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  U.S. Takes Aim At Afghan Opium
Posted by FoM on February 25, 2002 at 21:27:12 PT
By Karen DeYoung, Washington Post Staff Writer 
Source: Washington Post 

justice With the harvest due to begin next month, preliminary estimates are that Afghanistan is about to produce a "substantial amount" of opium poppy, perhaps approaching the near-record levels immediately before the Taliban government banned cultivation 18 months ago, a U.S. official said yesterday.

"The challenges are enormous," said Rand Beers, assistant secretary of state for international narcotics and law enforcement affairs.

With little time left, he said, the United States is considering providing financial and other incentives to farmers to plow under their fields before harvest, an admittedly difficult undertaking since much of the cultivation is in the most lawless parts of Afghanistan.

Stopping the cultivation of poppy and production of raw opium, the basic ingredient of heroin, is a principal goal of U.S. reconstruction policy in Afghanistan. In the late 1990s, Afghanistan produced about three-quarters of the world's opium supply.

Beers's comments came in a briefing on yesterday's release of the annual presidential certification of countries cooperating in U.S. counter-narcotics efforts. Congress requires such certification of major drug-producing or transit countries as a condition of receiving U.S. aid.

Twenty-three countries have been so designated, and President Bush yesterday named three of them -- Afghanistan, Haiti and Burma -- as having "failed demonstrably to make substantial counternarcotics efforts over the last 12 months." Only Burma, which receives no U.S. assistance, was actually barred from assistance. Bush said in a written message to Congress that he was exercising his authority to waive aid bans on the other two on grounds it was "vital to the national interests of the United States."

Complaints by a number of countries, supported by some members of Congress, led to a change in the certification procedure this year. Rather than certifying which of the 23 countries were cooperating, the president "decertified" those that were not.

Mexico, which protested the previous "guilty until certified innocent" system, made significant progress under the new administration of President Vicente Fox in arresting drug traffickers and assisting interdiction efforts, Beers said. The overall efforts of police and military forces in Colombia, the source of most of the world's cocaine, had been "superior," he said.

In his report to Congress, Bush wrote that total poppy cultivation in Afghanistan had decreased 94 percent following the Taliban ban. But "opium trafficking and heroin processing continued unabated through 2001, indicating the existence of large stockpiles." At no point, the report said, did the Taliban take steps to interrupt the opium trade. Since certification is based on activity last year, Afghanistan was placed on the decertification list.

Moreover, even as cultivation decreased in Taliban-controlled areas of the country, "cultivation and opium production increased in former Northern Alliance territory" in the northern part of the country, Bush wrote. Since the Taliban were driven from power last fall, "drug traffickers in Afghanistan have switched allegiances from the Taliban to local commanders and warlords."

Although the new interim Afghan government of Hamid Karzai has said it would not tolerate poppy cultivation, Beers said preliminary estimates of the U.N. Drug Control program, which provides an annual survey, were that cultivation this year could approach that of 2000. That crop, which produced about 3,600 tons of raw opium, was surpassed only by 1999's all-time record.

"That indicates the magnitude of the problem," Beers said.

Planted in the fall and harvested from late March through May, poppy has long been Afghanistan's most profitable cash crop, and destitute Afghan farmers, whose food crops and stock animals have been decimated by drought and war, are unlikely to want to give it up. In addition, Beers said, much of this year's crop is believed to be located in Helmand province, in southwestern Afghanistan, "one of the last areas to become secure."

Although the United States and other reconstruction donors plan eventually to launch food crop development programs in Afghanistan, they are far from being underway.

U.S. law does not permit the actual purchase of the opium crop, but "we are talking about possible remuneration" to those farmers who can be reached "for the cost of their labor to plow the crop under," Beers said. He said the United States would also assist efforts to interdict drugs smuggled through Pakistan and Central Asian countries bordering landlocked Afghanistan, although he acknowledged that one of Afghanistan's longest borders is with Iran, with which "U.S. relations are not the best in the world."

"Other countries have been working with Iran" on interdiction, he said. "I hasten to add that U.S. assistance will not go to Iran in any of these programs."

Note: Worries Grow About Bumper Crop.

Source: Washington Post (DC)
Author: Karen DeYoung, Washington Post Staff Writer
Published: Tuesday, February 26, 2002; Page A14
Copyright: 2002 The Washington Post Company
Contact: letterstoed@washpost.com
Website: http://www.washingtonpost.com

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http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread12096.shtml

A Drug on the Market - Economist UK
http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread12095.shtml


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Comment #3 posted by Jose Melendez on February 26, 2002 at 05:09:58 PT:

blah blah
"They may have told people they can plant; they may tell people nothing and allow them to plant; or there may be enough chaos with the war that it won't matter what the Taliban says," said the State Department's senior official for international narcotics issues, R. Rand Beers. "We had a situation that showed promise that is now headed in absolutely the wrong direction."

Even a wholesale collapse of the ban might not have an immediate impact on the availability and price of opium and heroin, one of its derivatives, in illegal drug markets. A continued flow of opium from stockpiles inside Afghanistan has kept the prices of those drugs stable in Europe, and officials expect those reserves to last for perhaps another year.

http://www.ocregister.com/breakingnews/attack/10222001/22nyopiumcci.shtml

"It is certainly true that the herbicide [glyphosate] itself, if taken in a significantly concentrated fashion, just like baby shampoo, will kill you. But we don't spray it at that level," Beers said. "We spray it at something considerably less than that kind of toxicity, and we do not believe and have not seen evidence that it is harmful either to the environment or individuals, despite the numerous press reports to the contrary."

http://usinfo.state.gov/topical/global/drugs/02012901.htm

...in an out-of-court settlement in New York state in 1996, Monsanto, a leading manufacturer of glyphosate-based herbicides, though not necessarily identical to those used here, agreed to withdraw claims that the product is "safe, nontoxic, harmless or free from risk." The company signed a statement agreeing that its "absolute claims that Roundup 'will not wash or leach in the soil' is not accurate" because glyphosate "may move through some types of soil under some conditions after application."

http://www.usfumigation.org/Literature/Press_Articles/To%20Colombians,%20Drug%20War%20Is%20a%20Toxic%20Foe.htm

...after paying relatively little attention to the problem in recent years, U.S. officials are now focused on Afghanistan's drug trade, saying that taxes on farmers and traders have become a crucial source of revenue for the Taliban and that drug money may be used to finance terrorist activities.

The challenge that Washington now faces is, in some part, of its own making. In the 1980s, opium production flourished in Afghanistan with the involvement of some of the Mujahedeen, rebels who were supported by the Central Intelligence Agency.

http://www.ocregister.com/breakingnews/attack/10222001/22nyopiumcci.shtml

In testimony before Congress then, Assistant Secretary of State for International Law Enforcement and Narcotics Affairs Rand Beers acknowledged that poppies were on the move. "We're finding it in high altitudes in Peru," he said. "The traffickers understand that more is better than less and that different products are better than a single product," he explained.

At the same time, the US Agency for International Development was reporting on its web site "rapid increases in cultivation of the opium poppy in Peru" as traffickers looked for "geographic regions that are outside of the current target areas."

http://www.drcnet.org/wol/218.html

Mr. HAMILTON. You would like to see us continue this annual exercise of either certifying or decertifying Colombia and then waiving or not waiving on a year-by-year basis?

Mr. BEERS. Sir, it is my intention that, at this time next year, we will be talking about a fully certified Government of Colombia, that the United States and the Government of Colombia will have overcome their differences, that the new Presidency in Colombia——

Mr. HAMILTON. OK, you've got a lot of optimism there and I hope you're right about it.

[Laughter.]

Mr. BEERS. Sir, this is the reason that I took the job.

http://commdocs.house.gov/committees/intlrel/hfa49158.000/hfa49158_0.htm

Opponents of aerial spraying, meanwhile, have called for a halt to the program while tests are being conducted. In an effort to reassure people of its safety, the United States is sponsoring a series of health studies in Colombia.

If the studies find any negative effect on public health, the spray policy might be reconsidered, according to Rand Beers, the assistant secretary of state who helps to oversee U.S. anti-drug policy in Colombia.

"What we would be looking for is long-term serious effect, or severe, acute effect. . . . If it were a mild rash that went away in five days, that would be of less concern, not no concern, but less concern to us than something that persisted," Beers said.

http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread10707.shtml

Although the Taliban was effective in greatly reducing poppy planting, many officials believe the leadership maintained stockpiles of opium and used the ban to limit the supply and increase the drug's value. Assistant Secretary of State Rand Beers said earlier this month that the Taliban did not ban opium farming "out of kindness, but because they wanted to regulate the market: They simply produced too much opium."

http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread11877.shtml

[ Post Comment ]
 
Comment #2 posted by SWAMPIE on February 26, 2002 at 02:10:13 PT
BY THE WAY...
Ed Rosenthals"MARIJUANA-GROWERS-GUIDE" has a lot of pictures of Afghan-Pot in it.The first page is great,but it should be in color.

[ Post Comment ]
 
Comment #1 posted by SWAMPIE on February 26, 2002 at 02:04:09 PT
PLOW IT UNDER RAND........
Guess what? If you knew anything about gardening,you would plow it under after it went to seed,and then you would see a "REAL BUMPER-CROP". Put it all back in the ground for next year when the demand for fresh opium will be even greater still!MONSANTO,anyone????? By the way,it finally rained there.The "AFGHANI-WEED"is probably going into a growth-spurt about now.More RUGS,what a shame!!! ONWARD THROUGH THE FOG!!! SWAMPIE

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