Remember Afghanistan?

November-15th-2003, 01:54 AM

Remember the "Filter" the appointed Bush fool complained over? He maintained that it was employed by the media and, ergo, we were not being told the truth. Well, the truth, according to Cheney's puppet, is that things are just swell in Afghanistan. Last night's Nightline showed us otherwise--yes, the women are not all burka babes anymore and some children are going to school, but the war lords still reign, the Taliban and Al-Qaeda people are feeling more and more welcome, and the main industry is poppies--a new twist is that there are also addicts, which was not the case under the Talis. Of course the Talis will trample down the poppy fields if they get to be in power again, but right now that is a thriving business--technically illegal, but no one bothers to stop it. Bush and puppeteer Cheney need to discard those rose-colored glasses and take a look at reality! Here, from today's NY Times, is an Op-Ed piece on this:

November 15, 2003
OP-ED COLUMNIST

A Scary Afghan Road
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Here's a foreign affairs quiz:

1. In the two years since the war in Afghanistan, opium production has:

(A) virtually been eliminated by Hamid Karzai's government and American forces.

(B) declined 30 percent, but eradication is not expected until 2008.

(C) soared 19-fold and become the major source of the world's heroin.

2. In Paktika and Zabul, two religiously conservative parts of Afghanistan, the number of children going to school:

(A) has quintupled, with most girls at least finishing third grade.

(B) has risen 40 percent, although few girls go to school.

(C) has plummeted as poor security has closed nearly all schools there.

The correct answer to both questions, alas, is (C).

With the White House finally acknowledging that the challenge in Iraq runs deeper than gloomy journalism, the talk of what to do next is sounding rather like Afghanistan. And that's alarming, because we have flubbed the peace in Afghanistan even more egregiously than in Iraq.

"There is a palpable risk that Afghanistan will again turn into a failed state, this time in the hands of drug cartels and narco-terrorists," Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, writes in a grim new report on Afghanistan.

I strongly supported President Bush's war in Afghanistan, and I was there in Kabul and saw firsthand the excitement and relief of ordinary Afghans, who were immensely grateful to the U.S. for freeing them (a crucial distinction between Iraq and Afghanistan, to anyone who covered both wars, is that you never saw the same adulation among Iraqis). Mr. Bush oversaw a smart war in Afghanistan, and two years ago the crisp mountain air there pullulated with hope — along with pleas for more security.

One day back then when I was thinking of driving to the southeast, six Afghans arrived from there — minus their noses. Taliban guerrillas had stopped their vehicle at gunpoint and chopped off their noses because they had trimmed their beards.

I stroked my chin, admired my own proboscis, and decided not to drive on that road.

Every foreign and local official said then that Afghanistan desperately needed security on roads like that one. But the Pentagon made the same misjudgment about Afghanistan that it did about Iraq: it fatally underestimated the importance of ensuring security. The big winner was the Taliban, which is now mounting a resurgence.

"Things are definitely deteriorating on the security front," notes Paul Barker, the Afghan country director for CARE International. Twelve aid workers have been killed in the last year and dozens injured. A year ago, there was, on average, one attack on aid workers per month; now such attacks average one per day.

In at least three districts in the southeast, there is no central government representation, and the Taliban has de facto control. In Paktika and Zabul, not only have most schools closed, but the conservative madrasas are regaining strength.

"We've operated in Afghanistan for about 15 years," said Nancy Lindborg of Mercy Corps, the American aid group, "and we've never had the insecurity that we have now." She noted that the Taliban used to accept aid agencies (grudgingly), but that the Taliban had turned decisively against all foreigners.

"Separate yourself from Jews and the Christian community," a recent open letter from the Taliban warned. It ordered Afghans to avoid music, funerals for aid workers and "un-Islamic education" — or face a "bad result."

The opium boom is one indication of the downward spiral. The Taliban banned opium production in 2000, so the 2001 crop was only 185 metric tons. The U.N. estimates that this year's crop was 3,600 tons, the second-largest in Afghan history. The crop is worth twice the Afghan government's annual budget, and much of the profit will support warlords and the Taliban.

An analyst in the U.S. intelligence community, who seeks to direct more attention to the way narco-trafficking is destabilizing the region, says that Afghanistan now accounts for 75 percent of the poppies grown for narcotics worldwide.

"The issue is not a high priority for the Bush administration," he said.

If Afghanistan is a White House model for Iraq, heaven help us.__

BFrank · August-12th-2004, 12:31 AM

Another fine mess they've got us into ...

BTW, once you get by the first few paragraphs, you will see that this is really an article about the rampant drug trade that is flourishing there.

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Rumsfeld Visits Afghanistan To Review Election Preparations
Associated Press
August 11, 2004 6:46 a.m.

KABUL, Afghanistan -- U.S. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld made an unannounced visit to Afghanistan Wednesday to review preparations for the October presidential election and go over reconstruction and counternarcotics programs.

During a daylong visit, he planned consultations with Afghan and United Nations officials, as well as meetings with senior U.S. military officials.

Before flying to the Afghan capital, he said U.S.-led coalition forces are preparing a coordinated effort to attack the narcotics trade in the country, recognizing that drug income could be used to fund insurgents and terrorists in the country.

He offered few specifics, but noted the British government previously has taken the lead in working with President Hamid Karzai's administration to address the drug trade in Afghanistan.

"There are plans being finished now," Mr. Rumsfeld said Tuesday, in Oman for the first of several visits to U.S. allies in the region. "I don't want to get into whose troops will do what."

The cultivation of opium poppies has resumed and flourished since 2001 in Afghanistan. It was largely eliminated under the Taliban's religious policing, but farmers have resumed cultivating and harvesting the profitable crop in the chaos since the fall of the Taliban.

American military commanders in Afghanistan have said previously they don't have enough troops to go after the poppy trade and still hunt Taliban and al Qaeda holdouts.

Mr. Rumsfeld seemed resigned that the poppy trade would continue to some degree, saying demand for the drug will always lead someone to create a supply. Heroin made from Afghan poppies generally reaches markets in Europe and Russia.

"All crops have been good the last two years," he said of Afghanistan's poppy cultivation. "It is a terrible thing. It produces great wealth for people who use it to harm society."

The criminal elements are naturally opposed to a strong, democratic government in Afghanistan, he said. He also suggested drug money had ties to the Taliban or al Qaeda, but provided no concrete information to back that up.

U.N. surveys estimate Afghanistan accounted for three quarters of the world's opium last year, and the trade brought in $2.3 billion, more than half of the nation's gross domestic product.

New surveys suggest even more has been planted this year, with Robert Charles, the State Department's top counternarcotics official, saying Afghanistan may be on pace for a world record opium poppy crop this year.

Mr. Rumsfeld pointed to the drug war in Colombia as a partial model for efforts in Afghanistan. There, U.S.-trained military forces attack narcotics smuggling routes while the Colombian government tries to eradicate coca growth in the farmlands through aerial spraying.

The costly Colombian campaign, a $3.3 billion, five-year military aid package known as Plan Colombia, has provided Colombian forces with training, equipment and intelligence. It has led to a huge increase in drug seizures, and closer judicial cooperation between the countries has led to the extradition of 120 alleged drug traffickers to the U.S. for trial in two years.

Despite the progress, cocaine prices on U.S. streets remain unchanged, a sign that there is no shortage of the drug. And the program to fly crop dusters over Colombian coca fields and spray them with herbicides has drawn sharp criticism from environmental and other groups.

Meanwhile, Mr. Rumsfeld hailed Afghanistan's efforts to prepare for presidential elections in October, citing figures saying more than nine million Afghans have registered to vote, including 3.5 million women.

"If those numbers prove out, that's an enormously successful registration process," he said.

Mr. Karzai is clearly the American favorite, but Mr. Rumsfeld and other officials have avoided endorsing him, saying the U.S. government will work with whoever the Afghan voters choose.

BFrank · November-18th-2004, 11:20 PM

Wall St Journal online
November 18, 2004 -- 5:31 p.m. EST

Afghan Opium Crop Surges

Afghanistan cemented its role as the world's biggest opium producer this year, with opium poppy crops growing 64% to 131,000 hectares from 80,000 hectares in 2003, according to a new survey by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. Though bad weather and disease cut the opium yield rate, opium production still increased 17% to 4,200 tons. That's lower than the all-time record of 4,600 tons, achieved in 1999 under the Taliban regime, but Afghanistan still supplied 87% of the world's opium this year, up from 76% last year. The UN report praised recent economic and political accomplishments in Afghanistan, including this year's successful elections, but warned that the country was in danger of becoming a "narco-state." "Opium cultivation, which has spread like wildfire throughout the country, could ultimately incinerate everything -- democracy, reconstruction and stability," Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the drug and crime office, wrote in the survey's introduction. The report estimated that opium trade generated some $2.8 billion this year, equivalent to more than 60% of Afghanistan's total gross domestic product in 2003. It called opium the "main engine of economic growth and the strongest bond among previously quarrelsome peoples" in Afghanistan.