Word: opium
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...hardly news that Afghanistan's huge opium crops supply more than 90% of the world's heroin. But now U.N. officials say Afghanistan is also the world's biggest producer of another drug - hashish. In its first attempt to calculate how much cannabis is grown in the country, the U.N. Office of Drugs and Crime says in a report released in Kabul on Wednesday that Afghan farmers earned up to $94 million last year from selling 1,500 to 3,500 tons of hash - the resin extracted from cannabis crops...
...persuade thousands of farmers to switch from growing drugs to growing food. Farmers can earn about three times as much money growing cannabis as growing wheat: about $3,900 per hectare, compared with $1,200 per hectare. What's more, cannabis is even more lucrative to grow than opium poppies, which yield about $3,600 per hectare. It's also far cheaper to grow cannabis than poppies, requiring little sophisticated cultivation. The report says it is an almost ideal crop for desperately poor farmers, who lack fertilizers and tractors and who need every penny they can squeeze from their land...
...about three dozen tribal elders was waiting under a sheer nylon tent adorned with local rugs. Mangal made an opening statement, explaining that most of these elders had turned against the outlandishly corrupt provincial Afghan government years ago (Mangal's immediate predecessor had been caught with nine tons of opium in his compound). They had supported the Taliban as a more orderly option but were ready, allegedly, to switch sides. What they really wanted was a real government providing real services - although they were adamant about one demand: they wanted the U.S. and Afghan national security forces to police...
...worried about moving too quickly ahead of the Afghan government's capabilities. One called it "rushing to failure." Another called it "catastrophic success," a term last used after U.S. forces reached Baghdad in three weeks and had absolutely no idea how to control what they'd won. (Read "Afghan Opium: To Crack Down...
...what to do with the poppy crop - McChrystal is likely to win that debate - they will confront the next challenge: getting the farmers to eventually grow other crops instead. The last time officials in Kabul tried to get Marjah farmers to switch to wheat cultivation was in 2008, when opium was selling at $75 a kg, a long way down from the peak of $250 a kilo in 2003. Even so, the farmers turned down subsidized wheat seed and fertilizer, believing opium would be more profitable. They were wrong. When the next crop was harvested, says Rory Donohoe, a USAID...