Heroin poppies now mainstay of Afghanistan economy

[kpete]

Fight to stem bumper opium crop
Heroin poppies now mainstay of Afghanistan economy

Wednesday, March 8, 2006 Posted: 0443 GMT (1243 HKT)

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- Springtime is on the way and already hundreds of farmers are tending pale green shoots of Afghanistan's chief crop and economic mainstay: opium poppies.

It looks to be a bumper year. Some 320,000 acres are currently blanketed in rows of dandelion-like sprouts that eventually produce almost 90 percent of the world's heroin.

But drug agents are counterattacking. An army of 500 tractor-driving Afghans hopes to plow the plants under before producers grow powerful enough to corrupt the country's fledgling government.

"There's going to be a continuous effort in spring and summer," U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry, the top American commander in Afghanistan, said in an interview Tuesday with The Associated Press.

When the Taliban ran Afghanistan, its leader enforced an effective ban on poppy growing under threat of jail. As a result, cultivation dropped to practically nothing in 2000.

http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/asiapcf/03/07/afghanistan.poppies.ap/index.html

[rooboy]

1. Heroin probably a mainstay of Bush family fortune too. n/t

[I give]

6. WOW!

Do you have a source for that? I would LOVE to read more about that!:woohoo:

[newyawker99]

9. Hi I give!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[skylarmae]

2. another whopping success brought to you by georgie porgie...

and the senate rolled over yesterday on the nsa spying investigation....

so hard to get to the bottom of anything with this corrupt repuke house, senate, admin and military.

[Minnesota Libra]

3. As the article rightly points out before Bush's was on terrorism.....

.....Afghanistan's poppy production was almost zero. So it would seem Bush is spreading more than just democracy.:freak: :banghead:

[Stockholm]

4. What is the point?

Just get the US and EU to guarantee to buy the whole crop. Cheap opiates for the pharmaceutical companies and a regulated market?

[shadowknows69]

5. Can't be.

Fearless leader says we defeated the Taliban and Afghanistan is stable.

[JNelson6563]

7. Well, not actually "stable"

more like a den. You know, an opium den. heh ;-)

Team Bush really screwed things up at every turn haven't they?

[ContraBass Black]

8. There's a surprise.

So, who else can say, "I told you so?"

[mdmc]

10. bumper crop this year?

:kick: