Afghani Poppy Production: Are We Helping?

By Steven Wright

If someone told you that the United States was in fact funding the Taliban, you would most likely laugh and ask if the aliens told them that when they were abducted.

      Throughout the entire world, there are only five countries that contribute to the world’s opiate production and Afghanistan contributes to over 90% percent of the global total, making it a billion dollar trade.

      And what do poppies make? Heroin and prescription medication.

      The primary consumers of these two things are The United States and Great Britain, the terrorist organization called “The Taliban’s” two sworn enemies.

      The irony of all this is that the Taliban is based in Afghanistan, and they are the ones that receive money from this massive cash crop.

      The Bush administration devised a plan to “try” to destroy, or at least slow down, production of poppies by a mass burning of the crop and giving the farmers other crops to grow such as wheat.

       “Afghan farmers can buy wheat seeds, that’s not the problem” said Vanda Felbab-brown, professor of Georgetown University. “The problem is that they cannot make a sufficient living on it or get access to credit and land”.     

Richard Halbrooke, the Administrations Coordinator on Afghan policy, calls the method “wasteful and ineffective” and “pushes farmers into the Taliban’s hands by destroying their livelihood and leaving them with few alternatives.”

  According to Steven Coll, author of the book ’Ghost Wars,’ the U.S. government trained Taliban forces in guerrilla warfare in order to fight the USSR.             

So first we teach them tactics for fighting a larger and more advanced military, then western society funds their growth with our need for drugs.

       George Orwell’s novel ‘1984’ is about societal brainwashing and absolute government control of every aspect of human life.

In the story, there are three nations in secret agreement to be constantly at war with one another, in order to keep the strong government ‘needed’ in the minds of the people. They on the surface are at war and sworn enemies, but underneath it, they are in fact symbiotic.

       Could this novel be an unwitted prophecy?

       We buy their products, trained their militia, allow them to continue making money to fight us and push otherwise neutral farmers into the hands of the Taliban by burning their livelihood, in turn giving them fresh troops.

      We may be at war with the Taliban, but we are simultaneously  helping them. What sense does it make to support your enemy? Without U.S. support, they would have no resources to fight us with.

       Don’t take my word for it, do your own research, and make your own conclusions. This is just something to think about.