OT: Afghanistan: NATO Drops the ball

[SimonM]

This is an example of fatally flawed policy implementation in aid and reconstruction in Afghanistan. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7657478.stm)

I have been vociferously opposed to military intervention in Afghanistan. Although I am philosophically of the perspective that armed intervention almost never accomplishes the intended goals of the invaders I have also mentioned the other half of the equation:

Aid and reconstruction.

Few places in the world (outside of Africa) are in more desperate need of aid and reconstruction than Afghanistan. One of the problems is that Afghanistan was largely a poppy producing nation. The poppies mainly went to produce Opium. Replacement crops are frequently more delecate and significantly more succeptable to spoilage and drought than the poppy crop.

There was a proposal put forward a while ago that would have been great, had it been implemented. It was not.

I would like to put it forward once again.

Step 1: Found a not-for-profit NGO or find an existing not-for-profit NGO to participate in the aid sceme. Ensure that said NGO is properly equipped to handle the processing of large quantities of Opium and Morphene.

Step 2: Divert military spending into the buying of Afghan poppy crops. Buy them... all of them... at a fair price.

Step 3: Through previously prepped NGO process opium poppies into Codeine and Morphene. Make this available, at cost or at a loss, to hospitals in impoverished countries.

Understand that due to graft and corruption there is a possibility that some of this medicine will make it onto the black market after it is given to hospitals. Accept this but work to minimize this through oversight.

[David Jamieson]

Simon-

Bureaucratic bungling entangling the delivery of promised roads in a region littered with assassins is excusable to some extent and can't be framed as dropping the ball.

Do you think they won't ever have those roads or that they won't get aid delivered to them?

I think they will , but there is a matter of getting rid of the nut bars that are around every corner so that the aid can be delivered.

Would you rather continue with the influx of narcotics into our country and others and the perpetuation of the heroin trade for the small benefit it will bring Afghani farmers?

they'll get their roads and irrigation. they'll get their aid. But first, the taliban must be fully routed so that normalization can occur.

[SimonM]

My point was that the handling of the Opium issue was bungled from stem to stern. If it is bought from the farmers and stewarded by people making it into useful, legal, medicine it's not ending up funding heroin cartels.

[Drake]

I'm sure NATO will be happy to buy illegal narcotics. Of course, once they can actually get in there without being ambushed, usually aided by the same stupid farmers we feel so compelled to rescue from their miserable and totally involuntary career as drug dealers. Is this the same excuse we can use for drug dealers in poor parts of town? It was their environment?

NATO may not be doing the best job there, but your idea is infinitely worse. If anything, they are playing too nice, which is typical of NATO.

[sanjuro_ronin]

This is an example of fatally flawed policy implementation in aid and reconstruction in Afghanistan. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7657478.stm)

I have been vociferously opposed to military intervention in Afghanistan. Although I am philosophically of the perspective that armed intervention almost never accomplishes the intended goals of the invaders I have also mentioned the other half of the equation:

Aid and reconstruction.

Few places in the world (outside of Africa) are in more desperate need of aid and reconstruction than Afghanistan. One of the problems is that Afghanistan was largely a poppy producing nation. The poppies mainly went to produce Opium. Replacement crops are frequently more delecate and significantly more succeptable to spoilage and drought than the poppy crop.

There was a proposal put forward a while ago that would have been great, had it been implemented. It was not.

I would like to put it forward once again.

Step 1: Found a not-for-profit NGO or find an existing not-for-profit NGO to participate in the aid sceme. Ensure that said NGO is properly equipped to handle the processing of large quantities of Opium and Morphene.

Step 2: Divert military spending into the buying of Afghan poppy crops. Buy them... all of them... at a fair price.

Step 3: Through previously prepped NGO process opium poppies into Codeine and Morphene. Make this available, at cost or at a loss, to hospitals in impoverished countries.

Understand that due to graft and corruption there is a possibility that some of this medicine will make it onto the black market after it is given to hospitals. Accept this but work to minimize this through oversight.

Allow me:

Proper
Planning
Prevents
****
Poor
Performance.

The 6 P's.

[David Jamieson]

Not to mention, it is unreasonable to assume that you could just glut the medical market with afghan heroin.
There is already a strictly controlled supply chain of legal narcotics coming out of Thailand.

Just setting up shop with the afghans without setting up the same rigid controls would be folly.

Glutting the market would be folly.

Better to convert the crops to market garden goods and help the farmers get up and running with that. If they want to grow poppies to fuel the underground heroin market, then in my opinion, burn those fields now and with extreme prejudice.

That country needs a lot of fixing and until we can get other means than military in there, it's gonna be a while before those normalized trade routes and so on are installed and up and running.

predictions show the insurgents probably peaking into next year and then declining. after the next series of routes and the approach of the decline is the perfect time to move in with new crops seeds and farming aid for all able and willing afghans.

i too think that setting up shop for more morphine production is just a mistake that shouldn't happen. the world doesn't need more narcotics.

[SimonM]

Drake getting to the poppy fields isn't a problem. In fact many of them were actually destroyed last year.

The problem is that many were destroyed without consent of the farmers, the crops that were destroyed with consent from farmers were destroyed on promises that haven't been fulfilled (the topic of the article I linked). So the problem is NOT getting to the poppy fields. It's what to do once there.

Furthermore the farmers are not the big drug cartels that make all the money from the heroin trade. They are just peasant farmers in a tribal society trying to support their families. Furthermore where do you think Morphene and Codeine come from? Poppy fields can be cultivated for legal and illegal reasons. I'm advocating moving these fields from one sphere to the other. This is something that it is known the farmers would get behind; they want to sell crops that won't go bad before they get to market. Most are not partial to whom they sell.


Not to mention, it is unreasonable to assume that you could just glut the medical market with afghan heroin.
There is already a strictly controlled supply chain of legal narcotics coming out of Thailand.

Hitting the pharmaceutical conglomerates in the bank book is simply a happy side-effect of this plan. Scarcity of good medicine in the third world due to the unnecessarily high prices charged by drug companies is one of the blights affecting the third world. This wouldn't solve that problem but it would exacerbate it somewhat.

In other words fvck the "medical market".

Now one final point:

Did I not use words like regulation and oversight?

I am not suggesting a free-for-all. Just a relatively large scheme to get Afghani farmers on side.

But then, David, I know you just want to bomb the country into the ground, dust off your hands, and say "all in a day's work" so I'd not suggest you to support something that would actually help to rebuild the war-torn country.

[David Jamieson]

Drake getting to the poppy fields isn't a problem. In fact many of them were actually destroyed last year.

The problem is that many were destroyed without consent of the farmers, the crops that were destroyed with consent from farmers were destroyed on promises that haven't been fulfilled (the topic of the article I linked). So the problem is NOT getting to the poppy fields. It's what to do once there.

Furthermore the farmers are not the big drug cartels that make all the money from the heroin trade. They are just peasant farmers in a tribal society trying to support their families. Furthermore where do you think Morphene and Codeine come from? Poppy fields can be cultivated for legal and illegal reasons. I'm advocating moving these fields from one sphere to the other. This is something that it is known the farmers would get behind; they want to sell crops that won't go bad before they get to market. Most are not partial to whom they sell.



Hitting the pharmaceutical conglomerates in the bank book is simply a happy side-effect of this plan. Scarcity of good medicine in the third world due to the unnecessarily high prices charged by drug companies is one of the blights affecting the third world. This wouldn't solve that problem but it would exacerbate it somewhat.

In other words fvck the "medical market".

simon, pot fields are destroyed in north america every season without consent from the farmers. IN SA, it's coca fields that get slashed and burned.

we can't just add to the market and glut it because heroin is worth more than barley.

[SimonM]

David you aren't listening.

I AM TALKING ABOUT MAKING SURE THE OPIUM POPPIES NEVER BECOME HEROIN!!!!!

Heroin is one of about four drugs made from Opium poppies, of those two are illegal in most jurisdictions and two are legal and controlled in most jurisdictions. There is nothing about Afghan poppies that stops them from being made into Morphene or Codeine other than the fact that only the drug cartels are buying.

Furthermore the best way to take a bite out of organized crime would be to decriminalize most illegal drugs and treat addiction as a social / medical problem rather than a criminal one. But that's a separate issue.

[Drake]

Drake getting to the poppy fields isn't a problem. In fact many of them were actually destroyed last year.



Most of the Taliban were killed or captured too during our initial invasion and subsequent occupation. Funny how they keep coming back.

[SimonM]

Yeah, funny that.

You'd almost think they were using the destruction of cropland and the failure of reconstruction efforts (a failure attributable both to Taliban sabotage and NATO not providing anywhere enough funding for reconstruction) to recruit disaffected youth unhappy with a foreign force occupying their land. You'd almost think that they were also recruiting angry pakistani fighters who are tired of interference in their state by Washington and who have been heavily indoctrinated in madrasas that are able to get students due to the failure of Pakistan to provide a sufficient school system.

Hmmm...

It's almost like, gee, I don't know...


NATO droped the ball!

[David Jamieson]

David you aren't listening.

I AM TALKING ABOUT MAKING SURE THE OPIUM POPPIES NEVER BECOME HEROIN!!!!!

Heroin is one of about four drugs made from Opium poppies, of those two are illegal in most jurisdictions and two are legal and controlled in most jurisdictions. There is nothing about Afghan poppies that stops them from being made into Morphene or Codeine other than the fact that only the drug cartels are buying.

Furthermore the best way to take a bite out of organized crime would be to decriminalize most illegal drugs and treat addiction as a social / medical problem rather than a criminal one. But that's a separate issue.

Simon, it is you who are not listening.

WE DO NOT NEED ANOTHER PRODUCTION CENTER FOR POPPIES IN THE WORLD.

WE DEFINITELY DO NOT NEED IT TO BE HAPPENING IN A LAWLESS LAND THAT IS A WARZONE AT THIS TIME.

also, I don't think you have the right to say that I think it should just be bombed into dust. what kind of statement is that to make? It's rather assumptive, rude and is seeking a terminus in the discussion based on your point of view. I don't fell that way at all, I have friends in country, good friends and I would like to see them home and that is entirely dependent on stability in the region that is NOT going to happen by the volition of the people who are there and to think it is so is dreaming.

You talk about setting up whole redundant and elaborate systems to justify the growth of poppies that aren't needed.

Afghanistan needs a stabilized agricultural market. Poppies will not provide that. Food crops will and that must be nurtured. there are still forces at play to be routed before that can be set into play fully.

More poppy products for cheap in the third world won't help much. It is synthetics and infrastructure they require, not handouts and punishments to companies in developed nations.

Honestly, some of the stuff that comes out of you is just weird at times.

The best way to stop a bullet is with a job. A man cannot be proud of himself on the suffering of others. No poppy farmer in the illicit trade can be proud of his job considering he contributes to misery in others and supporting legalization and control in a developed nation is a whole different thing than opening that pandoras box in a nation that is barely on it's feet.

[SimonM]

Burning down their farms and promising a road that is never built equates to giving them a job now?

You say some strange things at times yourself David.

The poppies were THERE.
The farms were IN PLACE.
I'm not talking about poppies as an expansion into a new area.

I'm talking about using THE BIGGEST POPPY GROWING COUNTRY IN THE WORLD to make medicine instead of illicit drugs.