Poppy Power

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This program was quickly dubbed the Kebabs for Poppy scheme.

The build up of the Afghan army and police has lagged. The poppy crop has grown.

Soon after, USAID funded its own big eradication program.

Mullah Aukhundzada became so angry and humiliated when the promised goodies failed to materialize, that he ordered all the former poppy producing areas, as well as surrounding areas, to double poppy production the following year.

Fighting poppy and or coca production, on the other hand, is an ideal political stance for politicians.

The promise of funds to fight poppy production galvanized the American Embassy in Islamabad into action.

It is, of course, easier to mock the attempts of organizations such as USAID to tackle poppy production than provide a viable solution.

Success will also require more funds for reconstruction, development, and alternatives to opium poppy cultivation.

Mullah Aukhundzada was the Amir of a big area of Helmand in Southwest Afghanistan, a major poppy producing area.

Peasant farmers may, for a time, be bribed or intimidated (the Taliban executes Afghan poppy growers) into cultivating crops other than poppy or coca.

Meanwhile, acreage used for poppy and marijuana production has risen, according to the US government, to 6,900 and 8,900 hectares, respectively.

It is easier to vote to spend millions of dollars to eradicate poppy coca production in poor countries than confront addiction at home.

Poppy production is soaring, experiments with alternative crops are lagging, and there are not enough forces to provide security for farmers willing to try growing something different.

Recognizing the strong and continuing commitment made by the Transitional Administration of Afghanistan at the institutional, legal and administrative levels to eliminate opium poppy cultivation by 2013,

Starving farmers, if unassisted, may return to cultivating a very reliable cash crop the opium poppy, long a staple of the warlord economy.

Mexican beans, South Asian basmati rice, Bolivian quinoa, Amazonian ayahuasca, Indian chickpeas, Peruvian nuña beans, Andean maca all have been subject to predatory intellectual property claims.

Another bitter irony was that, in areas that received assistance, neighboring farmers who cultivated food crops soon switched to cultivating poppy because then, too, could then qualify for aid.

10. Welcomes the efforts of the Transitional Authority to respect fully the international obligations of Afghanistan with regard to narcotic drugs, and calls upon it to strengthen further its efforts to eradicate the annual poppy crop

2. Expresses its support for the efforts of Member States aimed at strengthening regional cooperation in order to counter the threat to the international community posed by the illicit cultivation of opium poppy in Afghanistan and its illicit trade

26. Notes with interest in this regard the decree issued by the Taliban in July 2000 imposing a total ban on opium poppy cultivation, and calls upon the Taliban to implement fully this decree

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In another instance a dashing young Afghan, who convinced the program s administrators that his uncle (in reality a nonentity) represented many growers whom he could persuade to stop cultivating poppy, walked away with one hundred thousand dollars worth of aid.

This New Peace phenomenon was first publicized by Andrew Mack s Human Security Report Project, supported by the superb database of the Uppsala Conflict Data Program. Harvard s Steven Pinker, in his seminal book The Better Angels of our Nature, put it in a larger historical context not just the Long Peace between the major powers since 1945, but, more important, a centuries old pattern of steady decline in the human appetite for violence.

This New Peace phenomenon was first publicized by Andrew Mack s Human Security Report Project, supported by the superb database of the Uppsala Conflict Data Program.

But when the pond dries up or the substitute crop or job fails, so long as there are rich drug users in the West, they will return to cultivating poppy or coca if it provides a livelihood for their families.

Photo courtesy Michel Pickard flickr (Creative Commons BY NC ND 2.0 license)Opponents of building a McDonalds in Melbourne are taking their case to Maccas headquarters in Chicago on Wednesday 18 September 2013.

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