– THE AFGHAN POPPY

The United States is to change the way it deals with the massive poppy growing industry in Afghanistan. USA special envoy to Afghanistan Richard Holbrooke, on Saturday 06/27/2009, at a G8 meeting in Italy, said current measures against poppy growers had been “a failure” (see – Opium’s kingdom).

Instead of destroying the crops it will spend money encouraging Afghan farmers to grow different ones. Mr Holbrooke said that existing programs of eradication had not reduced by one dollar the amount of money the Taliban earned from production.

“Spraying the crops just penalizes the farmer and they grow crops somewhere else. The hundreds of millions of dollars we spend on crop eradication has not had any damage on the Taliban”. But UK said in response it will continue to fund the destruction of opium fields in Afghanistan despite the USA condemning poppy eradication as a waste of money.  

The method of paying farmers in order to encourage them to grow different crops was already tried in several places in the world with limited success. It is depended on the ability of the regime to provide security, which is in doubt in Afghanistan and there is no other crops as profitable as poppy or alike.  The conference of foreign ministers in Trieste also called for credible elections in Afghanistan in 08/2009.

Mr Holbrooke said in future destruction of poppy fields would be phased out and the money instead redirected to farmers to grow different crops. The move was welcomed by delegates at the G8 conference.

The Italian Foreign Minister, Franco Frattini, said the G8 backed President Hamid Karzai’s appeal to the Taliban to take part in the Afghanistan elections in 08/2009. Richard Holbrooke said the fairness of the elections would determine the legitimacy of the government. “We have just seen a spectacularly bad example just next door in Iran”, he said.

 

 

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