Afghan opium cultivation hits a record

[leftchick]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060816/ap_on_re_as/afghan_opium_boom

KABUL, Afghanistan - Opium cultivation in Afghanistan has hit record levels — up by more than 40 percent from 2005 — despite hundreds of millions in counternarcotics money, Western officials told The Associated Press.

The increase could have serious repercussions for an already grave security situation, with drug lords joining the Taliban-led fight against Afghan and international forces.

A Western anti-narcotics official in Kabul said about 370,650 acres of opium poppy was cultivated this season — up from 257,000 acres in 2005 — citing their preliminary crop projections. The previous record was 323,700 acres in 2004, according to the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime.

"It is a significant increase from last year ... unfortunately, it is a record year," said a senior U.S. government official based in Kabul, who like the other Western officials would speak only on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive topic.

[maxsolomon]

1. you took your eye off the ball, Jr.

couldn't you even pay attention while you 'owned' the rangers?

our hegemony is over.

[rodeodance]

15. oh now , give him a break. He glances toward afgan at least once

once a year or he sends pickles or condi

[Minstrel Boy]

2. Heroin is worth 12 times its weight in gold,

and is by far the most profitable commodity on the market, "black" or otherwise. That's serious money, not left to "common" criminals.

Alfred McCoy, in his The Politics of Heroin, writes that, only two years after the start of the Soviet-Afghan war, the "CIA’s covert apparatus that shipped arms to the mujaheddin had been inverted to serve a massive drug operation that moved opium from Afghanistan, through Pakistan’s heroin laboratories, and into international markets."

Less than three weeks after Mohammed Atta and Marwan Al-Shehi enrolled at Florida's Huffman Aviation, a Lear jet owned by school financier Wally Hilliard was seized by DEA agents with 43 pounds of heroin onboard. It was the biggest seizure of heroin ever in central Florida, and yet Hilliard was not charged. Nor was the pilot, Diego Levine-Texar, who ignored agents demands that he drop his cell phone, which had to be pried from his hand at gunpoint. (The affidavit of the arresting agent read, "Based on my experience I know that narcotics traffickers maintain frequent contact with one another while transporting narcotics… I believe Levine-Texar attempted to contact other accomplices as to the presence of agents and other law enforcement officials.") Information about Levine-Texar, we're told, is considered "sensitive." And flight records showed the same plane had made approximately 30 weekly round trips to Venezuela with the same passengers, and they always paid cash.

Anyone who thinks a record opium crop is a "failure" to these people doesn't know yet how they measure success.

[leftchick]

22. Excellent MB!

Thank You!

:hi:

[valerief]

3. So counternarcotics actually means narcotic-facilitating. Well,

as long the soldiers know what they're fighing for.

[Turbineguy]

4. Dope will get you

through times of high deficits better than high deficits will get you through times of no dope.

Or something like that.

[RaleighNCDUer]

5. despite hundreds of millions in counternarcotics money

Uh huh.

That hundreds of millions is funding the very warlords who are growing, harvesting, and distributing the opium. That kind of money can only engender corruption, and who do you think is getting it? The Taliban was shutting down opium production, ergo, the enemies of the Taliban were the opium growers. We are still fighting the Taliban and supporting the Taliban's enemies -- IOW, the opium growers. The 'anti-opium' money is going into anti-Taliban operations because the Taliban is bad, and opium is bad, therefore the Taliban must be behind the opium crop, right?

Is there anything over there we can't fuck up?

[saigon68]

6. Fire up the Bongs Boys --- Our Ship has Come IN !!!

LOL

FREEDOM (to make a profit) IS ON THE MARCH

[SpiralHawk]

7. "Mission Accomplished" - George AWOL Bush & republicon cronies

"Profits are way up on oil and drugs. Me and my fat cat cronies are tickled pink." - Commander AWOL

[Virginia Dare]

8. Where is the money going?

That's what I'd like to know.....

[TomInTib]

9. It's going where it's always gone.

Some to the Generals/Warlords
Some to the guys on the streets of the US and Europe who are distributing the drug of the moment(that is, the regional product of wherever the US is involved)
Some to Law Enforcement
A pittance to the farmer

And a ton to off-the-books ops and to the schemers who scrape fortunes off the top.

[Virginia Dare]

10. I suppose we can make a pretty accurate educated guess...

as to who these "schemers" you mention are.

[frylock]

21. CIA

[Jacobin]

11. The CIA budget is doing quite well then, I suppose

[leftchick]

14. that is exactly

what I was thinking.

[krispos42]

12. So, thanks to us the Afgahns have a record crop....

... while Midwesterners have drought and crop failure, and ranchers are selling off their herds because there is no fodder for them to eat.

Nice to know our domestic priorities are being addressed... someplace in the world...

[donkeyotay]

13. The preznit should stop spreading demockracy. He's no good at it.

Things might have been quite different in Afghanistan if Osama hadn't taken out the Lion of Afghanistan before attacking NY and bringing all hell raining down. Why, Masoud would probably be running the country if Osama hadn't had this foresight. I wonder where the money would be going then.

<snip>
In the first months of 2001, Masoud calculated that he had to involve himself in a complex gamble: change his image from warrior to statesman. He addressed the European parliament in Strasbourg, France, in April 2001. This was his first official trip to the West. He tried hard to attract Western support for the resistance against the Taliban. But still no one was listening. In Strasbourg, Masoud delivered a stunning message that nobody took seriously at the time: "If President Bush doesn't help us, then these terrorists will damage the United States and Europe very soon - and it will be too late."

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/DI12Ag02.html

[skids]

16. So what ever happenned to those tractors?

The ones that were supposed to promote food agriculture in Afghanistan?

Same thing that happenned to 40 acres and a mule?

Imagine what the world would have been like if instead of going after Saddam we had spent at least as much time and money helping Afghanistan build an economy as we did blowing it up.

GWB -- cut and ran from Afghanistan, once he had to face the prospect of giving people something other than a bullet to the head.

[dkofos]

17. Good for them. I hope the money goes to rebuilding the country

[druidity33]

18. jeez...

I know it's not as profitable, but man couldn't they have had a record year for Afgani weed?! Screw the poppies, grow some hemp!

B-)

[truthisfreedom]

19. wow, bush succeeded at something in Afghanistan! amazing! 40% increase!

rove should be crowing about this! what a remarkable advance!

[Rex]

20. All part of the BFEE plan. Things are working out GREAT for drug

warlords! How some can't see that this is a result of the BFEE, befuddles me.

[mhatrw]

23. So we've succeeded bringing them a "free market" economy.

Poppy must be very, very proud of his son.

[LeftHander]

24. DrugRummy....more white horse for America.....nt

[shadowknows69]

25. Any questions why Heroin use is way up in the US?

n/t