Harvest of Hypocrisy? UK Opium Poppy Farming Kept Hush-Hush

September 11, Osama Bin Laden... Pretexts for What is the 3rd Opium War?

Today I came back from University and one of the first things I did was to open the news page of the BBC. Looking through I found an article about a theme I have been interested in for some time: Afghanistan's opium production. 

The article makes several statements over which I cannot help but to cast doubt:




1) "Analysts say that revenue from the drug has helped fund the Taliban insurgency."

2) "Nearly 80% of the opium grown in Afghanistan is being produced in provinces in the south, including Helmand and Kandahar, which are among the most volatile in the country.
The UN says this demonstrates that there is a clear link between insecurity and opium cultivation."


3) "The rise in production came even though the Afghan government and Nato have increased crop eradication measures by 65% and made significant seizures in recent months."

4) "Experts say the Taliban's involvement in the drugs trade ranges from direct involvement - such as providing farmers with seed, fertiliser and cash advances for their crop - to distribution and protection."


Before analyzing each one of these statements individually I would like to write a brief overview about the history of Afghanistan's opium cultivation.

Between 1979 and 1989 the country was under the domain of the Soviet Union. The local government started to lose control: warlords flourished and with it opium production, as regional commanders searched for ways to generate money to purchase weapons, according to the UN (source: UN office for the Coordination of Human Affairs website – Bitter-Sweet Harvest: Afghanistan’s New War). In reference to this time it was alleged by the Soviets on multiple occasions that American CIA agents were helping to smuggle opium out of Afghanistan, either into the West, in order to raise money for the Afghan resistance or into the Soviet Union in order to weaken it through drug addiction. According to Alfred McCoy, the CIA supported various Afghan drug lords (Source: Chossudovsy Michel "Pakistan and the global war on terrorism" and Paul DeRienzo "Interview with Alfred McCoy").

Between 1989 and 1994 the country had no stability and no centralized government. It has been a time of war and warlords. 

Source: Wikipedia

This period ended in 1994 when the Talibans came to power and took control of Afghanistan. Because opium or any other type of drugs are against the Islamic ethics and laws, in July 2000 Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, collaborating with the United Nations to eradicate heroin production in Afghanistan, declared that growing poppies was un-Islamic, resulting in one of the world's most successful anti-drug campaigns. As a result of this ban, opium poppy cultivation was reduced by 91% from the previous year's estimate of 82,172 hectares. The ban was so effective that Helmand Province, which had accounted for more than half of this area, recorded no poppy cultivation during the 2001 season (source: United Nations press conference on Afghanistan opium survey 2004). 

In November 2001 the Talibans lost control of the country as it was invaded by the US and its allies. 

In December 2001, a number of prominent Afghans met in Bonn, Germany to develop a plan to reestablish the State of Afghanistan, including provisions for a new constitution and national elections. As part of that agreement, the United Kingdom (UK) was designated the lead country in addressing counter-narcotics issues in Afghanistan. Afghanistan subsequently implemented its new constitution and held national elections. On December 7, 2004, Hamid Karzai was formally sworn in as president of a democratic Afghanistan. Two of the following three growing seasons saw record levels of opium poppy cultivation (source: Graeme Smith "Portrait of the enemy").


In March 2010, NATO rejected Russian proposals for Afghan poppy spraying, citing concerns over income of Afghani people (source: Reuters). When has NATO ever been interested in the income of the Afghani people? When has NATO ever done something that was not somehow in its own interests? There have also been allegations of American and European involvement in Afghanistan's drug trafficking (source: Daily Times), bringing Russia, in 2010, to accuse the United States of supporting the opium production in Afghanistan (source: PressTV).


Before trying to draw some conclusions from this information, which already seems in discrepancy with the assertions of the BBC, I would like to share with you, and eventually analyze and compare 3 maps:

The first map (source:UN) clearly shows us how the areas with the major poppy cultivation are the south and south eastern ones and that these areas are also the most dangerous ones.... which is quite strange considering that the the US and the UK are sending thousands of their best soldiers there. Hitherto America has sent a total of 94 000 troops in Afghanistan.

The second map (source: UN office on drugs and crime), amongst other things, tells us that the provinces of Farah and Nimroz, which are under the sole occupation of the US army, are the ones that saw the largest increase in opium poppy production in the biennium 2006-2007 (I do not have sources for more recent years, but please bear in mind that the US army had been there for 5/6 years already at the time that this data was taken). 

We also see from the third map (Source: International Security Assistance Force, which is a NATO-led security mission in Afghanistan) that the province that produces more overall opium is the one of Helmand where UK  troops are.... doing what? This is the question!


This is my question: what are these troops really doing in Afghanistan? Hundreds of thousands of men and billions of dollars to hunt down Osama Bin Laden? To hunt down a man whose actual responsibility in the events of 9/11 has been widely discussed and questioned? Or have Obama and 9/11 been the pretext to invade Afghanistan? And if so, why? Vietnam and Iraq had petrol; Yugoslavia had heavy water and prime resources; Libya has petrol and its leader wanted to withdraw the gold he had deposited in England... But what is interesting in Afghanistan and why has opium production only terribly increased since the NATO invasion and particularly in the areas controlled by the UK and the US?


What can the US and the UK possibly do with Opium? Probably the same that they do with Cocaine: sell it and have black cash to finance operations that cannot appear on official balance sheets. But not only: the United States are in fact the world's largest consumers of prescription opioids and their pharmaceutical companies have an ever larger need for it and have an even higher price as India is the only country to legally produce opium for export, bringing it to monopolize the market and set the prices for it. 

So what is the conclusion: regarding America's direct support in the production of Opium in Afghanistan I have no proof (except for the 81 800 images that come up if you google: "Us troops patrolling opium in Afghanistan"!); regarding America's eventual use of this opium I also have no proof. All I can do cast doubt over the assertions made by the BBC and give some elements to stimulate one's critical sense.


Finally: Is this the third Opium War? 

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The Social Team: the Quality of the Society in which We Live Depends on the Human Interactions We Are Able to Create between Us

Our business interactions are marked either by the pursuit of profit or by the satisfaction of the consumers. Politics is a race for power. But the majority of our life takes place in an other dimension, that does not obey either the laws of economics nor the ones of politics: the one of social relations, where the motivating factor is the acceptance of the group.

The consent of our similar, of our peers, gives us an identity and a status. It is am immense force, which tends to shape our behavior. In its most trivial form we call it conformism: a word that commonly has a negative connotation. Brought to its extreme it produces the herd effect: psychological or physical violence on the weaker ones. Nevertheless there are positive connotations, and we are so involved with them that we do not realize it any more.

In civil countries, the ones in which we admire the discipline, the legality, the civility, all these virtuous behaviors are present because there is a powerful civic conformism. More than the fear of legal reprehension it is the judgment of the neighbors that induces these people to pay taxes and respect the laws. So many atheists dedicate themselves to philanthropic activities, not with the goal of a place in paradise but because it feels right, because it is the behavior praised by their peers.

In a group of soldiers at the front, the approval of their mates can propel acts of heroism much more than the pursuit of praise of their superior. Vice versa if in a group of adolescents the idea that who has good grades is a nerd spreads, scholastic success becomes a stigma and conformism propels negligence towards studying.

Is there a way to channel this energy in a positive direction? The pressure of the peers is the theme that impassions a great American Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Tina Rosenberg. She has narrated to the readers of the New York Times magazine and of other journals the democratic revolutions in China, Serbia, Georgia and Ukraine; she has explored the poorest villages of India and  angladesh; she has lived in South African communities decimated by AIDS. In her last book Join The Club she tries to distill from her experience some lessons specifically on the theme of social pressure as a force that has the power to change every one of us and therefore the course of the events.

An example given by Mrs. Rosenberg concerns adolescents and their relationship with smoking. The campaigns against smoking that leveraged on cancer and the fear of death had almost no effect on teenagers, who have an unconscious tendency to believe they are immortal. Everything changed when some innovative advertisers promoted a different type of message: the great tobacco companies are all liars, they hide the truth about what they are selling, they want to F*** you. In the teenage groups targeted by this message a desire of rebellion against Philip Morris and others was generated. Quitting smoking became cool, it became the right thing to do.

A very different example that the author and journalist gives us is taken from her experiences in Jamkhed, a small and impoverished town in western India, and it regards women belonging to the lowest Hindu social caste. A training program aimed at transforming them into nurses assigned to the social hygiene service has deeply improved their self-esteem. Through their new role at the service of the community and thanks to the satisfaction of helping their neighbors, the women of Jamkhed have swept away millenary barriers.

The lesson of Tina Rosenberg is that the quality of the society in which we live is not the result of laws, of governments, or of the leaders that govern our society, but instead it depends mostly on community factors, on the positive conformism that generates trust, honesty, responsibility and solidarity. 

About nuclear energy: are economic needs past the “dangerous or not?” question.

In my opinion the danger of nuclear energy is only one of the chapters, even if the most dramatic one, which is indicating in which direction we are headed in today’s era of technology. As we are warned by Gunther Anders in The Outdatedness of Human Beings “Our ability to do is largely superior to our ability to foresee the effects of our doing”.

This highly dangerous situation removes man's opportunities for foresight

and therefore also the responsibility and mastery that result from the ability to foresee. Technology, in fact, which has no other goal to obtain other than its own strengthening and expansion, is supported today by the economy, which has an ever larger need for energy for its own aims (amongst which the well being of men is not contemplated, but only the increment of its profit); therefore from the economic front we can not expect any self limitation.

The misfortune is that we cannot expect any limitation from politics either, which, for a long time already, has not been the place where decisions are made anymore, because in making a decisions politics looks to economics, where every decisional process has been transferred. If to this we add the scarce knowledge, or even simply the lack of interest for themes such as nuclear energy, which by far exceed the competences of each one of us, I do not see how it is possible to stem this very dangerous “inability to foresee and forecast” that characterizes the choices that are made simply because they are feasible, regardless of the uncontrollable consequences that, except for the catastrophic accidents, are not easily perceptible.

This deficiency of perception is the highest risk we are taking without knowing how to control it.