America's War on Drugs Leaves Poor Bolivian Farmers Hungry and Desperate

[Judi Lynn]

America's War on Drugs Leaves Poor Bolivian Farmers Hungry and Desperate
By Graham Gori Associated Press Writer
Published: Aug 18, 2003




IBUELO ALTO, Bolivia (AP) - One morning last April, Hilaria Perez Prado began her day as always - hoping soldiers wouldn't burst from the jungle and tear her farm to pieces.

They did come, though. They trampled her fields. And then one shot her in the chest as they left.

Perez, 41, is out of the hospital. But her lung is damaged and so is her hope of eking out a living for her family farming deep in the Chapare, a remote Bolivian region that is deep in America's war on drugs.

Over the past seven years, Washington has spent $470 million on a militarized campaign to deter Perez and other poor farmers from growing coca. (snip/...)

http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGAQ1KN3IJD.html

[Franx]

1. America's war on Drugs?

THE US ATTACKED AFGHANISTAAN -AMONGST OTHER REASONS- BECAUSE THE TALIBAAN WHEN TOOK POWER DESTROYED THE CROPS OF OPIUM OF THE WORLD'S LARGEST EXPORTATOR ... USA IS THE WORLD'S LARGEST IMPORTATOR OF OPIUM...WHAT ARE US C30S COMMING BACK FROM AFGHANISTAAN HAVING AS CARGO? PURE CHEAP OPIUM!


Afghanistan and opium production

The defeat of the Taliban would result in a surge in opium production.

A new UN survey reveals that the Taliban have completed one of the quickest and most successful drug elimination programmes in history.

The area of land given over to growing opium poppies in 2001 fell by 91 per cent compared with the year before, according to the UN Drug Control Programme's (UNDCP) annual survey of Afghanistan. Production of fresh opium, the raw material for heroin, went down by an unprecedented 94 per cent, from 3,276 tonnes to 185 tonnes.

Almost all Afghan opium this year came out of territories controlled by America's ally in the assault on Afghanistan, the Northern Alliance. Because of a ban on poppy farming, only one in 25 of Afghanistan's opium poppies was being grown in Taliban areas.

Some UN officials privately believe that the Taliban have not received enough credit for controlling drugs, and that under any post-Taliban regime cultivation, consumption - and the amount of opium and heroin on world markets - would inevitably increase.

"These are things which no one can say," said one UN official who worked in Afghanistan before the terrorist attacks of 11 September. "No other government in the world would have been able to do that. When I travelled through Badakshan (a province largely controlled by the Northern Alliance) you often saw the poppies."

Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Taliban's supreme leader, banned poppy growing before the November planting season and augmented it with a religious edict making it contrary to the tenets of Islam.

The Taliban, which has imposed a strict brand of Islam in the 95 percent of Afghanistan it controls, has set fire to heroin laboratories and jailed farmers until they agreed to destroy their poppy crops.

The Taliban enforced the ban by threatening to arrest village elders and mullahs who allowed poppies to be grown. Taliban soldiers patrolled in trucks armed with rocket-propelled grenade launchers. About 1,000 people in Nangarhar who tried to defy the ban were arrested and jailed until they agreed to destroy their crops.

In year 2000, poppies grew on 12,600 acres of land in Nangarhar province. According to the U.N. survey, poppies were planted on only 17 acres there this season and all were destroyed by the Taliban.

[Franx]

2. Link...

http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v01/n904/a07.html

[Droopy]

4. Welcome to DU, Franx

:hi:

[Droopy]

3. Sad story

And my guess is that American farmers being subsidized for their crops is a reason why these poor farmers can't make enough money growing legitimate crops. What are these people supposed to do?

[Franx]

5. Thanx Droopy :)

Thanx:)