RugbyRebels

Sandydragon wrote: Nato were doing their best to eradicate the drug trade in Afghanistan. The Taliban were keen to preserve it as they made significant money from the sale of drugs. I agree that money and warfare are intrinsically linked, although I suspect you weren't linking drugs and the Taliban.

I saw some stats about heroin production during war years..(take your pick of years)...and I seem to remember that some of the fluctuations in heroin production are interesting.
You say NATO were doing their best.......but someone else wasn't. And it wasn't the Taliban.
Heroin production has increased year on year. Someone is making a huge profit.

kk67 wrote:

Sandydragon wrote: Nato were doing their best to eradicate the drug trade in Afghanistan. The Taliban were keen to preserve it as they made significant money from the sale of drugs. I agree that money and warfare are intrinsically linked, although I suspect you weren't linking drugs and the Taliban.

I saw some stats about heroin production during war years..(take your pick of years)...and I seem to remember that some of the fluctuations in heroin production are interesting.
You say NATO were doing their best.......but someone else wasn't. And it wasn't the Taliban.
Heroin production has increased year on year. Someone is making a huge profit.

I had in mind poppy production went down massively when the US first went into Afghanistan, but that only served to spike prices and drive up revenues. Whether that informs that production has since only gone one way I don't know, but there's certainly plenty in the war on drugs that makes no sense, whether financial, moral or common

2001 is the only flatline year. Other than that it's been a reasonably steady trade.
Of course the UK is a massive consumer of quality horse,......just like the US is a massive consumer of the marching powder.

kk67 wrote:

Sandydragon wrote: Nato were doing their best to eradicate the drug trade in Afghanistan. The Taliban were keen to preserve it as they made significant money from the sale of drugs. I agree that money and warfare are intrinsically linked, although I suspect you weren't linking drugs and the Taliban.

I saw some stats about heroin production during war years..(take your pick of years)...and I seem to remember that some of the fluctuations in heroin production are interesting.
You say NATO were doing their best.......but someone else wasn't. And it wasn't the Taliban.
Heroin production has increased year on year. Someone is making a huge profit.

Much of the production occurred in areas where security was poor, so destroying drugs perhaps wasn't always the main priority. There was definitely plenty of corruption amongst the Afghan police and army, but the main problem was livelihoods. To the poor farmer, how does he live when we have destroyed his crops? Not always easy to grow alternatives and the support was often missing.

If there has been greater stability then more could have been done. But the way the taliban defended those fields was notable and they made a lot of money from drugs sales, notwithstanding religion.

I was involved in one of the early EUFOR-led operations on the border between Serbia and Bosnia back in 2004ish. The intent was to 'bolster' the BiH police and customs officers by sealing the crossings over the Sava river and stopping everything that came across. There were a few minor seizures - a couple of cases of ropey wine here and there and 1 bloke who was smuggling 2 lamb carcases under the bonnet of his car (Bet they would have tasted pretty rank at the wedding reception).

The Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders were working up near Bijeljina and on the 2nd day stopped a VW camper van. When they searched it the found a monstrous load of heroin that had made its way overland from AFG.

In what proved to be a very positive and popular gesture, the battalion CO allowed the local customs police to take all the credit for the find. I asked him a couple of days later why he had done this, since it probably cost him an OBE or some other tasty gong. He said that if word had got out in Glasgow that the Argylls has nabbed that size of stash and put such a dent in the supply, none of his lads would have been able to go home on leave!

Destroying poppyfields in the middle of a world morphine shortage was bloody stupid. If we'd paid the farmers to grow there'd have been a darn sight less support for the Taliban.

That experiment was tried by the US in Pakistan back in the 70s and 80s. They bought the opium crop, refined it into medical grade opiates, which were then donated to developing states. Problem was, it created a demand, which was then filled by expanding cultivation and when the programme was cut for lack of continuing funding it left behind not only an agricultural sector even more dependent on the opium crop, but a glut of heroin that sold for whatever the farmer could get and gave rise to a boom in heroin addiction in the 'Stans.

And it wasn't contained there; by the late 80s/early 90s the largely Asian community of Tower Hamlets, for example, became virtually overwhelmed with heroin addiction, its young men by-passing the so-called gateway drugs and getting straight onto the cheap smack.

SerjeantWildgoose wrote:That experiment was tried by the US in Pakistan back in the 70s and 80s. They bought the opium crop, refined it into medical grade opiates, which were then donated to developing states. Problem was, it created a demand, which was then filled by expanding cultivation and when the programme was cut for lack of continuing funding it left behind not only an agricultural sector even more dependent on the opium crop, but a glut of heroin that sold for whatever the farmer could get and gave rise to a boom in heroin addiction in the 'Stans.

And it wasn't contained there; by the late 80s/early 90s the largely Asian community of Tower Hamlets, for example, became virtually overwhelmed with heroin addiction, its young men by-passing the so-called gateway drugs and getting straight onto the cheap smack.

There's your problem.

My problem? I think you'll find it is the inevitable consequence of having a democratic super-power that potentially changes administration and reverses budget priorities every 5 years. There are alternatives, I suppose, but one party despotism tends to be frowned upon in liberal circles.

Frankly, the majority of citizens of western democracies only consider it 'their problem' when some junkie fecker nicks their iPad to fund their habit - and at that point their priority is not providing a sustainable alternative for some Afghan farmer; they'd be happy to see Helmand and the tribal areas doused with Agent Orange.

Eugene Wrayburn wrote:Destroying poppyfields in the middle of a world morphine shortage was bloody stupid. If we'd paid the farmers to grow there'd have been a darn sight less support for the Taliban.

They were more interested in not being being killed by the Taliban than being paid.

Valid Maslovian point there, Baz.

Even if the dried up dung-hole was capable of supporting any other cash crop (It isn't), the choice between growing olives for Lidl or opium for Tallybob was often made at the dodgy end of an AK.

It happens every now and then mate. I usually screen shot it for posterity.

SerjeantWildgoose wrote:Valid Maslovian point there, Baz.

Even if the dried up dung-hole was capable of supporting any other cash crop (It isn't), the choice between growing olives for Lidl or opium for Tallybob was often made at the dodgy end of an AK.

Agreed. And the Afghan government, or at least those not in cahoots anyway, often went for th harshest option, which doesn't incentivise the starving farmer.