Poppy Daze

The spurt in violence in Afghanistan in recent months has generally been attributed to the resurgence of the Taliban and al-Qaeda. However, aid workers in Afghanistan are saying that it is warlords with connections to the production and trade of narcotics who are behind many of the attacks … Warlords and crime cartels control this lucrative industry … Governments back home in the NATO countries are reluctant to get their soldiers drawn into tackling drug trafficking as this would make the troops targets of the all-powerful drug syndicates. Therefore, even if they come on a field of poppy or an opium warehouse, the troops are under instructions not to act against it.

“Narco-terrorism” has become an increasingly entrenched factor in the violence that’s meant to keep southern and eastern Afghanistan ? a key opium poppy region ? off-limits to outside assistance … “The revenue from the poppy trade in Afghanistan is more than all the humanitarian aid combined” … “It’s impossible to separate out what’s factional fighting, what’s Taliban activity and what’s drug trafficking” … The fact that drug-trafficking revenue has soared since the U.S. push into Afghanistan has put the Bush administration on the defensive. “You ask what we’re going to do and the answer is, ‘I don’t really know,'” Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said recently.