamid Karzai at first agreed to allow spraying last year before changing his mind, according to the Western official familiar with the drug trade.

Khodaidad said the Afghan government may permit ground-based spraying next year and is even considering aerial spraying. Afghan officials have not talked publicly about aerial spraying before, out of fear of public opposition.

"We have left the option open," he said. Any decision to start ground-based or aerial spraying would have to come from Karzai, Western officials say.

The Associated Press. 2007.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapcf/05/21/afghan.drugs.ap/index.html

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Re: Poppy profits fuel Taliban [Re: despisedicon]
    #6949025 -

umm, i dont really know anything about prescription drugs...painkillers....but arn't a lot of them dirvived from poppy?

where does the US government get there stash?

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Re: Poppy profits fuel Taliban [Re: despisedicon]
    #6949347 -

despisedicon said:



Field of Dreams


--------------------


Come on breakthrough with me...such wonders terrify the soul...it's real no need to question...knowledge infiltrates the host

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Re: Poppy profits fuel Taliban [Re: Available]
    #6949393 -

India is a big producer for pharmy corporations.

So... we are trying to stop the current economy in afghanistan, and switch it over to pro-western values? I'm sure the chemical properties would transform into "medicine" if Americans overlooked the fields.


--------------------
"During evolutionary time, the avenues of possible progress have become progressively restricted, until today only one remains...Man...has been suddenly appointed managing director of the biggest business of all, the business of evolution."

Life begins the day you start a garden.

Check out my trade list in My Journal...

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Re: Poppy profits fuel Taliban [Re: Delta9Hippie]
    #6951240 -

I don't support wars the US is leading at the moment (i have peace signs all over my house hehe), but the only reason I would support the Afghanistan effort would be if it led to destruction of the poppy fields. Heroin is not only absolutely useless and it transforms otherwise perfectly intelligent and capable human beings into mindless slaves to a chemical, it also gives all other drugs a bad name. This is the only way it can be stopped, or at least slowed down because of the street price increase it would lead to.


--------------------
Curiousity killed the cat, so it can be curious only 8 more times.

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Re: Poppy profits fuel Taliban [Re: Jerrico]
    #6952826 -

Or we could simply allow afghanis to grow the poppies legally for medicine like they do in Turkey. See, then we wouldn't be trying to destroy the economy of an entire country (which makes the populace justifiably hate us and support terrorist groups) and creating a situation in which only groups willing to use violence (i.e. the taliban) can take advantage of a highly lucrative product. Honestly, continuing to "step up" anti-poppy efforts is literally a worse strategy than shooting ourselves in the foot.

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Jump to top Pages: 1

Shop: North Spore North Spore Mushroom Grow Kits & Cultivation Supplies   MagicBag.co All-In-One Bags That Don't Suck   Original Sensible Seeds Bulk Cannabis Seeds   Unfolding Nature Unfolding Nature: Being in the Implicate Order   Sporeworks.EU Spores for European Microscopy

Feedback and Administration > Shroomery News Service
Threaded Mode Threaded  Previous topic Previous  View all topics Index  Next topic Next 

Similar ThreadsPosterViewsRepliesLast post
* Drug war, Taliban, Poppies are all in full flower veggieM 1,670 1 12/17/06 04:41 PM
by funkyjunky
* Taliban Netting Millions From Poppies veggieM 2,724 8 04/12/07 06:28 PM
by FoURtWeNTy420
* Afghans to use herbicide on nation's poppy crop veggieM 1,873 5 11/29/06 09:52 PM
by Nephlyte
* How to solve Afghanistans drug problem veggieM 1,445 1 01/16/07 02:20 PM
by ThreePieceSuit
* Afghans Attack Anti-Poppy Military Crew Lifenergy 584 0 01/09/05 12:35 AM
by Lifenergy
* Eradication of poppies 'will spark retribution'
( 1 2 all )		 veggieM 4,451 34 01/09/07 05:10 PM
by The_Red_Crayon
* NATO Commander in Afghanistan Predicts Record Poppy Crop, Continued Violence This Year Bridgeburner 811 3 01/02/08 09:02 PM
by Skeeblix
* Russia accuses the U.S. military of involvement in drug trafficking from Afghanistan Alan RockefellerM 4,103 11 02/23/14 08:21 PM
by Dark_Star

Extra information
You cannot start new topics / You cannot reply to topics
HTML is disabled / BBCode is enabled
Moderator: motaman, veggie, Alan Rockefeller, Mostly_Harmless
1,726 topic views. 0 members, 0 guests and 6 web crawlers are browsing this forum.
[ Show Images Only | Sort by Score | Print Topic ]
Search this thread:

Copyright 1997-2026 Mind Media. Some rights reserved.

Generated in 0.026 seconds spending 0.008 seconds on 16 queries.