# U.S. and Britain again target Afghan poppies  (by paying them)



## strollingbones (Aug 8, 2009)

The U.S. and British governments plan to spend millions of dollars over the next two months to try to persuade Afghan farmers not to plant opium poppy, by far the country's most profitable cash crop and a major source of Taliban funding and official corruption. 

By selling wheat seeds and fruit saplings to farmers at token prices, offering cheap credit, and paying poppy-farm laborers to work on roads and irrigation ditches, U.S. and British officials hope to provide alternatives before the planting season begins in early October. Many poppy farmers survive Afghanistan's harsh winters on loans advanced by drug traffickers and their associates, repaid with the spring harvest. 

U.S. and Britain again target Afghan poppies

lets see....wehat and fruit saplings are a lot of work...poppy growing...not so much...drug dealers are gonna stay there...americans not so much....why work on roads and ditches when you can grow poppies ...who thinks this shit up?


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## waltky (Oct 21, 2014)

Another record crop of poppies in Afghanistan...

*US watchdog: Afghanistan poppy production at record levels despite massive counternarcotics efforts*
_October 20, 2014  — Afghanistan’s opium economy is booming despite $7.6 billion in U.S. counternarcotics efforts since 2002, federal auditors said in a report released Tuesday._


> The most recent findings by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction come just a few months ahead of the withdrawal of coalition combat troops, when the vast majority of U.S. and NATO forces will leave the country.  SIGAR cited a United Nations tally of net land area used for poppy cultivation in 2013: more than 500,000 acres, a 36 percent jump from the previous year and a historic record. The lion’s share of that cultivation, the U.N. says, comes from Helmand and Kandahar provinces, two regions that were the focus of the 33,000-strong American troop surge four years ago.  “That is equivalent to more than 800 square miles — more than twice the size of all the boroughs of New York City, or 12 times the size of the District of Columbia — planted solid with opium poppies,” SIGAR wrote in a previous report in January.
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> Afghanistan remains the world’s top producer of opium, supplying more than three-quarters of the world as well as a growing domestic addict population, the U.N. report said. Along with illegal mining and extortion, the illicit drug trade is a major source of funding for the Taliban. International officials have said that the rebels are using the vast profits generated by the opium trade to buy ammunition and weapons and to fuel the insurgency.  The SIGAR report said that poppy production had quadrupled in eastern Nangarhar province which was deemed poppy-free in 2008 and previously considered a model for eradication efforts.
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## Moonglow (Oct 22, 2014)

Throwing money away on a wasted effort to stop what has been happening for centuries...


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## Moonglow (Oct 22, 2014)

US and British forces had no problem with selling opium to China....even started a war with China over it...twice...


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## Ringel05 (Oct 25, 2014)

Moonglow said:


> US and British forces had no problem with selling opium to China....even started a war with China over it...twice...


And they're still not all addicted.......  Oh well time for another war.......


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## Moonglow (Oct 25, 2014)

Ringel05 said:


> Moonglow said:
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> > US and British forces had no problem with selling opium to China....even started a war with China over it...twice...
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I'll say...


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## waltky (Mar 14, 2016)

Granny says, "Oh, look atta pretty poppies!...

*Pentagon Expects Lull in Afghan Fighting for Poppy Harvest*
_Mar 14, 2016 | The Afghan army's struggling 215th Corps in southwestern Helmand province is expected to get some respite in the coming weeks as the Taliban turns its attention to the lucrative poppy harvest, according to the U.S. military._


> Army Brig. Gen. Wilson A. Shoffner said that the recent spike in attacks in which the 215th Corps has lost ground to the Taliban in Helmand is expected to drop off in the coming weeks as the insurgents focus on securing the harvest and moving it to the smuggling routes through Pakistan and Iran.  In Helmand, by far Afghanistan's major producer of opiates, the harvest moves "within the province from south to north as the weather allows, and we expect to see the same sort of pattern this year," said Shoffner, the main spokesman for NATO's Operation Resolute Support.  "And so we anticipate that spike in activity [by the Taliban] will continue until about the latter part of March and then there should be a lull as the harvest gets under way," Shoffner said in a briefing from Kabul to the Pentagon last week.
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> The U.S., NATO and the Afghan government do little to interfere with the harvest. A spokesman for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, which once had teams conducting raids around Afghanistan, said Monday that "We still have a presence there" but "the footprint there has been substantially reduced."  Opiates have been and continue to be Afghanistan's largest exports, with an estimated annual value of nearly $3 billion, or about 13 percent of Afghanistan's Gross Domestic Product, according to the United Nations Office On Drugs and Crime, or UNODC.  A typical Afghan farmer can get $200 for a kilogram of opium produced from poppy, according to the UNODC. The same amount of green beans will fetch $1.  Shoffner estimated that the Taliban gets about half its funding from drug trafficking and taxing farmers to move the crop.
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## waltky (May 6, 2016)

Bumper crop of poppies providing Taliban with funds for offensive...

*Taliban Gets 'Windfall' from Poppy Harvest to Fund Offensives*
_May 05, 2016 | The Taliban will reap "windfall" profits from a bumper poppy harvest in Afghanistan this spring to fund coming offensives, a U.S. military spokesman in Kabul said Thursday._


> "The poppy crop is really the engine that provides all the money that fuels the Taliban," and the insurgents were expected to benefit from "this very good poppy crop that they had this year," said Army Brig. Gen. Charles H. Cleveland.  "As a result, we do expect an uptick in Taliban efforts to attack" when the harvest is completed later this month, with offensives focused on southwestern Helmand province, the center of the Afghan narcotics trade, Cleveland, the deputy chief for communications of the Resolute Support mission, said in a video briefing from Kabul to the Pentagon.
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## The Great Goose (May 10, 2016)

strollingbones said:


> The U.S. and British governments plan to spend millions of dollars over the next two months to try to persuade Afghan farmers not to plant opium poppy, by far the country's most profitable cash crop and a major source of Taliban funding and official corruption.
> 
> By selling wheat seeds and fruit saplings to farmers at token prices, offering cheap credit, and paying poppy-farm laborers to work on roads and irrigation ditches, U.S. and British officials hope to provide alternatives before the planting season begins in early October. Many poppy farmers survive Afghanistan's harsh winters on loans advanced by drug traffickers and their associates, repaid with the spring harvest.
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> ...


I know, its the one cuntry in the world that is defensible. Why give up good living to be a debt slave in a feminist society, if your cuntry is defensible?


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## waltky (May 20, 2017)

Afghanis growin' more poppies...




*Afghanistan's Deadly Poppy Harvest on the Rise Again*
_May 16, 2017 | WASHINGTON — The world's No. 1 opium-producing country, Afghanistan, is braced for an exploding poppy harvest this year, as farmers are cultivating the illicit crop in areas where it has never grown before._


> “Unfortunately, the narcotics production is on the rise this year,” Javed Qaem, Afghan deputy counternarcotics minister, told international donors in Kabul Tuesday. “We are concerned that narcotics would increase this year, including in areas and provinces where previously we had zero opium production.”  A new United Nations survey said Friday the total area under opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan has increased by 10 percent, from 183,000 to 201,000 hectares, compared to the previous year, leading to a significant rise in the production of illicit opium. The illicit drug is fueling insecurity, violence and insurgency among other problems to discourage private and public investment in Afghanistan, the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime said in its survey report.
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