Opium production business in Afghanistan has risen by nearly 50 percent in the last year and amassed about 68 billion US dollars globally, according to a recent United Nations report. However, the United States authorities don’t seem really interested in eradicating the drug plague, a journalist, Cladio Gallo, said, The Voice of Russia reports.
Although the West has pumped about 100 billion dollars into the economy of Afghanistan, there are still no signs of any significant improvement. While in the 1970s, Afghan people used to grow all their own crops, today huge amount of food has to be imported from abroad to feed the 32-million population. And as the Anglo-Pakistani writer Ahmed Rashid noted: “This year more Afghans are dependent on income from heroin rather than wheat.”
Claudio Gallo, a journalist and an editor at La Stampa, deems that the United States and NATO are notinterested in eradicating opium cultivations in Afghanistan. Although Washington has spent more than 6 billion dollars to curb opium production since 2001, the number of areas targeted for poppy eradication was gradually decreasing. At the same time the land under poppy cultivation rose by 36 percent. The US officials believe that Taliban drug cartels do not pose any significant threat to the United States. And now, when the American troops are going to withdraw from Afghanistan, no one in the US is bothered by the fact that Afghan heroin will continue spreading in Russia, Europe and Canada.
“The security agenda and short-term ideas of success didn’t go well with the ideas of counter-narcotics work”, writes the journalist, citing Jean-Luc Lemahieu, outgoing head of the UN office on drugs and crime in Afghanistan.
According to Claudio Gallo the American approach is very far from the one suggested by Viktor Ivanov, who once said: “We know every farmer, every lab – just give us international laws, and we will destroy their stocks. We must kill the dragon in his cave.”
But the American counterparts of Mr. Ivanov were not eager to cooperate. Moreover, the US has recently put Ivanov on the list of Russian personalities affected by US sanctions for Crimea, and thus froze the collaboration with Russia on anti-drug programs.
Gallo quotes Pino Arlacchi, European MP for the Italian Democratic Party and former UN Executive Director of the Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention, who said:
“It is unbelievable, completely irrational, not even George W. Bush Administration was so rough. The situation is desperate because here in the West no one seems to care. Europe has given Afghanistan 1 billion euros every year in civilian help since 2009. One small part of this money is enough to solve the problem of opium cultivation and trade in the country. Five years ago, as a member of the European Parliament, I made (together with Ivanov) a detailed plan that was never implemented. Europe discussed the plan with Russia (Moscow was ready to pay half the expenses) but the project remained on the table. The truth is that the West is completely indifferent to the problem.”
Today, when Afghanistan is on the verge of taking upon itself, the situation in this sphere is going to get even worse, believes the journalist.
Source: The Voice of Russia
Discussion3 Comments
It is the Taliban drug cartel that is producing heroin and providing a major source of income for the Taliban…the author ( a Russian) says the USA has spent 5 billion to eradicate the drugs and in the next sentence says that the USA has not done anything?…5 billion is not anything?…heroin is the cash crop of farmers in Taliban controlled territory…if you want to stop heroin you must first stop the Taliban …
I’m on Methadone since I’m 18 years old (I started very early and I’m lucky to be in Germanys Capital Berlin… we have a ~50% discount compared to cities with 100 to 250k population in the “center” of Germany (for US it is a joke, many US states are lager than whole Germany, Italy, Poland and even the smaller ones like Spain or the very small ones with a quite high population like Belgium, Netherland, Luxemburg and Portugal.
Heroin was never meant to be “fought”. I live here in the Street were the Embassy of Tajikistan in Germany has its home, its a 30 meter air distance from my balcon, I have a very nice project-place in a old building (restored of course) in the former city center of “West-Berlin”, Tajikistan has I think a bit more than Berlin Metropolitan Area (means 4.5 to 5 million?!) but it is even before Iran the Number 1 in seizure of Opium or already “refined” or how to say… the Afghan power is low quality with 80-83% in most cases, only very few cases report seizure of 85% or more, this is because they simply do not the last steps (make it with many steps better and better and taking out the crap, but 83% is extreme… in some areas in Europe they sell “bubbles” (you know, small plastic bag and like making cooking they have a “form” to make round pieces from that bags with 2 colours… color 1 = small, color 2 = big… when I was consuming it was 10€ small and 20€ large, you had a “Sunday bubble” if you bought every day because Sunday is the worst day for addicts to make money. Prostitution is a old mythos because of the movie “We childrem from Bahnhof Zoo”, in fact its true, but its long ago, 1997 persons told me, they installed a BGS station with many cameras (expensive in 1997, the cameras put away the “normal” scene, a few boys selling their body are still there, but I was a docu, its not like in Christiane F.’s famous book that 30-40 men from morning to evening wait for “customers” (in a encircled city by soviet union, now ask your self how David Bowie said while acting in the movie to the book, since CHristiane was a big fan and Bowie lived in the street where I made my business school… until 1980 or 1981, in 1981 he was making larger scenes and said “West-Berlin is the worlds capital of heroine”, it was a action led by soviet KGB, no heroin traffic was interrupted, I guess even they helped or gave special cards to pass the control points without even allowing the stupid East-German murder border guards to touch the car…
Tajikistan, a unofficial of course, report showed that over 95% of the seized heroine and opium (we talk about thousands of kilogramms, many metric tons, especially Opium is max. 10% morphine containing, with average of 8% for the best poppy in Afghanistan, however before it is burned it is replaced sooo heavy, that they burn stuff we buy in Europe on the street (quality seen)… 1kg of 82% pure Di-Acetyl-Morphine would be made in the first step to 10kg with 8.2%, this is still far too high for selling it to the end customer, another round, 20kg with 4.1%, maybe 1-2kg more and we have “Berlin heroine”; in central Germany except Hamburg and Frankfurt as well as the Netherland bordering region the standard range is even from 1 to 3%!
In Bavaria and Ba-Wü, the 2 most southern and most richest states in Germany they pay 20€ for a “normal” bubble, no small for 10€… and the 20€ normal bubble usually is even a bit worse in terms of per cent or amount… that is why when I was addicted people came here from Thüringen, Bavaria, “Göttingen” (city, a 911-doctor, but Fentanyl, Alfentanil and Remifentanil is boring as well as Buprenorphine and so on, DiaMorphine is simply the best, he was Anästhesist as we say, you know, speciality “narcotic” (For operation), and the ambulance doctor, is because in Germany we have normal 112 (number) ambulances with 2 guys being no doctors or so, and we have “Notarzt” (Emergency Doctor) which joins if the ambulance is not enough or they need medicine they do not own (“Btm” = Betäubungsmittel = drug).
The newsreels always write soooo low prices, I mean they never check out that maybe 5kg seized in a home of a kurdish guy (Kurdistan -> Turkey -> Balkan -> European Union is the main route, now also Azerbaijan/Georgia -> Russia -> Ukraine/Belorussia -> European Union… Greek and Turkey, Creta and Cyprus (most being Greek, but also 1/3rd or so turkish) are special cases but also they swim in the stuff…..
Mexico started an full-scale “heroine offensive” 😉 Since papaver somniferum grows everywhere, where people live, or were we have a summer….
oh back to small and great, inflation adjusted the “large” would be over 22.50€ now, but there is now 10 and 15€ and better quality since Putin after the sanctions sent us the worst criminals from Chechyna, they even can not travel in Russia, they are highly dangerous, already 3 murder commited for small amounts on the drug scene, at this place only! (1-2 km radius), they are psychos and have their connection to Azerbaijan or Georgia and then through Grozny Area it is smuggled somehow to Ukraine and Ukraine is a piece of….. 5000 US-$ cash and a guard let you pass even if you come with a small 5 ton truck…
its crazy… its getting cheaper! The German social care allows you to buy a big bubble of heroine for 27 days of the month or so………. US put it under war-law and said DO NOT TOUCH THE POPPY! If someone did without being allowed, he could get military prison……. serious, check it out….