poppy fields or poison them in Afghanistan? I remember talk about this before the campaign started but I haven't heard anything about actually doing it. Did we leave them intact so these people still would have some kind of an economy left after the war? Will we do it now, that the pressure is off? Just wondering.

I don't think there were a lot of poppy fields to bomb.

I've read articles that say the Taliban had really clamped down on poppy growing, and now that they're getting wiped out, Afghan farmers are planting the poppy again in a big way.

There was just a news thingy on CNN headline news.  "Poppys are blooing again in Af .." was the title.  One of the comments was that poppys need less water than food crops.  

What happened is that the Taliban turned Opium into a cash crop.  It became more lucritive for the farmers to grow it than food, so they grew dope.  That's one of the reasons that their asses are starving right now.  The Taliban also taxed the crap out of the growing, transport, processing, etc. which is where they were getting much of their funds.  As long as it was going export, they didn't care.  

There's not real good way to destroy the crops with bombs.  Spraying is not fesible from thousands of miles away.  Especially when that would be one perfectly good plane that could be dropping bombs instead.  Secondary reasons are that you may not want to be spraying after the Anthrax attack.  Many may see it as a possible NBC retaliation, since the Soviets made widespread use of chemicals there.  All it would take is one clown in a field to get sick or die, and we'd be the bad guys for using "chemical weapons".  

Lastly, we aren't there to install new governments, straighten out the Afgahni cultrue, restructure their economy or fight drugs.  We're there to get bad guys.  We probably have some responsibility to get some things straightened out there, but I don't think we're too interested in taking on a whole lot of perifieral missions.  

Ross

Opium has been a cash crop in southern Asia for thousands of years.  Its production and use have been embedded in the culture longer than Islam has been around.

I know a man who was a teenager during the Soviet-Afghan war.  He was a chemical weapons expert, Afghani style.  His job was to trade opium and heroin to Soviet soldiers.  He accepted weapons and ammunition in payment.

Going to war against opium in Afghanistan would be completely futile.  There are much better things we can do, like encouraging education and development of infrastructure.

WTF are you blathering about??

The Taliban BANNED the growing of opium poppies in Afghanistan a few years ago.  The feds were even making comments about how NICE the Taliban were for doing it.  Newspaper columnists wrote paeans about how the Taliban talked to farmers to stop planting poppies, and jailed the ones who refused to cooperate until they gave in.

Are you that badly uninformed normally, or were you on drugs when you wrote that??  Sheesh.

Ross, that is absolute balderdash.  As bad as the Taliban were, they did try to reduce opium and punished (severely) those they caught violating their law.  They were able to reduce opium production somewhat, but weren't able to stop it.

If you think the Northern Alliance and their cronies are going to try to stop opium production, you are mistaken.  They are going to step up production for the Europen market, if anything.  The Northern Alliance has buddies in Turkmenastan, Takikistan, and Uzbekistan who will assist them get opium into the former Soviet Republics and the rest of Europe.  They're also pretty close with India.

BTW, addiction to oppiates in Afghanistan is a serious problem only in Badkshan Province, which has long been controlled by the Northern Alliance.

DaMan