Afghan farmers harvested poppies last spring in the Nad Ali district of Helmand Province. Credit Bryan Denton for The New York Times
Alfred W. McCoy, Salon/Tom Dispatch: How opium defeated America in Afghanistan
A pink flower has stopped the world's largest military juggernaut in its tracks
After fighting the longest war in its history, the United States stands at the brink of defeat in Afghanistan. How can this be possible? How could the world’s sole superpower have battled continuously for 15 years, deploying 100,000 of its finest troops, sacrificing the lives of 2,200 of those soldiers, spending more than a trillion dollars on its military operations, lavishing a record hundred billion more on “nation-building” and “reconstruction,” helping raise, fund, equip, and train an army of 350,000 Afghan allies, and still not be able to pacify one of the world’s most impoverished nations? So dismal is the prospect for stability in Afghanistan in 2016 that the Obama White House has recently cancelled a planned further withdrawal of its forces and will leave an estimated 10,000 troops in the country indefinitely.
Read more ....
WNU Editor: The Taliban .... like all armies .... need money. Opium has bankrolled this insurgency. Here is another fascinating post on the Afghan opium trade and its ties to the Taliban .... Penetrating Every Stage of Afghan Opium Chain, Taliban Become a Cartel (NYT).
4 comments:
"opium production surged from a minimal 180 tons to a monumental 8,200 in the first five years of U.S. occupation" -- How could th9is happen? I smell CIA.
And how about the impact of drugs on foreign troops?
Once I talk with an ukrainian woman and he as told me about the Afghan invasion. When the war is over and the soldiers of Red Army are returned, many of them are drugs addictive.
I have already seen before, on that blog, on 20.000 and more desertions on U.S. Army in Afghanistan.
Why?
In what type of conditions these soldiers come back home?
And is not clear the reason of the today minor impact of opium on afghan GDP.
If it is thanks to the international aid, how when this is stopped or simply slowed?
Young Communist,
Be wary of everything you read on the internet, everything. Believe no one (and that includes me) try to verify.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/01/07/us/drug-overdose-deaths-in-the-us.html
http://www.hngn.com/articles/34989/20140702/opioid-use-among-us-military-veterans-at-high-rates.htm
http://m.livescience.com/46239-desertion-rates-in-the-u-s-army-since-1970-infographic.html
Post a Comment