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Eradication of poppies 'will spark retribution' (1 Viewer)

So the Taliban will lay down its arms and stop killing people if they don't eradicate the poppies? :roll:

They have good soil there, they can grow crops that will have good monetary benefits for them. Poppies aren't the type of plant to ruin the soil either (some plants affect acidity and so on) so getting rid of them and planter crops of soy or wheat or what have you should be fairly easy. And because those crops are legal the farmers should make more money.
 
Willow said:
So the Taliban will lay down its arms and stop killing people if they don't eradicate the poppies? :roll:

They have good soil there, they can grow crops that will have good monetary benefits for them. Poppies aren't the type of plant to ruin the soil either (some plants affect acidity and so on) so getting rid of them and planter crops of soy or wheat or what have you should be fairly easy. And because those crops are legal the farmers should make more money.
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um... illegal crops are worth more money
 
So now all farmers in Afganistan are Taliban... sigh.
 
Beat me to it Pete.
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hehe, so I am guessing all those people growing pot in the US are terrorists too, as well as all farmers in South America growing coca plants, dispite that this plant is used in other things than cocaine.
 
PeteEU said:
hehe, so I am guessing all those people growing pot in the US are terrorists too, as well as all farmers in South America growing coca plants, dispite that this plant is used in other things than cocaine.
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That was meant to be one of the plus sides of the Afghanistan war, elimination of the poppy harvests to get heroin of our streets. Poppy crops have quadrupled since the invasion. Yippee.
I guess if the Afghan government (which is full of warlords, who can't read and write) had control outside of Kabul, things might be different.

Everyone talks about Iraq, but Afghanistan is getting really ****ed up as well.

In short, what I have being saying on this board for years. The war on terror is a massive failure.
 
PeteEU said:
So now all farmers in Afganistan are Taliban... sigh.
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GarzaUK said:
Beat me to it Pete.
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How about a report that has a little more detail...Nov/06

Taliban Drug Trade: Echoes Of Colombia, Is Afghanistan's Notorious Taliban Drug Trade Becoming Another FARC? - CBS News

Taliban Drug Trade: Echoes Of Colombia
Is Afghanistan's Notorious Taliban Drug Trade Becoming Another FARC



As Afghanistan's narcotics trade explodes past $3 billion a year, there is concern that the Taliban is becoming another FARC, Colombia's notorious leftist insurgent group that draws much of its funding from the drug trade.

The Taliban and FARC — the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia — both got their start protecting peasants from corrupt governments. There's evidence both initially fought narcotics traffic but then levied taxes on the trade for much-needed cash.

Over time, the FARC began to use its soldiers to protect shipments, and took over coca factories. They forced farmers under their control to grow coca. Eventually, they became self-sufficient and set up a parallel government in their semiautonomous zone. They now earn an estimated $500 million a year from cocaine.

That all sounds eerily familiar to police and military officials in Afghanistan. "There is no question at all that the Taliban has been increasingly involved — both directly and indirectly — in narcotics," says Seth Jones, an analyst at the Rand Corp.

Evidence is growing that the Taliban and their allies are moving beyond taxing the trade to protecting opium shipments, running heroin labs, and even organizing farm output in areas they control. "It's reached the point where about half of the opium we seize in the provinces has some link to the Taliban," says Gen. Ali Shah Paktiawal, director of the anticriminal branch of the Kabul police.

Another senior Afghan security official says captured Taliban have confessed that most funding comes from drugs.

Afghan opium production, which mushroomed 59 percent in 2006, multiplied by 162 percent in southern Helmand Province, where Taliban ties to the trade are clearest. "People should be concerned about the FARCification of the Taliban," says a senior Western counternarcotics official, adding, "It does not take a lot of drug money to fund their terrorist operations."
 
Cherokee you wrote

By farmers you mean the Taliban right?

They can starve!
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Therefore you are saying that all farmers that have poppies are Taliban. That is simply totaly incorrect and even your own link proves this. I have never doubted one second that the Taliban gets some of its funding from poppies, just as the warlords who also protect the farmers, but are offically part of the goverment apperatus (even the narco police and military) also get funding via poppies. But that is not what you wrote or insinuated with the comment. You said all farmers of poppies were taliban and they could starve. That means you are for a genocide of a large part of the rural population of Afganistan. Congrats :confused:

The situation in Afganistan is not black and white, as Americans like to see. Its another tribal culture where loyalites first goto the family and tribe then to others. The warlords are tribal leaders often and members of the tribe do what the tribal leaders tell them. If thats to grow poppy, support the US or Taliban, then chances are that is what the members will do.

The farmers in question can grow other crops sure, but they dont get near enough help to do so, and if they do grow other crops, then their income goes down dramaticly.. Its a simple equation of survival for the farmers. And in the end it really depends on who protects those poppy farmers.... and in Afganistans case its both the Taliban and the local warlords that control the rural areas of the country.

And for the record, the only goverment ever to almost wipe out poppy growing in large parts of Afganistan was the taliban... which is ironic.
 
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(And for the record, the only goverment ever to almost wipe out poppy growing in large parts of Afganistan was the taliban... which is ironic.)
Not ironic really. The Koran forbids the growth and use of drugs.
Taliban uphold the teachings of the Koran.
The US coalition originally went after the Taliban as they were giving shelter to Al Qaeda, they were unwilling to hand these guys over to the US after 9/11, so the US and others declared war on them.
The Taliban are fighting to regain control of what they consider to be their homeland, Al Qaeda comes into the equation not as part and parcel of the Taliban but as fighters willing to fight the US.
Eventually, you will find that in order to achieve some form of permanent peace within Afghanistan, the coalition will be forced by circumstance to talk peace with the Taliban.
With respect to A.Q. these are murderous barbaric heathens with no respect of or for the Muslim religion, they must be hunted down and erradicated like the rats they are.
 
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