John Verdon wrote: > I am an old hippy, high school drop out, lived in a van, built a teepee > (the whole hippy thing), even smuggled some grass across the Canadian > border.
Sounds like the appropriate senior guidance for that operation (see below)! It's just too bad that civilians and idealistic Canadian soldiers are dying for this shit (pardon the pun!). Chris <<Opium is converted into heroin on an industrial scale, not in kitchens but in factories. Millions of gallons of the chemicals needed for this process are shipped into Afghanistan by tanker. The tankers and bulk opium lorries on the way to the factories share the roads, improved by American aid, with Nato troops. How can this have happened, and on this scale? The answer is simple. The four largest players in the heroin business are all senior members of the Afghan government - the government that our soldiers are fighting and dying to protect. ... Our only real achievement to date is falling street prices for heroin in London.>> http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id= 469983&in_page_id=1770 Britain is protecting the biggest heroin crop of all time By CRAIG MURRAY Last updated at 20:45pm on 21st July 2007 ... In six years, the occupation has wrought one massive transformation in Afghanistan, a development so huge that it has increased Afghan GDP by 66 per cent and constitutes 40 per cent of the entire economy. That is a startling achievement, by any standards. Yet we are not trumpeting it. Why not? The answer is this. The achievement is the highest harvests of opium the world has ever seen. The Taliban had reduced the opium crop to precisely nil. I would not advocate their methods for doing this, which involved lopping bits, often vital bits, off people. The Taliban were a bunch of mad and deeply unpleasant religious fanatics. But one of the things they were vehemently against was opium. That is an inconvenient truth that our spin has managed to obscure. Nobody has denied the sincerity of the Taliban's crazy religious zeal, and they were as unlikely to sell you heroin as a bottle of Johnnie Walker. They stamped out the opium trade, and impoverished and drove out the drug warlords whose warring and rapacity had ruined what was left of the country after the Soviet war. That is about the only good thing you can say about the Taliban; there are plenty of very bad things to say about them. But their suppression of the opium trade and the drug barons is undeniable fact. Now we are occupying the country, that has changed. According to the United Nations, 2006 was the biggest opium harvest in history, smashing the previous record by 60 per cent. This year will be even bigger. Our economic achievement in Afghanistan goes well beyond the simple production of raw opium. In fact Afghanistan no longer exports much raw opium at all. It has succeeded in what our international aid efforts urge every developing country to do. Afghanistan has gone into manufacturing and 'value-added' operations. It now exports not opium, but heroin. Opium is converted into heroin on an industrial scale, not in kitchens but in factories. Millions of gallons of the chemicals needed for this process are shipped into Afghanistan by tanker. The tankers and bulk opium lorries on the way to the factories share the roads, improved by American aid, with Nato troops. How can this have happened, and on this scale? The answer is simple. The four largest players in the heroin business are all senior members of the Afghan government - the government that our soldiers are fighting and dying to protect. When we attacked Afghanistan, America bombed from the air while the CIA paid, armed and equipped the dispirited warlord drug barons - especially those grouped in the Northern Alliance - to do the ground occupation. We bombed the Taliban and their allies into submission, while the warlords moved in to claim the spoils. Then we made them ministers. President Karzai is a good man. He has never had an opponent killed, which may not sound like much but is highly unusual in this region and possibly unique in an Afghan leader. [Big deal -- he has his puppet masters do the killing for him. --CR] But nobody really believes he is running the country. He asked America to stop its recent bombing campaign in the south because it was leading to an increase in support for the Taliban. The United States simply ignored him. Above all, he has no control at all over the warlords among his ministers and governors, each of whom runs his own kingdom and whose primary concern is self-enrichment through heroin. My knowledge of all this comes from my time as British Ambassador in neighbouring Uzbekistan from 2002 until 2004. I stood at the Friendship Bridge at Termez in 2003 and watched the Jeeps with blacked-out windows bringing the heroin through from Afghanistan, en route to Europe. I watched the tankers of chemicals roaring into Afghanistan. Yet I could not persuade my country to do anything about it. Alexander Litvinenko - the former agent of the KGB, now the FSB, who died in London last November after being poisoned with polonium 210 - had suffered the same frustration over the same topic. There are a number of theories as to why Litvinenko had to flee Russia. The most popular blames his support for the theory that FSB agents planted bombs in Russian apartment blocks to stir up anti-Chechen feeling. But the truth is that his discoveries about the heroin trade were what put his life in danger. Litvinenko was working for the KGB in St Petersburg in 2001 and 2002. He became concerned at the vast amounts of heroin coming from Afghanistan, in particular from the fiefdom of the (now) Head of the Afghan armed forces, General Abdul Rashid Dostum, in north and east Afghanistan. Dostum is an Uzbek, and the heroin passes over the Friendship Bridge from Afghanistan to Uzbekistan, where it is taken over by President Islam Karimov's people. It is then shipped up the railway line, in bales of cotton, to St Petersburg and Riga. The heroin Jeeps run from General Dostum to President Karimov. The UK, United States and Germany have all invested large sums in donating the most sophisticated detection and screening equipment to the Uzbek customs centre at Termez to stop the heroin coming through. But the convoys of Jeeps running between Dostum and Karimov are simply waved around the side of the facility. Litvinenko uncovered the St Petersburg end and was stunned by the involvement of the city authorities, local police and security services at the most senior levels. He reported in detail to President Vladimir Putin. Putin is, of course, from St Petersburg, and the people Litvinenko named were among Putin's closest political allies. That is why Litvinenko, having miscalculated badly, had to flee Russia. I had as little luck as Litvinenko in trying to get official action against this heroin trade. At the St Petersburg end he found those involved had the top protection. In Afghanistan, General Dostum is vital to Karzai's coalition, and to the West's pretence of a stable, democratic government. Opium is produced all over Afghanistan, but especially in the north and north-east - Dostum's territory. Again, our Government's spin doctors have tried hard to obscure this fact and make out that the bulk of the heroin is produced in the tiny areas of the south under Taliban control. But these are the most desolate, infertile rocky areas. It is a physical impossibility to produce the bulk of the vast opium harvest there. That General Dostum is head of the Afghan armed forces and Deputy Minister of Defence is in itself a symbol of the bankruptcy of our policy. Dostum is known for tying opponents to tank tracks and running them over. He crammed prisoners into metal containers in the searing sun, causing scores to die of heat and thirst. Since we brought 'democracy' to Afghanistan, Dostum ordered an MP who annoyed him to be pinned down while he attacked him. The sad thing is that Dostum is probably not the worst of those comprising the Karzai government, or the biggest drug smuggler among them. Our Afghan policy is still victim to Tony Blair's simplistic world view and his childish division of all conflicts into 'good guys' and 'bad guys'. The truth is that there are seldom any good guys among those vying for power in a country such as Afghanistan. To characterise the Karzai government as good guys is sheer nonsense. Why then do we continue to send our soldiers to die in Afghanistan? Our presence in Afghanistan and Iraq is the greatest recruiting sergeant for Islamic militants. As the great diplomat, soldier and adventurer Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Alexander Burnes pointed out before his death in the First Afghan War in 1841, there is no point in a military campaign in Afghanistan as every time you beat them, you just swell their numbers. Our only real achievement to date is falling street prices for heroin in London. Remember this article next time you hear a politician calling for more troops to go into Afghanistan. And when you hear of another brave British life wasted there, remember you can add to the casualty figures all the young lives ruined, made miserable or ended by heroin in the UK. They, too, are casualties of our Afghan policy. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- <<Afghanistan last year produced the equivalent of 6,100 tonnes of opium, about 92% of the world total.>> http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9409154 The opium economy: A world awash in heroin And much of it from one unruly region of Afghanistan Jun 28th 2007 From The Economist print edition AP THE smell of the Afghan poppy season is unmistakable, even from the open door of a Black Hawk helicopter. NATO Soldiers in Helmand province see the expanse of purple and pink blossoms flashing by, but they do little to stop drug production; they worry instead about Taliban fighters mingling among the villagers, and are grateful to avoid being shot down. Yet the opium economy and the insurgency are mutually reinforcing; drugs finance the Taliban, while their violence encourages poppy cultivation. Not surprisingly, perhaps, both problems have grown more severe in recent years, nowhere more so than in Helmand. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the province is set to harvest another record crop this year, producing more opium (and from it heroin and other illegal drugs) than the rest of Afghanistan put together. Indeed, this surge has overshadowed the past decade's striking decline in the "Golden Triangle"-the border region of Thailand, Myanmar and Laos-which UNODC says is "almost opium free". Afghanistan has put a blot on what UNODC says is a hopeful global picture. Its latest "World Drug Report", published on June 26th, says that the market has largely stabilised for all classes of illicit drugs-including heroin, cocaine, amphetamines and cannabis. The global area under cultivation for both poppy and coca has declined over the past decade, although improving yields mean opium production has reached record levels while cocaine remains steady. Demand for opiates and cocaine is stable. Moreover, UNODC reckons that a startling 26% of global heroin production and 42% of cocaine output has been intercepted by government authorities. Meanwhile, cannabis cultivation in Morocco, the source of 70% of hashish in Europe, has dropped. World production of amphetamines and similar stimulants appears to be steady. The drugs business is by far the most profitable illicit global trade, says UNODC, earning some $320 billion annually, compared with estimates of $32 billion for human trafficking and $1 billion for illegal firearms. The runaway Afghan opium trade-worth around $60 billion at street prices in consuming countries-is arguably the hardest problem. Heroin is finding new routes to the consumer, for instance through West Africa to America, and via Pakistan and Central Asia to China. The opium market puzzles experts. They say there is now an over-supply of opiates, but the price for farmers or drug users has not changed much. UNODC suspects opium is being hoarded, and that traffickers are squeezing their vast profit margins and increasing the purity of heroin doses to maintain stability. At the time of the 2001 war in Afghanistan, the Taliban were blamed for presiding over widespread poppy cultivation. Yet they did impose a successful but short-lived ban in 2000. Their Western-backed successors have been less able to stop the inexorable spread of poppy farming. These days, says NATO, Taliban commanders and drug smugglers are often one and the same. Afghanistan last year produced the equivalent of 6,100 tonnes of opium, about 92% of the world total. There is an interesting divergence: in areas controlled by the government, production is either decreasing or stable (or even poppy-free); where the insurgency is strongest, it is for the most part increasing. Nevertheless, the impact is felt throughout Afghanistan. The opium trade is worth about $3.1 billion (less than a quarter of this is earned by farmers), the equivalent about a third of Afghanistan's total economy. It has forced up the exchange rate, sucked in unproductive luxuries and stoked a boom in construction, particularly around Kabul. In a country as poor as Afghanistan, opium rots any institution it touches. Some of the biggest drug barons are reputedly members of the national and provincial governments, even figures close to President Hamid Karzai. The whole chain of government that is supposed to impose the rule of law, from the ministry of interior to ordinary policemen, has been subverted. Poorly paid policemen are bribed to facilitate the trade. Some pay their superiors to get particularly "lucrative" jobs like border control. Despairing of the failure of the anti-narcotics effort, formally led by Britain, which has focused on seeking alternative livelihoods for poppy farmers, the United States has been pushing for a more aggressive eradication campaign with aerial spraying. Its experts say that incentives alone will never work when farmers can earn eight or nine times more from poppy than from wheat. "You need a stick as well as a carrot," says one senior American official. To show that aerial spraying works, the Americans point to UNODC's estimated 52% reduction in coca cultivation (but not cocaine output) in Colombia since 2000. However, European governments and many military commanders strongly oppose such draconian measures, fearing they will drive even more Afghans into the arms of the Taliban. American officials were outraged last April when British commanders used a local radio to tell Helmand villagers that foreign and Afghan troops "do not destroy poppy fields" and "do not want to stop people from earning their livelihoods". At military checkpoints, British soldiers assure passing Afghans they are there for reconstruction, not eradication, and they often turn a blind eye when they find opium. President Karzai has so far allowed only limited destruction by hand or with tractors. But this cautious approach has arguably made matters worse in places like Helmand. The discretion allowed to local government and police officials to choose which fields should be destroyed turned last February's eradication effort into a "harvest of money" as some Afghans called it. Wealthier or better connected farmers bribed police to spare their crops. Poorer farmers bore the brunt, while some of the nastiest warlords-cum-druglords were hardly touched. Some 500 police officers, backed by American security men with helicopters, raked in about $3m, according to some officers. They were supposed to destroy 12,000 of the estimated 100,000 hectares of poppy in Helmand. They claimed 7,000 hectares had been ripped up, but the UN verified only half this amount. Ordinary policemen averaged $1,000 each in backhanders. "We do a dangerous job and we get $70 salary a month," said one, "If we are killed there is no money for our families. We just have to make money while we can." One police colonel is said to have treated himself to a new Lexus car. Can Afghanistan learn from the successes of other countries? Thailand rid itself of poppy by an active policy of encouraging alternative economic development. But through the 1980s and 1990s it enjoyed strong economic growth driven by tourism and exports, and a fairly stable government. A lobbying group known as the Senlis Council says Afghanistan should copy Turkey and India in licensing legally poppy farming to make painkillers, such as morphine and codeine. This would draw farmers away from the drug barons and the Taliban, provide a source of income and improve skills by helping farmers to make painkiller tablets in their own villages. The Senlis Council argues that a large unmet need for painkillers could be filled by Afghanistan, particularly if it undercuts other producers. UNODC disagrees. It says there is no shortage of such drugs; the problem is poor distribution and many countries' lack of medical experience in using opiates. In any case, says UNODC, the inability to punish those who break the rules means licensing could increase demand for illegal poppies. Romesh Bhattacharji, India's narcotics commissioner until 2001, supports the Senlis Council. Pointing to the millions of new cancer cases every year, he argues that too many patients are dying in unnecessary agony. But he also enumerates the difficulties: in India, the government must survey 70,000 farms, suppress illicit cultivation, resolve countless disputes over allocations and prevent the theft or diversion of crops. This may be beyond the ability of a fragile state like Afghanistan. Another option under discussion is to stimulate licit agriculture, perhaps by guaranteeing prices for non-poppy crops. Afghanistan is, after all, within striking distance of the lucrative markets in the Gulf. But such measures might encourage smuggling of produce from neighbouring countries. In any case, encouraging agricultural exports requires more than higher prices, not least refrigeration, reliable electricity, safe roads, finance, marketing skills and access to markets. Dry opium, by contrast, can be stored almost indefinitely and often acts as a family's store of wealth. UNODC officials propose some partial steps, including targeting laboratories that convert opium to heroin, taking action against some of the best-known drug smugglers to signal the government's seriousness, and rotating police officers frequently, particularly those in bribery-prone positions such as border posts. Ultimately, though, halting Afghan opium production means reducing demand in Europe and other drug-consuming states. Progress in Afghanistan, if it comes, is likely to be incremental and will involve a mix of eradication, development, stimulating agriculture and licensing poppy. But all these measures require the same elusive ingredient: a stable government that controls its own territory and borders. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ SpamWall: Mail to this addy is deleted unread unless it contains the keyword "igve". _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] http://fes.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
