Terrific. Now drug production thrives - in Iraq [View All]

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http://www.iraqslogger.com/index.php/post/2933/Opium_Poppies_Bloom_in_Iraqs_Lawless_South

Opium Poppies Bloom in Iraq's Lawless South
Diwaniya Farmers Experiment with Narcotic Flower
Posted 7 hr. 36 min. ago
Opium poppies bloom in northeast Afghanistan's Badakhshan district in May 2005.
Photo by Paula Bronstein/Getty.


In at least one corner of Iraq’s vast lawless territories, farmers are trying their hand at a deadly new cash crop: Opium poppies.

The Independent’s Patrick Cockburn reports that some cultivators in southern Iraq are growing the plants, setting off the fear that the breakdown of law and order and the economy in Iraq may have created an environment in which drug production thrives.

The Independent (UK) has learned from “Iraqi sources familiar with the area” that the poppies bloom in former rice fields west and south of the Iraqi city of Diwaniya along the Euphrates River.

Opium poppies are used to produce the narcotics opium and heroin, as well as morphine and other opiate-derivates used in medicine.

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