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WASHINGTON, March 31 (UPI) -- Attempting to eradicate poppy fields in Afghanistan is counterproductive, the United States' top envoy to the country says. Even though U.S. President Barack Obama's new strategy for Afghanistan calls for continued efforts to destroy the flowers used in the production of opium, Richard Holbrooke, the administration's coordinator of Afghanistan policy, called the practice "wasteful and ineffective" at a Brussels forum this month, USA Today reported Tuesday. Moves to eradicate poppies have been "pushing farmers into the Taliban's hands" because it destroys their livelihoods, Holbrooke reportedly said.

Can pomegranates cut into the Talibans opium trade in Afghanistan? When I first heard this proposal, I thought it was a crazy idea. Now, I am not so sure. Pomegranates yield more then $2000 per acre than opium. The supporters of this proposal claim pomegranate farmers never return to growing opium. The downside is pomegranates are more difficult to transport in dangerous Afghanistan and the trees take 4~5 years to mature. The US Government is putting $12 million into publicizing the proposal. Video is here.

DUSHANBE, Tajik Drug Control Agency (DCA) chief Rustam Nazarov noted that according to the Afghan counternarcotics service, 7,700 tons of raw opium were produced in Afghanistan last year, 500 tons fewer than 2007. He noted that last year showed an increase in narcotics production in Afghan provinces not controlled by the central government. “The provinces uncontrolled by the central government now produce some 80 percent of Afghan narcotics,” said the Tajik drug control chief, “18 provinces in Afghanistan have been announced narcotics-free; three of these – Takhor, Balkh and Kunduz - border Tajikistan.” He added that production of narcotics in...

1st Video of N. Korean Poppy Fields Unveiled DECEMBER 09, 2008 07:45 The first video clip on poppies growing en masse in a district controlled by the North Korean military in Taehung, South Pyongan Province, was unveiled yesterday. The Citizens Coalition for Human Rights of Abductees and North Korean Refugees, a Seoul-based civic group, released the 20-minute clip at a digital video exhibition for North Korean human rights at Gwanggyo Gallery in Seoul, saying it confirms the North Korean military-led “white bellflower project” as claimed by North Korean defectors. The clip, which the group said it received from a spy...

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan -- Under a wine-colored burqa that flows from the crown of her head down over her body, Khadija sat cross-legged, spinning the wheel of a sewing machine and methodically stitching a seam into a flowing stream of white cloth. The 42-year-old mother of five was working to burn off a consuming and deadly habit that again is blooming across Afghanistan. Until a few days ago, Khadija, who like many Afghans uses only one name, slipped opium in her tea twice a day to combat depression. It was," Khadija said, "more important than food." Just as the Taliban have...

On March 1, 2006, I met Hamid Karzai for the first time. It was a clear, crisp day in Kabul. The Afghan president joined President and Mrs. Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Ambassador Ronald Neumann to dedicate the new United States Embassy. He thanked the American people for all they had done for Afghanistan. I was a senior counternarcotics official recently arrived in a country that supplied 90 percent of the world’s heroin. I took to heart Karzai’s strong statements against the Afghan drug trade. That was my first mistake. Over the next two years I would discover...

New York, NY (AHN) - Taliban militants have earned an estimated $100 million from "taxes" generated from farmers growing poppies for the opium trade in Afghanistan, the head of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, Antonio Maria Costa, said Tuesday. Acosta said the earnings do not include money coming from other opium-related activities. He said the extremists may have earned more in protecting laboratories and the transport of the illegal drug. He told the BBC, "One is protection to laboratories and the other is that the insurgents offer protection to cargo, moving opium across the border." The U.N. estimates...

THE world's biggest drug bust has been executed by narcotics agents in Afghanistan, who say they uncovered 236 tonnes of hashish hidden in trenches in the south of the country. The massive haul, found in the southern province of Kandahar on Monday, was worth more than $US400 million ($426 million) and would have netted the Taliban about $US14 million in profits, NATO officials said yesterday. It weighed as much as 30 double-decker London buses. "To our knowledge, this was the biggest drug seizure in the world," said Afghanistan's deputy interior minister Abdul Hadi Khalid. He said the drugs were found...

Afghan farmers hope to capitalise on soaring food costs by growing wheat instead of poppy crops, with the fall in heroin prices further fuelling the switch. The price of a tonne of wheat in Afghanistan has almost trebled this year, causing acute food shortages. A changeover of crops has begun in key agricultural regions, said Tekeste Tekie, country representative for the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation. He said a significant increase in wheat crops is expected from next year's harvest. "The high price of commodities has encouraged farmers to switch from poppy cultivation to wheat. In fact, we are already...

WASHINGTON, May 19, 2008 – The NATO International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan has made significant progress in the country despite the command being “under-resourced,” the alliance’s top officer in the country said today. In a conference call with defense experts from his headquarters in the Afghan capital of Kabul, U.S. Army Gen. Dan K. McNeill also said opium poppy cultivation continues to be a major threat to Afghanistan. “In some portions of the country right now, mostly in the south, the cultivation of poppy is a far greater threat to the Afghan government -- to the security and stability...

HELMAND PROVINCE, Afghanistan -- U.S. Marines are crossing the sands of southern Afghanistan for the first time in years, providing a boost to a NATO coalition that is growing but still short on manpower. They hope to retake the 10 percent of Afghanistan the Taliban holds. Some of the Marines that make up the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit helped to tame a thriving insurgency in western Iraq. Some 3,500 newly arrived troops hope to move into regions of Afghanistan now controlled by the Taliban. The Marines are working alongside British forces in Helmand province _ the world's largest opium-poppy region...

TALEBAN warlords are using cash from Afghanistan's bumper opium poppy crop to try to buy shoulder-launched ground-to-air missiles, the country's anti- narcotics tsar has warned. The surface-to-air missiles played a key role in driving out Soviet troops in the 1980s because they let mujahideen fighters shoot down Russian helicopters. Military commanders fear that such attacks could paralyse current Nato operations. Afghanistan's counter-narcotics minister, General Khodaidad, said the Taleban was busily scouring illegal arms markets for better anti-aircraft weapons. He said: "They are trying to get weapons to shoot down helicopters. They are trying to get ground-to-air missiles and they are...

Villagers in remote areas of Badakhshan Province, north-eastern Afghanistan, have been using opium as a substitute for medicine for years. They are oblivious to the harm it can do to their health. There is no official data about the number of drug addicts in Badakhshan. However, the United Nations Office for Drugs and Crimes (UNODC) says one million people are addicted to drugs there, 45,000 of whom are women. This video short shows a women’s opium smoking session in the village of Jukhan, tucked away in mountainous Badakhshan. While efforts are being made to rehabilitate drug addicts in the village,...

Southern provinces are the source of most Afghan poppy production Opium poppy production in Afghanistan reached another record high last year and Kabul must do more to stop it, a US State Department report says.The report says that the poppy cultivation helps Taleban insurgents obtain money and weapons. The drug trade hinders progress towards economic stability and democracy, the report adds. Afghanistan grows nearly all of the world's opium poppy crop in an illegal trade worth billions of dollars. "Eliminating narcotics cultivation and trafficking in Afghanistan will require a long-term national and international commitment," said the State Department. "The...

To be a "good" Muslim References -  'Palestinian' child abuse -  Evil 'Joy' -  'Blessing' Hitler -  Mourning the wicked -  Australia - Muslim land -  Jihad on all Buddhists -  Spain - Muslim land -  Europe - Muslim land -  Arabs DON'T care about 'Palestinians' -  72 virgins - Loyalty -  'Pallywood' -  (use of) Ambulances for terror -  (use of) Women for terror -  Human Shields -  Middle east background -  September 11 terror plot on London -  Myth on: 'Terrorists are desperate' -  Beheadings -  Ilan Halimi [an example of monsterous wild prolonged torture motivated by hate only] -  Muslims attacking Jews in France -  Ahmadinejad ' Islamic Hitler' -  Cutting -  'Honor killing' -  Jews & Christians as "Apes & Pigs"? - ...

It is this reporter's opinion that the Bush administration has decided not to destroy the opium crop in Afghanistan even though the president previously linked the Afghan drug trade directly to terrorism. Meanwhile, the Afghan opium poppy cultivation has exploded to a record high. The multibillion dollar trade, fueled by Taliban militants and corrupt officials in the Afghan Karzai government, is running rampant. Opium grows on 477,000 acres of land in Afghanistan. That’s a 17 percent increase over last year’s acreage. Afghanistan now accounts for 93 percent of the global production of opium which provides the raw material for heroin....

On Afghanistan’s main Jalalabad to Torkham road is Shaddle Bazaar, in eastern Nangarhar.This is one of Afghanistan’s biggest opium markets.Thousands of kilos are bought and sold every day. Tension is visible, there is shouting over prices and quality. There are big scales to weigh the opium - Gul Mohammad is counting out Pakistani rupees.He buys hundreds of kilos every day, the smell is everywhere. Vehicles come and go constantly. A man carries a bag of hundreds of thousands of Afghanis. The dealers all carry pistols.Customers bring opium packed secretly, they refer to it as maal. Abdullah Jan: “I left at...

I've heard the question asked repeatedly. How is Al Qaeda, which is supposedly relegated to living in caves in stone-age conditions able to create state of the art video documentaries that rival those produced by TV networks and news channels? In other words, where is the money coming from? In the past much of the seed money used to finance Bin Laden's operations came from his personal fortune. But with all of the money controls slammed into place six years ago after the 9/11 attacks, that money has been for all intents and purposes untouchable. Yet this year Al Qaeda's...

UNITED NATIONS, Aug 27: Opium production in Afghanistan has hit a record $3 billion this year, accounting for more than 90 per cent of the world’s illegal output, a United Nations report said on Monday. The production concentrated mainly in the strife-torn south of the country, where the Taliban, who once banned poppy cultivation, now profited from the drug trade, the report alleged. The UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) showed that the area under opium cultivation rose to 193,000 hectares from 165,000 in 2006, while the harvest soared by more than a third to 8,200 tons from 6,100...

NEW YORK: The United Nations is to release figures for drug production in Afghanistan that will show another reverse for the British-led effort to control the drug trade. The Daily Telegraph understands that annual production is expected to have risen by 18 per cent to about 7,200 tons - the sixth consecutive rise since 2001. That compares to 6,100 tons last year and 4,200 in 2004 and the increase includes another surge in production in Helmand province, which now produces more than half of the total opium for the country. The New York Times reported that production in Helmand, which...