Posted on 09/01/2006 9:26:39 PM PDT by The_Republican
WASHINGTON - The U.S.-backed strategy to fight Afghanistan's massive drug trade has been unsuccessful in stemming opium cultivation, which is expected to hit record levels this year, a senior U.S. official said Thursday.
"It's bad news and we need to improve it," said Thomas Schweich, principal deputy assistant secretary of state for international narcotics. "But we don't feel it's a hopeless situation, and we don't think the overall strategy is the wrong strategy."
Schweich spoke to reporters as Western officials in Afghanistan were forecasting a possible 40 percent increase this year in land under opium poppy cultivation, despite hundreds of millions of dollars spent in counternarcotics efforts.
Afghanistan produces more than 90 percent of the world's opium and heroin supply, and the drug trade has had a corrosive effect on President Hamid Karzai's struggling government.
"I'm not here to put a happy face on this situation. I'm not going to say anything is truly working," Schweich said. "What I'll say is that it's improving."
Schweich said recent improvements include a counternarcotics tribunal, better eradication of the crop, better distribution of funds for poppy farmers to find alternative jobs, and a public information campaign to warn people that they will be prosecuted and punished if they continue to produce drugs.
Schweich did not have specifics on how much opium production numbers would likely rise in an upcoming report by the U.N. anti-drug agency. But he said U.S. officials were prepared for a significant increase.
The high numbers, he said, were partly a reflection of a drug strategy that was only started in 2005. Money for farmers to pursue livelihoods other than poppy production were distributed in a "spotty manner," he said. There were also failures destroying the crop, and courts struggled to prosecute drug offenders.
A more credible threat of prosecution and better eradication of crops, Schweich said, would eventually help steer people away from planting.
Already posted, T...
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1693997/posts
I was on that failed project, for 2 years.
Subsidized opium farming...Now there's an original American solution...
I have an idea. Why doesn't the US just buy it all up and then destroy it. Might be cheaper than trying to eradicate it.
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