Word: afghanization
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Despite repeated claims of neutrality in the Afghan elections, the Obama Administration is deeply concerned that a Hamid Karzai victory would compound the challenges the U.S. faces in that country. Having made no secret of its dissatisfaction with Karzai's performance as President, the White House may now have to deal with an ally who feels slighted and scorned - and who has little incentive to go along with U.S. goals in Afghanistan...
Karzai's fall from Washington's grace has been spectacular. He was feted as an Afghan Mandela by the Bush Administration and enjoyed unparalleled access to the White House. Bush and Karzai routinely chatted in videoconferences. Obama, however, has treated the Afghan leader like spoiled fruit...
...report's figures are startling. The U.N. agency's staff, made up of expatriates and Afghans, have been monitoring the country's poppy fields on the ground and from aerial surveillance cameras and they have found that farmers this year planted far fewer poppies - an estimated drop from last year of about 79,000 acres (about 32,000 hectares), or 22% of the country's entire opium crop. Afghanistan's output usually accounts for more than 90% of the world's heroin. The price that Afghan farmers get for their opium has also crashed, dropping by a third since last...
That's all good news. But there is a twist. Afghan poppy crops are now high-yield, say U.N. officials, thanks to better irrigation methods and especially good rains over the past year. While acreage devoted to the flowers fell, production of opium itself dropped only 10% in Afghanistan last year, to about 6,900 tons. Each hectare of poppies yielded about 123 lb. (56 kg) of opium - 15% more than last year. (See pictures of a battle in Afghanistan's Kunar province...
Still, the U.N. report says, many Afghan farmers have apparently chosen to switch out of opium. The reasons might lie in simple market factors of supply and demand. In the years immediately following the Taliban's ouster in 2001, Afghan farmers, who had languished under a temporary Taliban ban against growing poppies, produced huge bumper crops. Those were harvested just as drug users in Europe, opium's biggest market, began to shun heroin in favor of cocaine and synthetic drugs like ecstasy. "There is definitely an issue of stocks over consumption," Costa says. "Starting in about 2006 Afghanistan has been...