Twelve provinces in Afghanistan were declared opium poppy free this year. Afghanistan is known for its large production of opium. In the 1990s the Taliban regime banned the production of opium. But after the US invasion and the following chaos the opium production grow to a new level even for Afghan Standards. The idea of NATO soldiers protecting poppy fields against Islamic fundamentalists, was not very pleasing for western governments. So they tried to find a way to get rid of the poppies without upsetting the Afghan farmers. One way they came up with was to promise millions in developing aid to the regions.

Bribing people to do something is usually a bad idea. The only motivation Money can provide is the motivation to get this Money. So you end up with people doing smart moves to get the money but without paying respect to your intentions or goals. And this happened of course in Afghanistan. When the farmers tried to decide what to grow in the new season they simply switched from opium to cannabis. You have to understand that most of the Afghan soil is pretty poor and cannabis and opium poppies grow good even on poor soil. Especially Cannabis (there really is a reason why this stuff is called weed). Potheads might say that Cannabis is far more harmless than Opium. But sponsoring Cannabis production is probably not what the UN and western governments intended.

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This entry was posted on November 21, 2007 at 2:40 pm and is filed under environment, money makes the world go round. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.

Tags: afghanistan, drugs, economy

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