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  • Opium Funding Afghan Unrest

    Opium Funding Afghan Unrest
    KABUL The top U.S. general in Afghanistan said yesterday he estimated that Afghanistan’s rampant opium poppy cultivation was funding up to 40 percent of the Taliban-led insurgency.

    Gen. Dan McNeill, head of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, added he had been told by an international specialist that his figure was likely low and could reach up to 60 percent.

    The cultivation of opium 93 percent of whose world supply comes from Afghanistan, according to the United Nations is undermining everything the government and its international allies were trying to do, he said. Afghanistan’s opium production grew by 34 percent this year, according to a U.N. survey.

    Washington Times
    October 19, 2007
    "Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves, therefore, are its only safe depositories." Thomas Jefferson

  • #2
    Looks like a job for Agent Orange.:(
    Semper in excretum. Solum profunda variat.

    Comment


    • #3
      UNODC Exec. Summary

      Afghanistan Opium 2007 Executive Summary

      I've pulled this from another thread where it lay uncommented. I'm a tad frustrated as I found the full report a couple of days ago and now can't. The UNODC link to the full report and other links take you here-the executive summary.

      In any case, total dollars captured by farmers, chemists, and traffickers approaches $2.8 bil. About $750 mil is held by farmers so the bulk would seem held by the traffickers and chemists, of which most probably lies in the hands of the traffickers.

      My guess is that there's a very symbiotic relationship between the traffickers and the regional power-brokers/war-drug lords. Excluding farmers leaves about $2.0 bil (about 7% of the GDP, IIRC) concentrated near power-centers. Again, that's a lot of captal held within the country. Some sent overseas, no doubt. The rest-purchasing protection and grease for the economy on very favorable terms to the lender?
      Last edited by S2; 20 Oct 07,, 19:46.
      "This aggression will not stand, man!" Jeff Lebowski
      "The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you're uncool." Lester Bangs

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      • #4
        We should buy the whole stuff and turn it into morphin and other useful drugs. Maybe even built the facilties in Afghanistan (or a nearby country) and this way put some additional economy into the region (and some cheap medicine as an extra).

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        • #5
          I'd recommend keeping the crop going, paying the current rate for it and burning it. Alongside that have say a ten year period of improving farming skills for foodstuffs, all of which the coalition buys at good prices. Since the troops are likely to be targeted if they eat the stuff, make it plain that it's not going to be eaten by the troops and ship it to Pakistan and sell it at the wholesale price to their food distributors, same with India.
          What's missing in Afghanistan are the normal trade connections.
          In the realm of spirit, seek clarity; in the material world, seek utility.

          Leibniz

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          • #6
            All these are side issue and chasing the will o' the wisp or finding excuses for a task not well done.

            Afghanistan is a society steeped in religion and tribal customs and traditions.

            Only an Oriental will understand how this is so deeply rooted, it cannot be eradicated with education.

            What has happened to India is what is to be done. Today India is wholehearted with the US and not with the USSR or its successor. I don't have to elaborate.

            Allow maximum of Afghans to be educated ( and brainwashed if you will) in European countries. The poppies will dry up on their own!


            "Some have learnt many Tricks of sly Evasion, Instead of Truth they use Equivocation, And eke it out with mental Reservation, Which is to good Men an Abomination."

            I don't have to attend every argument I'm invited to.

            HAKUNA MATATA

            Comment


            • #7
              It's the Saffron, Man

              Herati Saffron- Radio Free Europe

              "Bashir Ahmad Ahmadi is the head of agriculture administration in the western Afghan province. Having just completed the test phase of a farming project there, he is now urging farmers in his region to grow the saffron flower -- Crocus Sativus Linneaus -- instead of opium poppies.

              'Herati saffron has beaten the international record for the most productive farm yield. I can confirm this,' Ahmadi says. 'The world's top producers of saffron are able to get farm yields of about 8 kilograms of saffron per hectare. But the Herati saffron fields have been even more productive [than that].'"


              The problem is packaging and distribution channels. Iran is a massive producer of saffron but because of packaging issues, up to 85% of its saffron is sold as bulk and packaged in Europe and elsewhere. Like opium, the farmer can only receive a couple of hundred dollars per kilo for high-quality unpackaged saffron. Packaged in Italy or Spain, it's resold for more than $2000.

              The investment potential for anybody able to figure out how to process (laborious and time-consuming work) and package locally would be through the roof. It would provide employment to seasonal workers while recapturing much of that $1800 dollars per kilo margin back into the Afghan economy minus shipping costs to markets.

              Who knows, maybe it would save us $.50 on a plate of paella.:))
              "This aggression will not stand, man!" Jeff Lebowski
              "The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what you share with someone else when you're uncool." Lester Bangs

              Comment


              • #8
                Update:

                IMO it is time some serious action was taken regarding this, Its irrelevant what the UN say about it "being less important"

                Whats the solution?



                Drugs finance Taliban war machine, says UN drug tsar
                But opium becoming less important to Afghan economy


                LONDON, 27 November 2008.
                The Afghan Opium Survey 2008 released today by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) shows that opium has become less important to the Afghan economy due to a decrease in cultivation, production and prices. However, opium finances the Taliban war economy and is a major source of revenue for criminal groups and terrorists.

                Opium cultivation in 2008 declined 19% to 157,000 hectares. Production was down by 6% to 7,700 tons. The Survey shows that prices are also down by around 20%. As a result, the value of opium to farmers dropped by more than a quarter between 2007 and 2008, from $1 billion to $730 million. The export value of opium, morphine and heroin (at border prices in neighbouring countries) for Afghan traffickers is also down, from $4 billion in 2007 to $3.4 billion this year.
                The area of arable land in Afghanistan used to grow opium dropped from 2.5% to 2.1% between 2007 and 2008, and one million fewer people were involved in opium cultivation this year. The Afghan opium problem is therefore shrinking in size and becoming more concentrated in the south-west of the country where 98% of the opium is grown.

                Despite the drop in opium cultivation, production and prices, the Taliban and other anti-government forces are making massive amounts of money from the drug business. In Afghanistan, authorities impose a charge (called ushr) on economic activity, traditionally set at 10% of income. Opium farming may have generated $50-$70 million of such income in 2008. Furthermore, levies imposed on opium processing and trafficking may have raised an additional $200-$400 million. "With so much drug-related revenue, it is not surprising that the insurgents' war machine has proven so resilient, despite the heavy pounding by Afghan and allied forces", said the Executive Director of UNODC, Antonio Maria Costa.

                He also pointed to the danger of opium stocks held by the Taliban. "For a number of years, Afghan opium production has exceeded world demand. The bottom should have fallen out of the opium market, but it hasn't. So where is the missing opium?" said Mr. Costa. "Lack of price response in the opium market can only be the result of stock build-ups, and all evidence points to the Taliban".

                The UN's top drug control official suggested that ongoing efforts by the Taliban to manipulate the opium market may result in less opium in 2009. "Since they are hoarding opium, they have the most to gain from lower cultivation. This would drive up prices, and result in a re-evaluation of their stocks", said Mr. Costa. News picked up by UNODC surveyors in a number of eastern and southern provinces confirms that the Taliban are taking a passive stance during opium planting this autumn, as opposed to past efforts to promote it.

                Furthermore, alternative sources of income are becoming more attractive to farmers. The revenue from wheat has tripled since 2007. The gross income ratio of opium to wheat (per hectare) in 2007 was 10:1. This year it narrowed to 3:1. The net income ratio is down to 2:1. However, this is partly due to drought and may therefore be reversed. Mr. Costa therefore called for "greater and faster international development assistance - including food aid to urban centres - to prevent a humanitarian disaster and to consolidate gains that have resulted in 18 out of Afghanistan's 34 provinces becoming opium free".

                Mr. Costa insisted on the importance of "keeping down both opium production and prices". "If the Taliban can disrupt the market, so can NATO: drug production and trafficking would be slowed by destroying high value targets like drug markets, labs and convoys - which the Afghan army, backed by NATO, are starting to do. International efforts have also been stepped up to reduce the inflow of precursor chemicals needed to produce heroin", he said. "These measures are meant to hit organized crime and insurgency in order to cut the Afghan drug economy's umbilical cord to the world, breaking the link between opium farmers in Afghanistan and heroin addicts in Europe", said Mr. Costa.

                "The downward trend in Afghanistan's opium economy would gain speed with more honest government, more security, and more development assistance", said Mr. Costa.



                COMMENTARY FROM THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
                http://www.unodc.org/documents/about...istanfinal.pdf

                AFGHANISTAN OPIUM SURVEY 2008
                http://www.unodc.org/documents/about...8_web%203a.pdf
                Attached Files
                sigpicFEAR NAUGHT

                Should raw analytical data ever be passed to policy makers?

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                • #9
                  That was a good bump Tigger,thanks;).
                  "Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves, therefore, are its only safe depositories." Thomas Jefferson

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                  • #10
                    This is not really news. Most terrorists/insurgents/whatever use illegal means to finance themselves. Look at how KLA used organised crime to get money and then purchase weapons. LTTE are doing same. Taliban are using the production rather then distribution for financing but same old concept realy

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                    • #11
                      Originally posted by aktarian View Post
                      This is not really news. Most terrorists/insurgents/whatever use illegal means to finance themselves. Look at how KLA used organised crime to get money and then purchase weapons. LTTE are doing same. Taliban are using the production rather then distribution for financing but same old concept realy
                      May not be (really) news, but it is fact and there needs to be a solution to it.
                      sigpicFEAR NAUGHT

                      Should raw analytical data ever be passed to policy makers?

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Originally posted by T_igger_cs_30 View Post
                        May not be (really) news, but it is fact and there needs to be a solution to it.
                        indeed. Unless there is viable substitutefor poppy growers they'll continue to grow it and sell it whoever has money.

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                        • #13
                          Juz burn the farm and compensate the farmers. Encourage them to go into building and construction. Make the Village Chief the director of a construction company and bid for projects, giving them priority.

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                          • #14
                            Afghanistan opium poppy cultivation.

                            I want Taliban back.
                            Winter is coming.

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              Originally posted by NUS View Post
                              I want Taliban back.
                              It is thought that the sharp decline that particular year was a commercial tactic, which doesn't imply a long term policy on the part of the Taliban, as it is demonstrated now. If you think I have to prove my assertion, I'll look it up.

                              It doesn't matter. Anyway, as far as the "war on drugs" or whatever you have in mind is concerned, it is IRRELEVANT.

                              All the Opium in the world could be eradicated (which would be a very, very bad idea) and still there are ways to produce synthetic Opium derivatives and in fact have been around for decades.

                              So what's the point?

                              Opium derivatives have among other things the faculty of killing pain, and does it in a way nothing else natural or artificial can, which if you think about it is a blessing. We need it at the very least to produce morphine and codeine. Now, the older the Opium crops in one area, the better the quality, and Afghanistan is apparently one of the best, much better than anything from the far East or Australia.

                              So why screw it?

                              Really, it's not for the paella thing, in fact I think S-2 idea is really good. But do you know how precious little saffron is actually needed? With less than a gram of saffron you have for years of paellas. At best, is only part of the solution.
                              Last edited by Castellano; 04 Dec 08,, 00:34.
                              L'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux

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