Unexpected consequences: Opium crop in Afghanistan sets record.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

So now the Taliban, which "almost eliminated" opium production is now being financed by opium while the newly installed government is being undermined by opium money. More brilliant planning by the geniuses in Washington.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/01/AR2006120101654.html

Opium production in Afghanistan, which provides more than 90 percent of the world's heroin, broke all records in 2006, reaching a historic high despite ongoing U.S.-sponsored eradication efforts, the Bush administration reported yesterday. In addition to a 26 percent production increase over past year -- for a total of 5,644 metric tons -- the amount of land under cultivation in opium poppies grew by 61 percent. Cultivation in the two main production provinces, Helmand in the southwest and Oruzgan in central Afghanistan, was up by 132 percent.

The administration has cited resurgent Taliban forces as the main impediment to stabilization and reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan, and the U.S. military investment has far exceeded anti-narcotic and development programs. But U.S. military and intelligence officials have increasingly described the drug trade as a problem that rivals and in some ways exceeds the Taliban, threatening to derail other aspects of U.S. policy. "It is truly the Achilles' heel of Afghanistan," Gen. James L. Jones, the supreme allied commander for NATO, said in a recent speech at the Council on Foreign Relations. Afghanistan is NATO's biggest operation, with more than 30,000 troops. Drug cartels with their own armies engage in regular combat with NATO forces deployed in Afghanistan, he said. "It would be wrong to say that this is just the Taliban. I think I need to set that record straight," he added.

Opium cultivation was outlawed during Taliban rule in the late 1990s and was nearly eliminated by 2001. After the overthrow of the Taliban government by U.S. forces in the fall of that year, the Bush administration said that keeping a lid on production was among its highest priorities. But corruption and alliances formed by Washington and the Afghan government with anti-Taliban tribal chieftains, some of whom are believed to be deeply involved in the trade, undercut the effort.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai recently noted that "once we thought terrorism was Afghanistan's biggest enemy" but said that now "poppy, its cultivation and drugs are Afghanistan's major enemy."

[aquart]

1. Unexpected? No. Predictable? You betcha.

[WinkyDink]

2. Unexpected by whom? Maybe this is what Bushco wants.

[AIJ Alom]

3. So the more we try to eradicate the more is being produced. Hmm.

Opium production in Afghanistan sure sounds like insurgent production in Iraq. The key question I have is, in terms that they can understand, "is our administration learnin?"

[onethatcares]

4. there is no way 5644 metric tons of anything

gets moved anywhere without complicity at all levels of government. Just try to move 5600 metric tons of wheat or cotton.

[GenDem]

5. Follow the money

It probably leads back to Wall Street and the International banks.

[bullimiami]

6. right. expected. predictable. so, planned IMO.

[valerief]

7. The War ON Drugs has always been the War FOR Drugs. I wonder

if most of the crop goes to big Pharma. Who does get the lion's shares of it?