...in sacks beneath their floors. Afghan farmers are poor, they contend with poor soil and dry conditions, and the poppy plant grows well in those conditions and turns a profit for them. Not a big profit, but definitely enough to help the family.
Post-American invasion, the Bush regime turned out to have an amazingly short attention span. They made a big deal about girls and schools and voting, and then (seemingly) could not sustain interest. As far as I could tell from the article, they never paid much attention to the situation of the farmers at all. But the amount of cash each farmer needed to sustain and improve their family lot was miniscule compared to the war budget.
So, after the next growing season the borderlands began to be flooded with cheap opium and heroin. Really cheap. Pakistani and other addicts moved to those border towns. It was only a matter of time before the old channels to Europe and America reopened.
Which, shortly, they did, and a drug we thought we had managed to get rid of in the US made a comeback.
Source: major American newspaper, probably the NY Times, cited at DU in the year following the Afghan invasion.
= new reply since forum marked as read
