There is no shortage of opium poppies in Afghanistan, despite the best efforts of ISAF forces to eradicate the controversial crop. There is a world shortage of essential opium-based medicines such as morphine and codeine. If these two circumstances can be brought together the Taliban can be undermined and the war shortened, Afghans can prosper as legitimate farmers instead of the suppliers of more than 90 per cent of the world's heroin. All of this could be done and an adequate supply of painkillers ensured not just for Western hospitals but also for a Third World where shortages are extreme and patients by the million live and die in agony because of it. The Senlis Council, a European think-tank, suggests that an opium licensing system could be used to divert the illegal drug trade into regulated sales of the poppy product for legitimate medicines. [continues 228 words]
KANDAHAR CITY, Afghanistan - She strides into a dingy hotel restaurant, a diminutive Canadian lawyer with hired guns following behind. One of her men is a burly Australian who packs an automatic rifle. He installs himself at the hotel's entrance, his weapon hidden but at the ready. It's not unusual for civilians in this dangerous city to protect themselves with private security. But rarely does a woman move about in such a manner -- commanding an armed guard and eschewing a burka, or even a shawl, for male Afghan clothes. [continues 1293 words]
Opium, Thugs Bloom Under U.S. Policies in Afghanistan War A little more than five years since the start of the Bush administration's Afghan war, the "ousted" Taliban is back in full flower, and so is the notorious Afghan poppy. There's no doubt the two are intimately connected. The Taliban, which briefly banned poppy cultivation in 2000 in an effort to gain U.S. diplomatic recognition and aid, now both supports and draws support from that profitable crop; Afghanistan provides 92 percent of the world's heroin. [continues 1485 words]
KANDAHAR - There has been much debate in Canada regarding the dramatic increase in violence in Kandahar, the southern Afghan province where Canadian troops are stationed. For two years, I have lived in Afghanistan performing research for the Senlis Council, a European think tank. During this time, I witnessed how the Taliban insurgency has been fuelled by forced poppy-crop eradication. This disastrous counter-narcotics policy has destroyed the livelihoods of impoverished farmers, and led to the disintegration of whole communities. Kandahar has suffered years of severe drought -- poppy is one of the rare crops that will grow in this harsh climate. Over 85% of the province's population relies on farming to survive. Without crops, families have become internal refugees. Their poverty has engendered severe disillusionment with the international community and is hindering NATO's mission of winning hearts and minds. [continues 480 words]
Jamilla Niazi is a 40-year-old woman with a freckly face and high cheekbones. When she arrives in a refugee camp in Helmand province in southern Afghanistan to speak to me via Internet camera phone, her features are hidden behind the blue burqa she is forced to wear in the scorching summer heat. She peels back the gauze and smiles. She doesn't do this much anymore -- not since the death threats began to come every night, pledging to burn her in acid. To jihadis, Niazi has committed an intolerable offense: She is the head teacher of a school for girls. "The Taliban have come back," says the aid worker with Niazi. "They control this area now." The night before our conversation, they burned down a school in nearby Nabili, and Taliban fighters planted a landmine in the playground of another girls school. [continues 605 words]
Jamilla Niazi is a 40-year-old woman with a freckly face and high cheekbones. When she arrives in a refugee camp in Helmand province in southern Afghanistan to speak to me via Internet camera phone, her features are hidden behind the blue burqa she is forced to wear in the scorching summer heat. She peels back the gauze and smiles. She doesn't do this much anymore - not since the death threats began to come every night, pledging to burn her in acid. To jihadis, Niazi has committed an intolerable offense: She is the head teacher of a school for girls. [continues 649 words]
More Afghan Farmers Will Turn to the Taliban If the U.S. Doesn't Stop Eradicating the Country's Poppy Crop. JAMILLA NIAZI is a 40-year-old woman with a freckly face and high cheekbones. When she arrives in a refugee camp in Helmand province in southern Afghanistan to speak to me via Internet camera phone, her features are hidden behind the blue burka she is forced to wear in the scorching summer heat. She peels back the gauze and smiles. She doesn't do this much anymore -- not since the death threats began to come every night, pledging to burn her in acid. To jihadis, Niazi has committed an intolerable offense: She is the head teacher of a school for girls. [continues 647 words]
Last Week in Ottawa There Was a Conference Outlining the Current Situation in Afghanistan. One of the primary reports was tabled by the independent Senlis Council headed by president-founder Norine MacDonald. For the past 14 months, MacDonald has lived and worked in the Kandahar region where her council has monitored the progress of international development efforts. Despite the obvious security risks, the Senlis team live among the Afghans and do not operate with military escorts. As such, they are one of the very few foreign agencies still providing an insight into this Taliban-infested hostile corner of Afghanistan. [continues 725 words]
Lawyer Norine Macdonald Argues That the Campaign to Eradicate Illegal Crops Is Devastating Farmers, Disillusioning Families and Playing Afghans into the Hands of the Taliban Saskatchewan-born lawyer Norine MacDonald has been in Afghanistan since January 2005 to conduct research for the Senlis Council, a security and development policy group. MacDonald, who founded the international think-tank in 2002, is now its president and lead field researcher. Based in Kandahar, MacDonald returns to Canada this week to take part in a Senlis Council symposium on Canada's involvement in Afghanistan. The symposium will discuss the steps that need to be taken to address both security and poverty in Afghanistan. It begins Tuesday in Ottawa at the Marriott Hotel. [continues 1495 words]
Canadian and United Nations experts are dismissing key elements of a report by an international think-tank that urges Canada to take the lead in developing new NATO strategies in Afghanistan such as legitimizing poppy production to meet Third World demands for painkillers. The Senlis Council report, originally released in June, was submitted to a symposium yesterday, where the Conference of Defence Associations dismissed its main recommendation as superficial and nonsensical. The paper by Norine MacDonald, the development and security think tank's lead field researcher in Kandahar province, says the military situation in southern Afghanistan has declined dramatically in recent months due largely to a failure to win the hearts and minds of the local populace. [continues 219 words]
Canada must immediately launch an emergency food program to relieve the growing hunger crisis in southern Afghanistan, says the president of an international development and security think-tank. Canadian lawyer Norine MacDonald, the founding president of the Senlis Council, told a news conference yesterday that a famine has started to take shape in the cities and towns that neighbour Canada's military base in Kandahar. "Children are starving to death literally down the road from the Canadian military base in Kandahar," said Ms. MacDonald, who has spent the past year in southern Afghanistan and has helped document the rise of refugee camps in Kandahar and in surrounding towns. [continues 673 words]
The Afghan government has ordered the closure of all offices of a group that wants to promote new ways of dealing with the global drugs problem. The Interior Ministry said the Senlis Council, had been "confusing farmers" and had been a factor in the increase in poppy cultivation. Senlis has suggested the legal use of Afghan opium for medical purposes. A spokesman for Senlis said it had not received any formal notification that its offices were to be closed. He denied its activities had increased poppy cultivation. [continues 58 words]
DRUGS AND TERROR: BRITAIN'S ROLE [] Tony Blair's ambition to eradicate opium production in Afghanistan has failed miserably. More poppies are grown than ever, financing the Taliban's resurgence and thus fuelling the war on terror. Britain is caught in a vicious circle in Helmand Province. Its ill-conceived war on drugs in Afghanistan may hand the Taliban a huge victory - the collapse of Nato. It was perhaps appropriate that Britain, as the biggest consumer of Afghan heroin, take on the role of "lead nation" in counter-narcotics in Afghanistan. But this has been prosecuted on the cheap while Nato has refused to back the poppy eradication schemes that the British government regards as critical to the success of the programme. Now the Taliban are making money hand over fist from drugs, ensuring that their forces remain well stocked with weapons. [continues 2294 words]
Canada has now flown 36 soldiers and one diplomat out of Afghanistan in caskets. There doubtless will be more bodies to be transported home in weeks and months to come, a notion that may carry heavy political ramifications for the Harper government as an election inevitably approaches. Conservatives, as a result of the mid-May vote they engineered in the Commons, bear full responsibility for extending the Canadian mission in Kandahar for an additional two years, to 2009. Most Canadians haven't access to the necessary information for a thorough analysis of the strategic imperatives behind the Afghan mission. [continues 623 words]
In his address to the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday, Prime Minister Stephen Harper stressed the historic importance of the UN-sponsored intervention in Afghanistan. The rich have conspicuously come to the aid of the poor in the common interest. Calling it the UN's "greatest test," Mr. Harper said, "we cannot afford to fail." He then warned that "we haven't made Afghanistan's progress irreversible. Not yet." The gravest danger to this important project is that the foreign forces in Afghanistan come to be regarded not as saviours, but as invaders. One reason that this may happen has yet to receive proper attention. It lies in the aggressive poppy-eradication program promoted by the United States. [continues 722 words]
Drug Industry Supports The Insurgency, NATO General Warns Afghanistan's opium industry is thriving despite efforts to eradicate the crop and the expansion of poppy cultivation is concerning both NATO officials and critics of the mission who say it is necessary to end dependence on the drug crop to spur the country's redevelopment. A UN report states poppy cultivation will soar to record levels in Afghanistan this year, yielding 92% of the world's supply of opium. Cultivation has increased by 59% this year, reaching an output of 6,700 tonnes. [continues 297 words]
The Italian Red Cross and other organizations launched a campaign Monday to promote the idea of licensing Afghanistan's illegal opium production to make morphine. "This system we advocate provides for one part of the Afghan opium to be used to make legal morphine, rather than illegal heroin," Massimo Barra, president of the Italian Red Cross told reporters in Rome. The campaign seeks to promote trade agreements with Afghanistan and stems from a study released last year by The Senlis Council -- a European think-tank on drug policy -- that examined the potential for licensing poppy cultivation in Afghanistan to provide legal, opium-based painkillers. [continues 329 words]
Almost five years after a U.S.-led coalition attacked Afghanistan in response to the Sept. 11 attack, experts warn that the country is slipping away. The Islamic fundamentalist Taliban are back, controlling half the country, by some estimates. Fighting in the south is some of the fiercest that Western troops have faced in 50 years. Prospects for more help dimmed yesterday, as NATO nations failed to agree on calls by military commanders for 2,500 extra troops to help crush the growing Taliban-led insurgency. At least 50 people were killed yesterday in widespread violence across Afghanistan. [continues 769 words]
Regarding Public Editor Ted Vaden's Sept. 10 column "A conservative Locke on the paper?" no worries about The N&O seemingly leaning to the right. There are examples in every issue. Case in point: The Sept. 14 article "Control of Afghanistan slips." Of all the material available on the wire, the N&O decides to print a Cox News Service article citing [in part] experts from a European (French) think tank opining that the United States has lost control in Afghanistan. [continues 89 words]
A sharp spike in the illicit Afghan narcotics trade, despite major efforts by U.S. and Afghan forces over the past year, continues to fuel an insurgency that is increasingly killing American soldiers and destabilizing the country. In light of devastating figures expected to be announced Saturday by the United Nations, U.S. officials plan to urge a shift in policy that would involve getting tougher with regional Afghan officials who fail to meet new goals for destroying poppy fields in their areas, the Post-Dispatch has learned. [continues 1026 words]
