Shamus

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

__________________
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but
it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.

glyn

__________________
Semper in excretum. Solum profunda variat.

S-2

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?

__________________
"This aggression will not stand, man!" Jeff Lebowski

Tarek Morgen

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).

__________________
uh I might be wrong

Parihaka

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.
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

Ray

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

S-2

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.