The Freeing of Afghan Poppies

Kabul, Afghanistan -- Well it's official. Everyone can now relax. The US government is scraping its opium poppy eradication program in Afghanistan.

Convinced that razing the cash crop grown by dirt-poor Afghan farmers is costing badly needed friends along the front lines of the fight against Taliban-led insurgents, U.S. authorities say they are all but abandoning the Bush-era policy of destroying drug crops.

Wait! The Associated Press article US moving away from Afghan drug eradication says "the Bush-era policy of destroying drug crops"? What is the author smoking?

Neither Bush Administration nor Obama Administration has ever had any such program. Ask any journalist, any soldier, any junkie, ask anyone with a vague idea of what is happening in Afghanistan and they will say this is utter bunk. No one has been trying to eradicate poppies which is why poppy production continues to go through the drug roof.

When I was in Farah and Helmand Provinces several months ago, I was struck by how careful our troops were in not stepping on a single blooming poppy. Actually, their sensitivity for Afghan entrepreneurs and concern for the junkies in the West was quite stunning. Giving me another of my Vietnam flashbacks.

When traveling on our tracked vehicles in Vietnam, we had no hesitation to rip right through a farmer's field. I still remember one farmer. As we approached his property, he came rushing toward our tracked vehicles with arms waving and his brown weathered beaten face pleading as he begged us not to drive through his rice paddies. This of course produced a big yawn from us, and six or so of our tracked vehicles drove straight through his paddies destroying maybe 20 percent of his crop. On our way back, we might have gotten another 20 percent. On the other hand, on our way back we might have gotten a mine.

In Vietnam, we didn't understand the critical importance of the local population. How to get them on our side, if that was possible. Nor did we understand the universal principle that people want to be treated with respect and dignity. Nineteen year old Americans with a rifle in their hands often have trouble with that principle. Nor did we grasp to tear up some poor farmer's field is a no-brainer, which on your return trip might get your low wattage brain blown to smithereens.

Instead, we were told our job was to kill the enemy, which we did. And we did that very well. But that did not, strangely, win the war. We were clueless that factors other than corpses won wars.

In Afghanistan, the US military, and others, have made some progress in understanding the world and understanding war. And you don't just rip through some farmer's field.

Heroin may be a deadly scourge, but there are more pressing concerns, U.S. officials say, and ways to fight drug production without driving Afghan farmers into the hands of the Taliban.

As I said, we have not attacked poppy farmers, and drove them anywhere. That is a myth. We have been engaging in one of the other "ways," specially, we've been doing nothing. But doing nothing turns out not to be cheap, for American taxpayers. It has been costing us $45 million a year! Maybe doing something would be cheaper.

Yet, doing nothing turns out to be the best policy if the only alternative is to stomp or spray or plow-up or blow up Afghan poppy fields and deny subsistence farmers who have seven or so mouths to feed the money to feed those seven or so hungry mouths. But isn't there a third option? Myth 2: there are only two options on the board of play. Baloney.

There is something other than doing nothing which is allowing the Taliban to rake in $50-plus million through its drug protection racket, or destroying farmers' livelihood and have his family turn into skeletons? There is a sensible third way.

At this critical juncture when the Associated Press article could have stopped blowing smoke -- new policy ... break with Bush Administration ... no more eradication -- the writer nods-off. There is nothing about crop substitution, price supports, and market infrastructure. Not a word about a comprehensive agriculture system that could give Afghan farmers the money they need to feed their families, and give the UN and NATO a significant reduction in poppy cultivation. Poppies that result in more than 90 percent of the world's illegal heroin and is a bonanza crash crop for the Taliban to buy guns and bombs for this increasingly bloody war. Not a word!

For years we have been hearing about a crop eradication program that does not exist, how many more years will it be before we hear about a crop substitution program that could exist?

Comments

[S1m0n]

Poppy eradication has been handled by agents from the DEA, not by the army, on the rather insulting theory that the people of afghanistan won't realize the DEA is also American, or won't blame the army for what the DEA does to their livelihood.

[sixyfivepercentwater]

I would think the Afghanis have a right to grow whatever they want in their own country. If we object to it coming into our country, then maybe we should increase efforts to stop it at our shores. That would work about as well as the entire "war on drugs" has worked, but it's something that would be ours to do if we chose, unlike destroying crops belonging to another country.

[penelope742]

Why can't we allow the poppy growth, and harvest the crops for the WHO? How would you like to have a cancer, or another terminal illness, with no pain meds? Most of the rest of the world lacks pain management. We don't need to eradicate! My Grandmother died of pancreatic cancer. If we had been in India, or Africa, she would have had to endure kidney failure with no medicine for pain. Forget the junkies, they need treatment programs anyway, let the farmers grow the poppies, and put them to good use. Here in the US we take so much for granted. How would we feel if we took our loved ones, in illness, after a car crash, or a bad fall, to the hospital, and were told we needed to pay for a pain med? While our loved ones screamed, or begged for death? What if you didn't have the money?! Or couldn't afford the pain medication?

[S1m0n]

Most of the world's supply of medical opium is grown in Tasmania, for reasons I wouldn't want to guess at.

[JScott]

You would think with all the big ag doing genetic research they could develop a poppy or a coca plant that has none of the drug content in it at all and then just spread the seed widely in the affected areas.

[luziannagirl]

Well, American farmers are still legally growing tobacco, aren't they?

That despite the fact that far more Americans die of tobacco-related disease than all deaths from all other substance-related causes put together, including alcohol, illicit and illegal drugs, including all opium-derived drugs.

Yeah, opium poppy cropping produces a helluva lot of money, primarily because it's illegal. So de-criminalize it and the bottom will drop out of the price. Heck, opium poppy can be cropped right here in the United States! I know because I've grown it--legally. It's easy as can be in warm climates.

Attack the problem at its root----eliminate the lucrative black market. Why have we not done this years ago, I wonder?

Who is benefiting from the continued illegality of opium and other drugs!!!!??????

We all certainly know who's being hurt.

[anderinthemountains]

I think this article may be wrong. We, the US, has been working on eradication for years. It may not be successful but it has been tried.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/07/09/070709fa_fact_anderson

[Stewart Nusbaumer - Huffpost Blogger]

Day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year US and Afghan troops drive right past poppy fields. It would be easy to destroy them, if they wanted to destroy them. Get out of their vehicles and set the field on fire. Poppy gone!

Why hasn't that been done? Because they have been told not to destroy the plants.

In fact, our troops drive through choke points and risk their lives not to damage plants. When a road turns narrow because poppy is on both sides or poppy and wheat are on both sides, this is a great place to plant an IED.

No, we're not trying to destroy poppies -- except extremely rarely for the bamboozled journalist, like stunning photos of a lab being exploded, but the reality is the drug trade is thriving, everyone knows where it is grown, and no one is attempting to stop it.

This may change in the future, but for 8 years it has not changed.

[makeck]

US and Allied soldiers are not there to eradicate the poppy, they have other things to do (they like to call them "Missions"­.....takin­g out the poppy is not one of them). You should ask the sodliers why they are maneuvering around the fields if you see it. I am sure that is the answer you get.

The Afghans DO have people whose job it is to get rid of the poppy. Whether they are trying hard or not is another story.

Don't assume the Taliban are the ones making all the money off the poppy. Nor should you assume that if you destroyed every poppy in Afghanistan next spring that the opium trade will stop. Raw opium has a long shelf life (ten years I am told). They have lots in caves around, just like they have lots of guns in caves.

You also seem to make it sound as if the entire poppy crop is grown by Mom and Pop farms. This is big business, and if you are in Afghanistan you know the criminal element that grows large fields of poppy. No Mom and Pop operation. Those criminal gangs have ZERO interest in switching crops, and will only do so at then end of a gun, or when facing a long criminal sentence..­...maybe.

I do not disagree with your proposal, but you oversimplify the problem a bit too much.

[anderinthemountains]

Read the article. It's not American troops doing eradication. It's contracted out A very old friend of mine has been there for several years destroying poppy fields for the US government. There is a program and there has been for a long time.

[RoloTomassi]

Well, the poppy crops not actually being destroyed makes perfect sense to me; the notion that the US government is anti-drug is all wrong--they're just against the stuff being legal.

If it's legal the DEA & CIA would lose control of it, and therefore coverts running on blacked out budgets could not continue, DEA officers and state & local cops couldn't run their confiscati­on/redistr­ibution operations without scrutiny, and the privatized prison industry would take a big hit, as their quotas for minimum number of drug-related "guests" would be negative impacted.

They've been doing it for decades with south American cocaine, and I'm sure such began immediately upon the US's arrival in Afghanistan.

So, while I've not heard this assertion before, it is no surprise--I already assumed that such was a sham anyway.

[texasteph12570]

how about we buy all of that opium and convert it to organic, as opposed to synthesized, morphine and then i might not be allergic to it. big pharm.

[Jonni Rae]

tex, this is a very good idea. We should buy the poppy. It is used in many drugs. We do buy our poppy from some country, I can't remember which, but why not give Afghanistan an exclusive contract? The farmers prosper, the Taliban doesn't get it to sell for arms, if a few people get high, this does not bother me.

[makeck]

Your also missing another side to the problem. As long as they can BUY food with the money that they get from growing poppy, or better yet get it for free through some World Food Program distribution, you'd have to be an INSANE Afghan farmer to stop growing poppy. WHY!!! He can grow poppy and get money from the taliban, then tell the WFP that he has nothing to feed his family with.

If you are in Afghanistan, you KNOW that the Afghans are, above all, VERY practical. If they have the opportunity to double down and win, they will. Merely providing crops to grow will NOT fix the problem until you stop giving them free/subsidized food. Gorwin Poppoy while there is free food available is a win/win for them, no WAY and Afgahn farmer is going to miss out on that.

[Balzac]

Come on, we've gotta have these drugs. Let them grow poppies. Let people blunt their stress. It's not going to catch on in a big way if people don't persecute the addicts and thereby glorify it.

Also, legal drug companies can use that to make morphine. It's probably healthier than the synthetic crap.

[PHartman81]

You're saying it won't be a widespread drug problem if we don't persecute and glorify?
From what I hear, Amsterdam has a lot of drug problems, not grass, but hard stuff.

I believe your thinking is a little too simplistic.

[sekigahara]

The solution knocking multiple birds with a single stone is thus:

Create, support, and allow a LEGAL poppy growing industry in Afghanistan, such as already presently exists in Holland, Tasmania, Turkey, and India.

Products from their LEGAL industries are: LEGAL poppy seed - the very seed you see in the supermarket spice aisle, LEGAL poppy seed oil - used as a paint solvent with other applications, and LEGAL alkaloids used in medicine derived from poppies such as morphine, codeine, and thebaine..

This will provide jobs for farmers, jobs for transportation of the crop to market and industry, jobs in industry rendering the various products, and jobs in security protection of the crop as it is growing or being transported or rendered or exported.

Not to mention jobs administrating the various industries which can be derived from poppy plant products.

It's tightly controlled and LEGAL in a variety of countries. Why not allow Afghanistan to become a producer nation in this regard?

[ezeflyer]

Legalize it and defund the Taliban.

[jlevi]

To legalize and not regulate would be a serious mistake. To legalize and regulate that makes much more sense.

[Jonni Rae]

That's where we get our poppy from - Tasmania.

[jlevi]

The bottom line is the US does not put resources into something like agriculture and farmers. Instead our government response is to immediately focus on combat, in our military solving the problem. There seems to be an effort to change this some but it’s very hard to do. Our foreign policy has been militarized and our response is to use the military even when our military leaders are saying we need more of a humanitarian and civilian approach to solving the problem. We need a reorientation of our foreign policy. We need the military, but we need more than the military.

[Durango]

Why not set up opium markets in the bigger cities and buy up the crop at slightly higher than larket level prices?

That way the farmers and middlemen make some cash, which helps the local economy and we could then simply destroy the product. Or sell it to pharmaceutical companies.

it would certainly be cheaper than anything else we could do. Much cheaper than buying bullets and helicopters.

Sure the illicit market would remain but you would drive up the cost. And i would bet most Afghanis would rather be dealing with a legitimate market for their crop.

[Stewart Nusbaumer - Huffpost Blogger]

Couldn't they do the same thing with other crops? The farmers are not making a fortune off of poppies -- other people do. I have read accounts where farmers say they would like to get out of the poppy growing business because of the ethics and the whole underground nature of the business. So couldn't we set up substitute crop programs that allows them to grow other products and make as much as with poppies?

In Herat Province in western Afghanistan they are now growing saffron, and supposedly the farmers are making more money than when they grew poppies. But that might be because of conditions there.

[Stewart Nusbaumer - Huffpost Blogger]

I'm not talking about destroying these crops, of course. Sell them on a market, but the farmers would have price support system. We are spending so much money in Afghanistan, for troops, for weapons, for bases, etc., it seems to me a crop substitution and support program would be chump change.

[PHartman81]

Well, it’s rough out there in the real world. Unemployment is way up, a lot of us are in the process of losing our houses, or wish we were since we’ll never get our money out of them. Health care is through the roof, if you have a roof. You get where I’m going with this. With all these poppies being made into heroin the street price is being kept down. And you never know when you might need a good hit to get you through the day.