Why is there any argument about this at all? This crap winds up right on oyr streets and is a double victory for the taliban. I say spray it and salt the earth at the same time so we don’t have to spray the same fields again for the next 500 years. If you allow the Poppy to grow on your land, the land is destroyed for ten lifetimes.

Next problem…

Maybe the key to all this is dry up the Heroin and Iran will start coming around. Europe as well.

Plus he makes no sense: He’s afraid that killing the poppies will piss off the Taliban. Why? Because it will destroy 90% of their income. Which will desroy 90% of their ability to fight. He’s protecting his drug income.

From what I can tell he’s not worried that it will piss off the Taliban in so much as it will piss off the farmers who sell the filth as their only livelihood.

Angry farmer - means of income = potential insurgent.

The main problem is that most Afghani land isn’t the greatest quality for growing true agricultural crops in large numbers, right?

Would it be possible to secure an area, invest in factories or industries, torch the poppies and then bustle the farmers into factory jobs? Or are they all too decentralised for that to work?

That way you’d switch them from an agrarian to industrial society, ensure people still had jobs so there was no incentive to join the terrorist or insurgent groups, you’d remove the main source of the opiate drug problem and cut off a source of income from the terrorists.

Yoy! are you guys gonna slap me around for this …

As Zachary pointed out, it’s, unfortunately, one of the only means of income for the dirt farmers.

Don’t take this the wrong way but: I think this might be a case for some lukewarm form of (socialism) over there. The government needs to take over all the farmlands … not possession, but control … pay the farmers who own the land, and workers who would come in to work the fields. They need to develop, if they don’t have one already, a department of agriculture and map out what is to be grown on what farmland and enforce it, militarily if need be. Opiates are an important fact of life in our LEGAL drug manufacturing in the world. If the farmers have an history of growing the crop, let them … But breathe hard down their necks and regulate everything about the process, right down to the legal selling/exporting for proper processing into pharmaceutical products. Make the farmers responsible “businessmen”. Build processing factories in the country (job creation).

So, A-stan’s biggest export would be opiates? Have you ever had surgery, or needed pain-killers? Opiates. Just remember, a hell of a lot of our troops have been given medicines with opiates in them in order to ease their pain and even save their lives. The poppy plant is not evil. It’s those who control/use it incorrectly that are evil. Karzai’s brother, who it’s been said is a big drug dealer, well, maybe he should be brought in on building this industry. Put the responsibility on his back. Hell, we already bring in people who we WERE fighting with in A-stan and Iraq. Make this guy a responsible businessman, the government breathing down his neck. From THIS industry other industries/businesses will diversify. Putting poppy agriculture under the government’s control and making it a legal industry will take it out of Taliban reach. In addition, viable crops for the region need to be researched and PLANTED. The fucking place is a litter box!

I saw a documentary (PBS I think) right after we went into A-stan. Was a young woman who had left A-stan during the Taliban. When she returned after our invasion she toured areas that had once been lush and green and beautiful. The Taliban had either neglected or destroyed everything. It was green once. It can be green again. The people need to get off their asses and start rebuilding and replanting. Trees, crops, whatever!

If in a couple years something built off my “idea” isn’t doing any better than it is now … then nuke the damn fields.

Anyhow, I’ve had my thunks … Okay. Have at me.

Bring in pharmaceutical companies to work on this. They have more than enough profits to subsidize these farmers and the government.