Another American success story: We Spent $7.6 Billion To Crush The Afghan Opium Trade—And ...

[liberal N proud]

We Spent $7.6 Billion To Crush The Afghan Opium Trade—And It's Doing Better Than Ever

Opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan is at record levels, according to a new report from the Office of the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction. That's despite more than a decade of American efforts to knock out the Afghan drug trade—at a cost of roughly $7.6 billion.

SIGAR's data, which comes from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), shows that Afghan opium cultivation nearly tripled between 1994 and 2013. More than 780 tons of heroin or morphine could be produced with the current crop, whose total value is estimated at nearly $3 billion, up from $2 billion in 2012.


http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/10/afghanistan-opium-poppy-heroin-record-levels

Part of bu$h and cheney's Nation Building I presume.

[Comrade Grumpy]

1. It wasn't politically or economically feasible to "crush the Afghan opium trade."

It accounts for a huge percentage of the national economy.

It enriches well-connected people in the government as well as the Taliban.

It provides an income to tens of thousands of peasant families.

And we knew it. So we basically blew $7.6 billion in a meaningless charade.

We could have just bought the whole crop for about $600 million a year.

[Octafish]

2. Dealing drugs may be the only business more profitable than stealing petroleum.

Tomgram: Alfred McCoy, Afghanistan as a Drug War

http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175225/

[AwakeAtLast]

3. Well, yeah, can't pass up that $$$$

that so many of our soldiers died over.