Sunday, March 30, 2008
Afghanistan opium farmers are being forced to sell their daughters
Newsweek has a heartbreaking article on opium farmers in Afghanistan being forced to sell their young daughters to pay loans to local drug traffickers after their crops are destroyed by American/Karzai eradication programs. Of course, these poppies are pretty much the only reliable cash crop these people have, and as we've detailed before, removing their sole source of income leads to neither a victory in the war on terror or the war on drugs. This story only serves to question more the wisdom of our policy.
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1 comment:
I agree with the eradication policy, the need of the many out weight the need of the few.
We should however be showing these farmers how they can grow other crops and helping them to set up coops to partner with trading groups to sell those goods.
Drug cultivation despite the human costs is not the right answer. Who Suffers more them, or the people they help kill by lining the pockets of terrorist to buy weapons?
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