A Conspiracy Theory That Became a “Conspiracy Fact”: The CIA, & Afghanistan’s Poppy Fields

[Mayacaman]

48501

A Conspiracy Theory That Became a “Conspiracy Fact”: The CIA,
Afghanistan’s Poppy Fields and America’s Growing Heroin Epidemic (https://www.globalresearch.ca/a-conspiracy-theory-that-became-a-conspiracy-fact-the-cia-afghanistans-poppy-fields-and-americas-growing-heroin-epidemic/5533673)

[Shandi]

Thank you for sharing this resource. I will share it with others, as we all should, if we want to empower people with the real "conspiracy facts".




48501

A Conspiracy Theory That Became a “Conspiracy Fact”: The CIA,
Afghanistan’s Poppy Fields and America’s Growing Heroin Epidemic (https://www.globalresearch.ca/a-conspiracy-theory-that-became-a-conspiracy-fact-the-cia-afghanistans-poppy-fields-and-americas-growing-heroin-epidemic/5533673)

[cyberanvil]

Why did the Taliban ban opium production and lessons learned.

https://www.tni.org/en/article/learning-lessons-from-the-taliban-opium-ban

[Mayacaman]

cyberanvil wrote:

Why did the Taliban ban opium production and lessons learned.

https://www.tni.org/en/article/learn...iban-opium-ban (https://www.tni.org/en/article/learning-lessons-from-the-taliban-opium-ban)
Interesting link, Jefferson.

From the text:

"...One of the most dramatic consequences of the ban was the breakdown of the informal credit system based on opium. During the second half of 2000 and the first half of 2001, additional hundreds of thousands Afghan refugees were displaced internally or moved towards Pakistan and Iran, amongst them many indebted former poppy farmers unable to live through the winter and defaulting on their seasonal loans. Farmers were forced to reschedule their payments -one of the direct causes behind the full rebound of poppy cultivation the following year- and sell land, livestock, and even their young daughters (Bearak, 2001, IRIN, 2001)...

The Taliban ban as well as forced eradication efforts in the years thereafter are the major causes of accumulated debt, which is the main driving force behind the rapid expansion of poppy cultivation. A recent report analysing the determining factors behind farmers' decisions to grow opium poppy illustrates this perverse dynamic with dramatic examples. A barber/farmer in Khogiani, for example, took an advance payment of US$ 400 on 4 kilogrammes of opium from an opium trader in 2000 so that he could pay for treatment for his sick father. Due to the Taliban ban the barber did not have the opium to repay his debt. Interviewed early 2004, he said that the trader now wanted the equivalent of twenty kilogrammes of opium, or the equivalent of US$ 7,200 as payment for the original loan and the interest accrued. After mediation it was decided that the barber would give the trader his daughter against US$3,200 of the loan and mortgage two jeribs (0.4 hectare) of his land against the remaining US$4,000 he owed. The barber hoped that he would be able to repay the rest of his loan and regain his land. The only way to do so was to cultivate more opium this season (Mansfield, 2004). Countless stories like this about shattered family lives can be collected from across the country (Nawa, 2004, Rubin, 2004).

The short-lived drug control 'success story' can also enter history therefore as one of the most blatant examples of a humanitarian crisis being consciously aggravated under the guidance of a UN agency. Before the 2000 ban, UNODC had been running small-scale Alternative Development projects in Afghanistan for several years, which included a "poppy clause". In Drug Control Action Plans local authorities in the area had to commit to full elimination of illicit crops in the project period. Under UNODC's conditionality policy, development assistance would be provided "only if a ban on opium poppy cultivation has been declared at district level and that the concerned authorities at provincial, district and village levels have committed themselves to enforce such ban" (Transnational Institute, 2001)..."

[cyberanvil]

Interesting link, Jefferson.




So with the Taliban on the brink of taking control of the country, what will happen to Opium production?

[Abraham Entin]

Check out The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia by McCoy. This was published in 1972.