It is this reporter's opinion that the Bush administration has decided not to destroy the opium crop in Afghanistan even though the president previously linked the Afghan drug trade directly to terrorism.
Meanwhile, the Afghan opium poppy cultivation has exploded to a record high. The multibillion dollar trade, fueled by Taliban militants and corrupt officials in the Afghan Karzai government, is running rampant.
Opium grows on 477,000 acres of land in Afghanistan. That’s a 17 percent increase over last year’s acreage. Afghanistan now accounts for 93 percent of the global production of opium which provides the raw material for heroin.
U.S. forces, if allowed, could destroy the crop using aerial spraying techniques. But President Hamid Karzai rejects U.S. offers to spray the illegal crop claiming the herbicide would affect livestock, other crops, and water supplies.
Further opposition reportedly comes from the CIA which claims destruction of the Afghan opium would destabilize the Pakistani government … would threaten to overthrow President Pervez Musharraf’s government if the crops were destroyed.
The pitiful Afghanistan farmers attempting to scratch out a meager existence on their drought-stricken land, cry out, “We know it’s poison, but we have to feed our families.”
The farmers say a few acres of opium can bring five to eight times the price of a traditional wheat crop. According to intelligence sources, a single grant of $200 per year ($20 million in total) lent to the farmers could stop all opium production.
Compare that $20 million to the $50 or $60 billion already spent, already consumed by the war in Iraq. Consider too, the terrorists’ money originating with drugs flowing into the hands of Osama bin Laden.
If the Bush administration is truly interested in ending terrorism, it has to start in the poppy fields of Afghanistan. The United Nations estimates that Afghan opium, morphine, and heroin feeds the habits of 10 million addicts or two-thirds of the world’s opiate abusers. Afghan narcotics kill 10,000 people a year.
Europe is the most lucrative market, but this Afghan scourge is cutting a deadly path into the United States. Afghanistan is on track to produce 9,000 tons of opium this year, an increase of 34 percent over last year.
The farm value for opium is estimated at better than $1 billion dollars with a street value many times higher. And yet the farmers are telling us they are insulted by a government offer of $200 an acre to plant anything else.
Meanwhile, the innocent children of Afghanistan romp among the colorful poppy plants that will soon become the merchants of the world’s poison, death, and destruction.
To compound the problem, Karzai barely controls the capital city while the remainder of Afghanistan rests in the hands of unscrupulous war lords.
We must act to curtail this drug trade before many more lives are lost.
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