Buy the Poppy Crop

BUY THE POPPY CROP!

The Afghan farmers have no option but to sell their produce to the drug-traders who bank-roll the Taliban, or have it destroyed and so lose their livelihood.

After the British and Coalition forces have fought their way across Hellmand Province in Afghanistan and have ‘taken’ villages and settlements of farmers who grow poppies for sale to the illegal drug-trade via the Taliban insurgents, they must retreat again to prepared positions. Before they leave they are faced with the prospect of destroying the poppy-crop. This they can do either by burning it or, as has been proposed, by spraying plant-poison on it from the air.

This action would immediately destroy the farmers’ means of livelihood and so engender enormous hatred and hostility towards the Coalition forces, thus encouraging the farmers to welcome the return of the Taliban as soon as the coast is clear.

The alternative, of leaving the poppy-crop intact, is more likely to increase the friendliness of the Afghan farmers, but would allow them to harvest a valuable crop for which the drug-dealers will pay a good price to the Taliban which will use it to buy sophisticated weaponry to use against the Coalition forces.

The only viable alternative is the heretofore unthinkable one of subsidising and helping the Afghan government actually to buy the poppy-harvest and convert it into medicine in village-centred processing plants in Afghanistan.

As there is a serious shortage of morphine and other poppy-based pain-relieving medicines throughout the ‘third world’ there would be a large market for the products, which would bring in a good profit to an impoverished people. Also the poppy-farmers would be happy and would find they have good reason to sever ties with the Taliban, to which they have little automatic loyalty.

The Senlis Council, a Security and Development Policy Group, has conducted a survey which shows that a large majority of people, including 74% of British, are opposed to the US-backed proposal to destroy the poppy-crops by spraying.

Their “Poppy for Medicine” project is aimed at the task of persuading the governments of the Coalition in general and the government of Great Britain in particular, to implement its proposal before more lives are lost in what is an essentially fruitless military action.

I commend your attention to their websites:-

www.senliscouncil.net
www.poppyformedicine.net

HOME