Calling Afghanistan what it is: A drug war By Alfred W. McCoy

[Douglas Carpenter]

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175225/tomgram%3A_alfred_mccoy%2C_afghanistan_as_a_drug_war__/

and

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2010/03/30/afghanistan_as_drug_war/index.html

Calling Afghanistan what it is: A drug war

Thirty years ago, Afghanistan barely produced any opium. Then along came the CIA

By Alfred McCoy


An opium poppy farmer watches as Afghan Army troops pass through his field shortly before a firefight broke out with Taliban insurgents on March 14, 2010, in Kandahar province, Afghanistan.

snip:

Throughout all the shooting and shouting, American commanders seemed strangely unaware that Marja might qualify as the world's heroin capital -- with hundreds of laboratories, reputedly hidden inside the area's mud-brick houses, regularly processing the local poppy crop into high-grade heroin. After all, the surrounding fields of Helmand Province produce a remarkable 40% of the world's illicit opium supply, and much of this harvest has been traded in Marja. Rushing through those opium fields to attack the Taliban on day one of this offensive, the Marines missed their real enemy, the ultimate force behind the Taliban insurgency, as they pursued just the latest crop of peasant guerrillas whose guns and wages are funded by those poppy plants. "You can't win this war," said one U.S. Embassy official just back from inspecting these opium districts, "without taking on drug production in Helmand Province."

snip:

Opium first emerged as a key force in Afghan politics during the CIA covert war against the Soviets, the last in a series of secret operations that it conducted along the mountain rim-lands of Asia which stretch for 5,000 miles from Turkey to Thailand. In the late 1940s, as the Cold War was revving up, the United States first mounted covert probes of communism's Asian underbelly. For 40 years thereafter, the CIA fought a succession of secret wars along this mountain rim -- in Burma during the 1950s, Laos in the 1960s, and Afghanistan in the 1980s. In one of history's ironic accidents, the southern reach of communist China and the Soviet Union had coincided with Asia's opium zone along this same mountain rim, drawing the CIA into ambiguous alliances with the region's highland warlords.

Edited to conform to DU's fairuse policy for copyrighted material, Lithos DU Moderator

snip:

Short of another precipitous withdrawal akin to 1991, Washington has no realistic alternative to the costly, long-term reconstruction of Afghanistan's agriculture. Beneath the gaze of an allied force that now numbers about 120,000 soldiers, opium has fueled the Taliban's growth into an omnipresent shadow government and an effective guerrilla army. The idea that our expanded military presence might soon succeed in driving back that force and handing over pacification to the illiterate, drug-addicted Afghan police and army remains, for the time being, a fantasy. Quick fixes like paying poppy farmers not to plant, something British and Americans have both tried, can backfire and end up actually promoting yet more opium cultivation. Rapid drug eradication without alternative employment, something the private contractor DynCorp tried so disastrously under a $150 million contract in 2005, would simply plunge Afghanistan into more misery, stoking mass anger and destabilizing the Kabul government further.

Alfred W. McCoy is the J.R.W. Smail Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the author of The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade, which probes the conjuncture of illicit narcotics and covert operations over half a century. His latest book, Policing America's Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the Rise of the Surveillance State

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175225/tomgram%3A_alfred_mccoy%2C_afghanistan_as_a_drug_war__/

and

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2010/03/30/afghanistan_as_drug_war/index.html

To listen or download a full interview with Dr. Alfred W. McCoy:

http://tomdispatch.blogspot.com/2010/03/taming-dragon.html

.

[NJmaverick]

1. This article with the same FALSE headline has already been posted

and I have already posted links showing the 30 year claim to be a work of fiction from an author that needs to spend more time researching and less time bloviating

http://www.silkroadstudies.org/new/docs/CEF/Quarterly/February_2006/Pierre-Arnaud_Chouvy.pdf

[Flaneur]

3. Hmmm, who to believe?

One of the world's most reknowned experts on opium production?

Or NJ Maverick?

Tough call. Not.

[RainDog]

8. lol n/t

[laststeamtrain]

4. Thanks, House! U da man!

When I think of all the great things you do for us, keeping us on the straight & narrow & all, it makes me long for a smaller tent.

There's too many strange agents in this tent.

[Hannah Bell]

10. LOL. Your article quotes & sources said "bloviator". LOL LOL

and i'm not noting the smack-down you seem to see.

[MadHound]

12. You are posting bullshit that glosses over much of history of the region, especially modern history

I'll take the word, and research, of McCoy, an expert in the field, over your pathetic source any day of the week and twice on Sundays.

[mike_c]

13. was that linked article your "proof?"

It clearly links large scale opium production in Afghanistan to the Cold War and the CIA. The only statement I found citing earlier production-- albeit I scanned the paper quickly-- was to cold war activities in the mid fifties "stimulating" poppy production in Afghanistan, but it does not say that output was significant at that time, at least not in international terms. And in any event, the stimulus was STILL U.S. foreign policy and the CIA.

[Douglas Carpenter]

17. I think if one reads the article in its entirety or even listens to the interview

one will find his findings to be fairly nuanced. He does not for example charge that the CIA currently - at this time - have an agenda of promoting the international heroin trade. He argues that with the heroin trade comprising approximately 50% of Afghanistan's gross national product and a government full of officials at all levels and a coalitions knee deep in the heroin trade - complicity in the trade is a simple fact of life.

[Douglas Carpenter]

2. I STRONGLY - STRONGY Recommend reading the whole article and listening to the audio interview

by one of the world's leading experts on the politics of the international drug trade:

link for full article:

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175225/tomgram%3A_alfred_mccoy%2C_afghanistan_as_a_drug_war__

or

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2010/03/30/afghanistan_as_drug_war/index.html


link for audio interview with Professor McCoy:

http://tomdispatch.blogspot.com/2010/03/taming-dragon.html

/

[jberryhill]

5. We froze Afghanistan out of the legal opiate production system...

The legal production of opiates for the medical industry is controlled on an assigned quota system.

One problem is that artificial opiates, such as oxycontin, put a dent in demand, even among the designated "legal opium producers".

The fact that a huge chunk of the Afghan economy has hinged on opium production - and for a darn sight longer than 30 years - is something of an elephant in the room relative to the question of how to get Afghanistan on an even keel going forward.

I'd just as soon we look at getting pharma companies out of the artificial opiate business, since there is no real advantage over pain meds derived from actual opiates, other than cutting out growers who've built their livelihoods on them for a long, long time.

[RainDog]

6. Afghanistan is now also the leader in cannabis/hash production

http://www.enewspf.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=15243:afghanistan-leads-global-hashish-production-un-report-finds&catid=88888983:latest-national-news&Itemid=88889930

“While other countries have even larger cannabis cultivation, the astonishing yield of the Afghan cannabis crop makes Afghanistan the world’s biggest producer of hashish, estimated at between 1,500 and 3,500 tons a year,” said UNODC Executive Director Antonio Maria Costa.

Cannabis not only reaps a high return – $3,900 in gross income per hectare as compared to $3,600 from opium – but it is also cheap to harvest and process. It is three times cheaper to cultivate a hectare of cannabis in Afghanistan than a hectare of opium.

However, opium is still favoured over cannabis among Afghan farmers, according to the survey, which noted that the latter has a short shelf-life and is a crop grown during the summer months, when less water is available for irrigation.

Mr. Costa noted that in the past five years, cannabis cultivation has shifted away from the country’s north to the south. “Like opium, cannabis cultivation is now concentrated in regions of instability, namely the south of the country,” he stated."

[PufPuf23]

7. Interesting quote re: Taliban and opium production

from McCoy in the tomdispatch link:

"In the late 1990s, the Taliban, which had taken power in most of the country, lost any chance for international legitimacy by protecting and profiting from opium -- and then, ironically, fell from power only months after reversing course and banning the crop. Since the US military intervened in 2001, a rising tide of opium has corrupted the government in Kabul while empowering a resurgent Taliban whose guerrillas have taken control of ever larger parts of the Afghan countryside."

[frylock]

9. more recommended reading from alfred w. mccoy..

The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia

the more things CHANGE...

[Douglas Carpenter]

11. thanks

[amborin]

14. K&R

[dmr]

15. Douglas Carpenter:

Please be aware that DU copyright rules require that excerpts of copyrighted material be limited to four paragraphs and must include a link to the original source.

Thank you,
DU Moderator

[Douglas Carpenter]

16. thank you!! Fair enough

and thanks to Lithos for doing a fine job of editing and keeping the full content completely intact.

[Quantess]

18. This looks interesting.

I'll read it when I have more time.