Aryavartha
03-09-2006, 21:44
Thanks to the brilliant post-war efforts of the coalition in Afghanistan, we now have a record harvest of Opium in AFG. That's right. Highest lever EVER recorded. Oh yeah. Now you can drown your sorrows for having elected these kind of leaders by smoking the finest Opium on earth.
http://graphics10.nytimes.com/images/2006/09/03/world/03afghan.600.gif
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/03/world/asia/03afghan.html?hp&ex=1157342400&en=ad4141c5443c25c5&ei=5094&partner=homepage
Opium Harvest at Record Level in Afghanistan
By CARLOTTA GALL
KABUL, Afghanistan, Sept. 2 — Afghanistan’s opium harvest this year has reached the highest levels ever recorded, showing an increase of almost 50 percent from last year, the executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Antonio Maria Costa, said Saturday in Kabul.
He described the figures as “alarming” and “very bad news” for the Afghan government and international donors who have poured millions of dollars into programs to reduce the poppy crop since 2001.
He said the increase in cultivation was significantly fueled by the resurgence of Taliban rebels in the south, the country’s prime opium growing region. As the insurgents have stepped up attacks, they have also encouraged and profited from the drug trade, promising protection to growers if they expanded their opium operations.
“This year’s harvest will be around 6,100 metric tons of opium — a staggering 92 percent of total world supply. It exceeds global consumption by 30 percent,” Mr. Costa said at a news briefing.
He said the harvest increased by 49 percent from the year before, and it drastically outpaced the previous record of 4,600 metric tons, set in 1999 while the Taliban governed the country. The area cultivated increased by 59 percent, with more than 400,000 acres planted with poppies in 2006 compared with less than 260,000 in 2005.
“It is indeed very bad, you can say it is out of control,” Mr. Costa said Friday in an interview before the announcement.
President Hamid Karzai expressed disappointment at the results in a statement issued on Saturday and urged the international community to expand its commitment to strengthen the Afghan police and law enforcement agencies.
The Bush administration has made poppy eradication a major facet of its aid to Afghanistan, and it has criticized Mr. Karzai for not doing more to challenge warlords involved in opium production.:rolleyes: [WTF. Wait a minute. Karzai's writ does not run in south AFG because of the taliban and the taliba resurgency is because of the coalition troops headed by US not doing a thorough job and the Bush admin's blind eye to Pakistan's support to taliban.]
On Saturday, a State Department spokeswoman, Joanne Moore, had no immediate comment on the United Nations report, but she pointed to a fact sheet posted on the department’s Web site that outlined efforts to support Afghanistan’s counternarcotics campaign.
The increase in cultivation was mainly a result of the strength of the insurgency in southern Afghanistan, which has left whole districts outside of government control, and the continuing impunity of everyone involved, from the farmers and traffickers to corrupt police and government officials, Mr. Costa said.
Afghanistan is already the world’s largest producer of opium, and 35 percent of its gross domestic product is estimated to come from the narcotics trade.
Most of the heroin made from Afghan poppies is sold in Europe and Asia, drug officials say. Most of the increase in poppy cultivation has occurred in five provinces in southern Afghanistan, in particular Helmand, Kandahar and Oruzgan, where security has sharply deteriorated this year because of Taliban attacks, Mr. Costa said.
“The southern part of Afghanistan was displaying the ominous hallmarks of incipient collapse, with large-scale drug cultivation and trafficking, insurgency and terrorism, crime and corruption,” he said in a statement released by his office.
“We are seeing a very strong connection between the increase in the insurgency on the one hand and the increase in cultivation on the other hand,” he explained in the interview.
The Taliban had distributed leaflets at night, inviting farmers to increase their poppy cultivation in exchange for protection, Mr. Costa said. The rebels also profit from levies in return for protection of drug convoys passing through the border areas they controlled.
There were also signs of a pernicious strategy to encourage farmers to increase poppy cultivation in an effort to force a government reaction, which would then turn the population further against the government, Mr. Costa said.
But he did not blame only the Taliban for the increase. He specifically accused the former governor of Helmand Province, Sher Muhammad Akhund, of encouraging farmers to grow more poppies in the months before he was removed from office. The result was an increase of 160 percent in that “villain province” from its harvest last year, he said, the highest rise in the country.
“There is evidence of major pressure exerted by him in favor of cultivating opium,” Mr. Costa said.
In the news briefing on Saturday, Mr. Costa also criticized the government’s action of removing the governor and giving him a position in the upper house of Parliament.
“I have been on record for asking the president for corrupt officials not to be moved around but to be removed, to be neutralized; if records can prove conviction, to be arrested and convicted. So far we do not have much evidence for that And we hope that more forceful initiatives will be taken exactly in that area,” he said.
One province in the north, Badakhshan, where there is no problem of an insurgency, also had a significant increase in poppy cultivation.
Mr. Costa attributed that mostly to the lack of government control and the presence of powerful warlords and corrupt local officials. A substantial drought also played a part, because no alternative crop could survive as the poppies did.
While the government had improved its performance at eradication of the poppy crop, it had failed to do enough to catch traffickers and corrupt officials, he said.
The United Nations drugs office, which measures the eradication program, said about 38,000 acres of poppy fields were confirmed to have been destroyed, whereas only about 12,000 acres were confirmed destroyed last year. Government reporting on how much was eradicated was also less exaggerated, Mr. Costa said. In 2005, province governors had reported eradicating about 87,000 acres and the United Nations could only confirm 12,000 destroyed. In 2006, governors reported 57,000 acres destroyed, and the drug office confirmed 38,000, he said.
The United Nations drugs office surveys cultivation in Afghanistan through satellite imagery and with teams on the ground, who have even worked in Taliban-controlled areas. Usually they travel undercover on motorbikes, and they interview farmers and traders in more than 2,000 villages across the country.
International donors have put a lot of money into training judges and investigators and preparing high-security detention facilities for drug traffickers, and it was now time for the government to act, Mr. Costa said.
“I am pleading with the government to be much tougher,” he said. A new high-security prison block would be inaugurated in a few weeks, he said. “We have room for 100 people and I am asking the government to fill it within six months,” he said.
Afghanistan’s minister for counternarcotics, Habibullah Qaderi, said at the news briefing that the news was a setback for his ministry and for the country. But he said the government’s strategy to combat opium production would start to show results in the next three years.
He said he hoped the government would be able to capture more high-level traffickers and corrupt officials. But he said it still lacked the capacity to investigate and catch the “big fish.”
Several hundred people have been arrested and convicted for drug offenses in recent months, but Mr. Qaderi admitted most were people who were caught carrying the drugs.
One significant prosecution involved an Interior Ministry official, Lt. Col. Nadir Khan, who was sentenced to 10 years in prison two months ago for stealing 110 pounds of heroin that had been impounded by drug enforcement authorities and selling it, a Western counternarcotics official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Meanwhile AFG continues to burn.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060902/ap_on_re_as/afghanistan
14 British Soldiers killed in Afghanistan. Brits say accident. Taliban claims stinger attack.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/military/story/0,,1863223,00.html
British soldier killed by Afghan insurgents
The number of British soldiers killed in action in Afghanistan since June is now 15.
Last month, the Economist reported that 80,000 shots had been fired by British troops since their three-year peacekeeping mission began in May.
Kandahar
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/features/story.jsp?story=703377
State of Afghan schools. Also exposes perfidy of Pak regime.
http://www.speroforum.com/site/article.asp?idCategory=33&idsub=122&id=5031&t=Afghan+schools+in+peril
Afghan schools in peril
Thousands are shut out of school following a rise in missile and arson attacks.
Monday, August 21, 2006
by Hafizullah Gardesh
Extremists are increasingly targeting schools in Afghanistan, threatening the education of thousands of children who only recently returned to the classroom following the fall of the Taleban.
More than 100 schools have been set ablaze in recent months and dozens of others closed because of bombs and threats, according to the Afghan education ministry. Teachers have been killed and UNICEF claims that six children have died. Schools for girls have been hit particularly hard.
The attacks are spreading from the south and southeastern regions to all provinces and include one missile attack, 11 explosions, 50 school burnings and 37 threats against schools and communities, according to the UN agency. It says that in the four southern provinces alone more than 100,000 pupils are shut out of school because of closures.
Human Rights Watch concurs, saying it found entire districts where attacks had closed all schools and driven out teachers and NGOs. It cited 204 documented incidents against teachers, students and schools since January 2005, saying there have been more attacks in the first six months of 2006 than in all of the previous year.
It blames the Taleban and allied groups for many, though not all, of the attacks. Also responsible, its says, are local warlords trying to strengthen their control and criminal drug networks which target schools, because in many areas they are the only symbol of government authority.
Deputy Education Minister Mohammad Sediq Patman, however, lays the blame squarely at the feet of the Taleban.
"It is clear that the Taleban are involved in arson attacks on schools," he said. "We have information that Taleban in some provinces have told the teachers not to teach in schools, and that they will pay them the salaries in their homes."
Around 1.5 million girls were forbidden from attending school under the Taleban rule but had flocked back to the classroom since their overthrow in March 2002. UNICEF estimates that 5.1 million Afghan children were back in school by December 2005.
Qari Mohammad Yousuf, a Taleban spokesman, rejected claims that the group is behind the school attacks, adding it condemned the violence months ago. "We have denounced burning schools, but no one is listening to us. All of the media is controlled by the West," he said in an interview with IWPR.
He has two theories on who is responsible: school officials disguising their thefts from the schools by burning them down; and the government itself which, he said, is attempting to defame the Taleban.
Yousuf also denied being under the influence of Pakistani religious groups or the country's secret service, the Inter-Services Intelligence, ISI, whom many Afghans believe is masterminding the attacks.
"Pakistan's ISI are against education in Afghanistan, particularly in the
Pashtun areas. They do not want Afghans to be well educated because
Afghans' education is not in Pakistan's interests," said political analyst Habibullah Rafi.
Mohammad Hassan Wolesmal, also a political analyst, describes Pakistan as Afghanistan's biggest enemy.
"Pakistan cannot tolerate a strong Afghanistan. It tries to keep Afghans politically, economically, and militarily dependent on Pakistan therefore it burns the schools and prevents the Afghans from education," he said.
There are some within Pakistan itself who blame their government.
Addressing a press conference in Kabul on June 28, Afrasiab Khataq, who heads the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, accused his government of directly interfering in Afghanistan's affairs.
"I have heard that the Pakistani government has said that Americans are leaving Afghanistan and we [Pakistan] have to replace them," he said.
That's a claim Pakistan denies, along with the accusations that it is somehow sponsoring the school attacks.
"It is easy to blame [Pakistan] but to prove it is very difficult. There are some people who want to destroy the friendly atmosphere between Afghanistan and Pakistan," Naeem Khan, a press officer at the Pakistani embassy in Kabul told IWPR, adding that Islamabad has played a major role in the reconstruction of Afghanistan.
"Those who burn schools and conduct other destructive acts in Afghanistan and detonate bombs in Pakistan are terrorists, and these people are the enemies of both countries," he said.
This isn't the first time Afghanistan's education system has faced violent threats. Attacks on schools and teachers were also commonplace during the mujahedin's war against the Russians. Then, fighters argued that schools were communist training grounds and teachers were delivering enemy propaganda.
Some Afghans also claim there was a Pakistan connection with the mujahedin-era school attacks.
A former Jihadi commander claimed he went to Pakistan during those days and spoke to an ISI officer who showed him a map and told him to burn a school in Saroobi district of Kabul and destroy the local dam.
"I discussed the issue with my jihadi colleagues," he said. "They all said that we are doing jihad against Russians and communists but not against schools or power dams. We disobeyed this order of Pakistan."
It is hard to be optimistic when one keeps reading news from AFG. The taliban is in de-facto control of many southern provinces. Their attacks are more and more daring nowadays....them being confident of the security of their bases in Pakistan and the vast recruiting pool amongst Pak-Pushtoons.
All it takes is an isolationist admin to come to power in US and a US withdrawal and Karzai would be hanging in a lamp post like Najibullah...
http://graphics10.nytimes.com/images/2006/09/03/world/03afghan.600.gif
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/03/world/asia/03afghan.html?hp&ex=1157342400&en=ad4141c5443c25c5&ei=5094&partner=homepage
Opium Harvest at Record Level in Afghanistan
By CARLOTTA GALL
KABUL, Afghanistan, Sept. 2 — Afghanistan’s opium harvest this year has reached the highest levels ever recorded, showing an increase of almost 50 percent from last year, the executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Antonio Maria Costa, said Saturday in Kabul.
He described the figures as “alarming” and “very bad news” for the Afghan government and international donors who have poured millions of dollars into programs to reduce the poppy crop since 2001.
He said the increase in cultivation was significantly fueled by the resurgence of Taliban rebels in the south, the country’s prime opium growing region. As the insurgents have stepped up attacks, they have also encouraged and profited from the drug trade, promising protection to growers if they expanded their opium operations.
“This year’s harvest will be around 6,100 metric tons of opium — a staggering 92 percent of total world supply. It exceeds global consumption by 30 percent,” Mr. Costa said at a news briefing.
He said the harvest increased by 49 percent from the year before, and it drastically outpaced the previous record of 4,600 metric tons, set in 1999 while the Taliban governed the country. The area cultivated increased by 59 percent, with more than 400,000 acres planted with poppies in 2006 compared with less than 260,000 in 2005.
“It is indeed very bad, you can say it is out of control,” Mr. Costa said Friday in an interview before the announcement.
President Hamid Karzai expressed disappointment at the results in a statement issued on Saturday and urged the international community to expand its commitment to strengthen the Afghan police and law enforcement agencies.
The Bush administration has made poppy eradication a major facet of its aid to Afghanistan, and it has criticized Mr. Karzai for not doing more to challenge warlords involved in opium production.:rolleyes: [WTF. Wait a minute. Karzai's writ does not run in south AFG because of the taliban and the taliba resurgency is because of the coalition troops headed by US not doing a thorough job and the Bush admin's blind eye to Pakistan's support to taliban.]
On Saturday, a State Department spokeswoman, Joanne Moore, had no immediate comment on the United Nations report, but she pointed to a fact sheet posted on the department’s Web site that outlined efforts to support Afghanistan’s counternarcotics campaign.
The increase in cultivation was mainly a result of the strength of the insurgency in southern Afghanistan, which has left whole districts outside of government control, and the continuing impunity of everyone involved, from the farmers and traffickers to corrupt police and government officials, Mr. Costa said.
Afghanistan is already the world’s largest producer of opium, and 35 percent of its gross domestic product is estimated to come from the narcotics trade.
Most of the heroin made from Afghan poppies is sold in Europe and Asia, drug officials say. Most of the increase in poppy cultivation has occurred in five provinces in southern Afghanistan, in particular Helmand, Kandahar and Oruzgan, where security has sharply deteriorated this year because of Taliban attacks, Mr. Costa said.
“The southern part of Afghanistan was displaying the ominous hallmarks of incipient collapse, with large-scale drug cultivation and trafficking, insurgency and terrorism, crime and corruption,” he said in a statement released by his office.
“We are seeing a very strong connection between the increase in the insurgency on the one hand and the increase in cultivation on the other hand,” he explained in the interview.
The Taliban had distributed leaflets at night, inviting farmers to increase their poppy cultivation in exchange for protection, Mr. Costa said. The rebels also profit from levies in return for protection of drug convoys passing through the border areas they controlled.
There were also signs of a pernicious strategy to encourage farmers to increase poppy cultivation in an effort to force a government reaction, which would then turn the population further against the government, Mr. Costa said.
But he did not blame only the Taliban for the increase. He specifically accused the former governor of Helmand Province, Sher Muhammad Akhund, of encouraging farmers to grow more poppies in the months before he was removed from office. The result was an increase of 160 percent in that “villain province” from its harvest last year, he said, the highest rise in the country.
“There is evidence of major pressure exerted by him in favor of cultivating opium,” Mr. Costa said.
In the news briefing on Saturday, Mr. Costa also criticized the government’s action of removing the governor and giving him a position in the upper house of Parliament.
“I have been on record for asking the president for corrupt officials not to be moved around but to be removed, to be neutralized; if records can prove conviction, to be arrested and convicted. So far we do not have much evidence for that And we hope that more forceful initiatives will be taken exactly in that area,” he said.
One province in the north, Badakhshan, where there is no problem of an insurgency, also had a significant increase in poppy cultivation.
Mr. Costa attributed that mostly to the lack of government control and the presence of powerful warlords and corrupt local officials. A substantial drought also played a part, because no alternative crop could survive as the poppies did.
While the government had improved its performance at eradication of the poppy crop, it had failed to do enough to catch traffickers and corrupt officials, he said.
The United Nations drugs office, which measures the eradication program, said about 38,000 acres of poppy fields were confirmed to have been destroyed, whereas only about 12,000 acres were confirmed destroyed last year. Government reporting on how much was eradicated was also less exaggerated, Mr. Costa said. In 2005, province governors had reported eradicating about 87,000 acres and the United Nations could only confirm 12,000 destroyed. In 2006, governors reported 57,000 acres destroyed, and the drug office confirmed 38,000, he said.
The United Nations drugs office surveys cultivation in Afghanistan through satellite imagery and with teams on the ground, who have even worked in Taliban-controlled areas. Usually they travel undercover on motorbikes, and they interview farmers and traders in more than 2,000 villages across the country.
International donors have put a lot of money into training judges and investigators and preparing high-security detention facilities for drug traffickers, and it was now time for the government to act, Mr. Costa said.
“I am pleading with the government to be much tougher,” he said. A new high-security prison block would be inaugurated in a few weeks, he said. “We have room for 100 people and I am asking the government to fill it within six months,” he said.
Afghanistan’s minister for counternarcotics, Habibullah Qaderi, said at the news briefing that the news was a setback for his ministry and for the country. But he said the government’s strategy to combat opium production would start to show results in the next three years.
He said he hoped the government would be able to capture more high-level traffickers and corrupt officials. But he said it still lacked the capacity to investigate and catch the “big fish.”
Several hundred people have been arrested and convicted for drug offenses in recent months, but Mr. Qaderi admitted most were people who were caught carrying the drugs.
One significant prosecution involved an Interior Ministry official, Lt. Col. Nadir Khan, who was sentenced to 10 years in prison two months ago for stealing 110 pounds of heroin that had been impounded by drug enforcement authorities and selling it, a Western counternarcotics official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Meanwhile AFG continues to burn.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060902/ap_on_re_as/afghanistan
14 British Soldiers killed in Afghanistan. Brits say accident. Taliban claims stinger attack.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/military/story/0,,1863223,00.html
British soldier killed by Afghan insurgents
The number of British soldiers killed in action in Afghanistan since June is now 15.
Last month, the Economist reported that 80,000 shots had been fired by British troops since their three-year peacekeeping mission began in May.
Kandahar
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/features/story.jsp?story=703377
State of Afghan schools. Also exposes perfidy of Pak regime.
http://www.speroforum.com/site/article.asp?idCategory=33&idsub=122&id=5031&t=Afghan+schools+in+peril
Afghan schools in peril
Thousands are shut out of school following a rise in missile and arson attacks.
Monday, August 21, 2006
by Hafizullah Gardesh
Extremists are increasingly targeting schools in Afghanistan, threatening the education of thousands of children who only recently returned to the classroom following the fall of the Taleban.
More than 100 schools have been set ablaze in recent months and dozens of others closed because of bombs and threats, according to the Afghan education ministry. Teachers have been killed and UNICEF claims that six children have died. Schools for girls have been hit particularly hard.
The attacks are spreading from the south and southeastern regions to all provinces and include one missile attack, 11 explosions, 50 school burnings and 37 threats against schools and communities, according to the UN agency. It says that in the four southern provinces alone more than 100,000 pupils are shut out of school because of closures.
Human Rights Watch concurs, saying it found entire districts where attacks had closed all schools and driven out teachers and NGOs. It cited 204 documented incidents against teachers, students and schools since January 2005, saying there have been more attacks in the first six months of 2006 than in all of the previous year.
It blames the Taleban and allied groups for many, though not all, of the attacks. Also responsible, its says, are local warlords trying to strengthen their control and criminal drug networks which target schools, because in many areas they are the only symbol of government authority.
Deputy Education Minister Mohammad Sediq Patman, however, lays the blame squarely at the feet of the Taleban.
"It is clear that the Taleban are involved in arson attacks on schools," he said. "We have information that Taleban in some provinces have told the teachers not to teach in schools, and that they will pay them the salaries in their homes."
Around 1.5 million girls were forbidden from attending school under the Taleban rule but had flocked back to the classroom since their overthrow in March 2002. UNICEF estimates that 5.1 million Afghan children were back in school by December 2005.
Qari Mohammad Yousuf, a Taleban spokesman, rejected claims that the group is behind the school attacks, adding it condemned the violence months ago. "We have denounced burning schools, but no one is listening to us. All of the media is controlled by the West," he said in an interview with IWPR.
He has two theories on who is responsible: school officials disguising their thefts from the schools by burning them down; and the government itself which, he said, is attempting to defame the Taleban.
Yousuf also denied being under the influence of Pakistani religious groups or the country's secret service, the Inter-Services Intelligence, ISI, whom many Afghans believe is masterminding the attacks.
"Pakistan's ISI are against education in Afghanistan, particularly in the
Pashtun areas. They do not want Afghans to be well educated because
Afghans' education is not in Pakistan's interests," said political analyst Habibullah Rafi.
Mohammad Hassan Wolesmal, also a political analyst, describes Pakistan as Afghanistan's biggest enemy.
"Pakistan cannot tolerate a strong Afghanistan. It tries to keep Afghans politically, economically, and militarily dependent on Pakistan therefore it burns the schools and prevents the Afghans from education," he said.
There are some within Pakistan itself who blame their government.
Addressing a press conference in Kabul on June 28, Afrasiab Khataq, who heads the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, accused his government of directly interfering in Afghanistan's affairs.
"I have heard that the Pakistani government has said that Americans are leaving Afghanistan and we [Pakistan] have to replace them," he said.
That's a claim Pakistan denies, along with the accusations that it is somehow sponsoring the school attacks.
"It is easy to blame [Pakistan] but to prove it is very difficult. There are some people who want to destroy the friendly atmosphere between Afghanistan and Pakistan," Naeem Khan, a press officer at the Pakistani embassy in Kabul told IWPR, adding that Islamabad has played a major role in the reconstruction of Afghanistan.
"Those who burn schools and conduct other destructive acts in Afghanistan and detonate bombs in Pakistan are terrorists, and these people are the enemies of both countries," he said.
This isn't the first time Afghanistan's education system has faced violent threats. Attacks on schools and teachers were also commonplace during the mujahedin's war against the Russians. Then, fighters argued that schools were communist training grounds and teachers were delivering enemy propaganda.
Some Afghans also claim there was a Pakistan connection with the mujahedin-era school attacks.
A former Jihadi commander claimed he went to Pakistan during those days and spoke to an ISI officer who showed him a map and told him to burn a school in Saroobi district of Kabul and destroy the local dam.
"I discussed the issue with my jihadi colleagues," he said. "They all said that we are doing jihad against Russians and communists but not against schools or power dams. We disobeyed this order of Pakistan."
It is hard to be optimistic when one keeps reading news from AFG. The taliban is in de-facto control of many southern provinces. Their attacks are more and more daring nowadays....them being confident of the security of their bases in Pakistan and the vast recruiting pool amongst Pak-Pushtoons.
All it takes is an isolationist admin to come to power in US and a US withdrawal and Karzai would be hanging in a lamp post like Najibullah...