Tuesday, June 10, 2008

I hear that Afghan farmers are switching to wheat as the global food crisis has made that more profitable than growing opium...The West giveth and the West taketh. It was the invasion of Afghanistan which triggered an explosion in opium growth and the drugs trade and it is now their corrupt economics of greed which has replaced it. Such is the world we live in...

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Another thing is that when the US goes to "reconstruct" a region they bring everything - food, etc. - from home, destroying the local economy, thereby undermining the original purpose.

ASDFGHJK said...

I don't know what's your source for this, but honestly I would not believe for a second that a doubling or even a tripling in prices for legal crops would make a farmer to decide to stop growing opium - a lucrative and undemanding plant.
You need stability, a (kind of) rule of law and the hope that you earn enough to feed your family. If you provide for this most peasant would happily abandon the cultivation of poppies. I can't see that the occupation forces or the puppet-regime would provide for this.

Karin said...

NOTHING astonishes me anymore, nothing.
For me it has an additional sting ... I've been to Afghanistan in 1974, all over, by car from Germany, and remember the people who I love dearly to today! I hate to see those great folks succumbing to the rules of the West ...

Ezra is right!