This is a follow-up to an earlier post, “It’s a really good thing that the US isn’t in control of Afghanistan".
The follwoing is an excerpt from, “War Returns with a Vengeance as Allies Fail the Afghan People” by Kim Sengupta.
“The UN has stressed irrigation is essential for agriculture in a country where the overwhelming majority of the population live in rural areas. However there is no shortage of one particular crop - opium. Poppy cultivation reached a new high last year. According to the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, the area of cultivation has grown from 1,685 hectares in 2001 to 61,000 hectares in 2003. The country has the dubious distinction of accounting for 75 per cent of the world’s output.
OPIUM PRODUCTION
2001: 185 tons of opium (reduction of 96 per cent from 1999)
2003: Second-largest opium harvest (after 1999) with yield of 3,600 tons
Poppy cultivated in 28 of 32 provinces, involving 1.7 million Afghans. Drug trade income is $2.3bn, more than 50 per cent of Afghanistan’s legal GDP
69 per cent of farmers surveyed intend to increase cultivation in 2004
Nearly 30 per cent of farmers plan to more than double production
43 per cent of non-poppy farmers intend to start cultivating in 2004
Sources: UNICEF SOWC (State of the World’s Children) annual report); CARE International; Afghanistan Annual Opium Poppy Survey 2001); Afghanistan Farmers’ Intentions survey 2003-04); Amnesty International”
Thanks to Kim Sengupta from the Independent/UK for writing, “War Returns with a Vengeance as Allies Fail the Afghan People“. Now I have some stats on just what has been going on in Afghanistan other than shootings, stabbings and stonings.
The war on drugs has failed because no one can seem to keep their greedy paws out of the honey pot. Not even the best Americans can recuse themselves from the activity.
The American dream is to be rich, period. And facing the fact that drugs sell themselves and for anyone to make money from them they just have to be in control of them for some time, it is easy enough to see why our prisons are full those chasing the American dream.
And those who partake in the various poisons, like Mr. Rush Limbaugh(mentioned because he was breaking some law to obtain his junk) are simply being pinched on both ends by the dealer and the corporate prison systems gaining ground in the US.
The international cartels, those in charge of corporations, countries and provinces where and whom the raw materials come from, rake in massive profits when the drugs make there way to the public. The corporate prison systems here in the states reap the benefits of municipal money, each prisoner another sale.
Anyway, enough meandering through my unkempt mind this morning.
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War Returns with a Vengeance as Allies Fail the Afghan People
