Afghanistan Seeks Review of Herbicides in Poppy War
KABUL - In the face of pressure from the American government, the administration of President Hamid Karzai is seeking the formation of an international scientific committee to review the safety of chemical herbicides to combat Afghanistan’s opium poppy crop, Afghan and Western officials say.
The Afghan government has also formed two of its own committees to study the issue and, with a new growing season beginning this month, has vowed to conduct a speedy review process, Afghan officials said. “We are working around the clock,” Obaidullah Ramin, Afghanistan’s minister of agriculture, irrigation and livestock, said in an interview last week.
The moves, which follow a visit to Kabul earlier this month by a State Department delegation that briefed Afghan cabinet officials on the efficacy and safety of the chemicals, suggest a new willingness on the part of the Afghan government to reconsider its opposition to chemical eradication.
Since the beginning of the year, the Karzai administration has said it is adamantly opposed to the use of chemical herbicides to eradicate poppy fields. But in recent weeks, the American government has renewed its pressure on the Afghans to endorse at least a trial ground-based spray program using glyphosate, a widely sold weed killer that has also been used in American-financed counternarcotics programs in the Andes and elsewhere.
The Karzai administration has been reluctant, in part, because of concerns about the possible environmental and public health consequences. Afghan officials have also argued that a program with American-financed chemical eradication squads wiping out farmers’ livelihoods would hand the Taliban rebels a major propaganda tool and risk driving farming communities into the insurgency’s camp.
“We have no questions about its efficacy as a herbicide,” Faizullah Kakar, the Public Health Ministry’s deputy minister for technical affairs, said of glyphosate. “The issue is the health impacts and the social and political impacts.”
Mr. Kakar and Mr. Ramin, the agriculture minister, have been among the Karzai administration’s biggest critics of chemical eradication. Western officials say endorsements by the two men would be critical in persuading the entire Afghan government to approve spraying.
Mr. Kakar, who received advanced degrees in toxicology and epidemiology in the United States, said in an interview last week that while living in the United States, he had used glyphosate to kill weeds in his yard. But there, he pointed out, the water supply is better protected and regulated. “In Afghanistan, that’s not the case,” he said.
Glyphosate, he said, “can run into ditches and run into rivers and that’s the water that the whole population is using.” Mr. Kakar also said he had encountered some findings that suggested there might be a link between glyphosate and health problems.
American officials in Kabul and Washington said the State Department was assembling a list of candidates for an international committee. “Our goal is to very quickly pull this together,” a State Department official in Washington said in a telephone interview on Saturday, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the topic for attribution. He said the plan was to submit a list of names for consideration to the Karzai administration within two weeks.
The Afghan government has already formed committees in the Public Health Ministry and in the Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock to conduct parallel reviews, Mr. Ramin said.
“This is the most-studied herbicide in the world,” the State Department official said. “We’ve told them, ‘The one thing you shouldn’t worry about are the health impacts.’”
But American officials acknowledge that assuaging Afghans’ fears about the safety of glyphosate is only part of their challenge. An extensive public information campaign would also have to be carried out to dispel fears about the chemical’s political impacts.
© 2007 The New York Times
Funny thing… Afghans don’t seem to have a problem with these beautiful flowers, we do. Big Brother says so. Someone here had the obvious and cheapest solution–our government could buy all their product. But like buying their oil would also be cheaper, war profiteers, imperialists and theocrats could not make a killing, literally.
Somehow, the Afghan heroin trade is cutting into the C.I.A,’s control of the product. Maybe they’re just going to destroy the supply of those farmers who do not play ball with them…
The afghan population is suffering from a plague of addiction — close to 90%! Ths is a product of the US intervention and is no doubt connected to the CIA drug trade. Interesting to note that opium poppies farming is now happening in Iraq as well.
One of the reasons for the “war on drugs” is that keeping them on the black market keeps the money flowing for black ops. You cannot serarate orgaized crime from the NSA/CIA. They thrive off of drug money and use the law as an excuse to enslave much of the population in more ways than one.
I’m addicted to chocolate. Guess it will be illegal soon too.
Clinton and Bushie both export civil wars to Number One sources of illegal drugs: Colombia (Cocaine) and Afghanistan (Iraq). They end up closer to the supply. The supply only gets larger.
The War on Drugs (like all of our ‘wars’ lately) was never intended to be won; like Prohibition, it only increases consumption, plus serving as a Federal price support for illegal drugs. It is also a job-security program for drug dealers and drug warriors (often the very same people, and often the same politicians who pass these cynical Prohibitionist laws).
The Prohibition Amendment’s author, Senator Morris Sheppard, after years of heroically crusading for morality and freedom from the Demon Rum, was found to have a 120-gallon-per-day MOONSHINE STILL on his Texas ranch. Those Texans…they always did know how to deal with Yankees.
The War on Drugs funding in Colombia paid for liberal use of herbicides which killed not only the cocaine crops but also all the food crops, the livestock, driving indigenous farmers off their lands into homelessness. It also poisoned the streams and rivers which pour into the northern Amazon basin and the aquatic life which is a major source of protein for the indigenous people. In Afghanistan they have an ongoing drought. Water is precious. What happens when all the water is contaminated? Where do the people go? It’s a cinch the US isn’t accepting the refugees. But the herbicide manufacturers will clean up as usual.
Glyphosate is bad news. A committee is not needed. The toxicity is known.
what? a lawn mower won’t work?
Monsanto don’t think so.
Glyphosate. Read: Roundup. Brought to your neighborhood by the friendly folks at Monsanto. Do you think the Afghanis stand a chance in this fight? Who has more money than drug lords? Monsanto! Who has killed more people than drugs? Monsanto! Who pushed the constitution being impressed on Iraq banning farmers from saving their traditional seeds and growing them as they have for thousands of years? Monsanto!
It has long been accepted in public policy and medical circles that demand reduction through treatment programs and harm reduction through methadone maintenance, needle exchange and other scientific, sensible and relatively cheap measures are far more effective than crop eradication, and the adverse effects on the Afghan population and the public relations and recruiting bonanza for the Taliban inherent in yet another Bush-Cheney-Rice boondoggle should induce Congress to forbid it, if an even modestly rational, courageous and wise majority could be found.
Good idea, let’s destroy the environment and the people there! These people are in need to be put away; they are dangerously insane.
DON’T BE DESTRACTED by the health issues brought up in this article. The real issue is that the sale of heroin finances many American black-ops around the world - and the price of heroin is dropping.
There have been bumper crops of poppy plants for the last few years in Afghanistan and elsewhere, thus bringing down prices.
The issue of applying herbicides is more of an effort at maintaining HIGH PRICES for opium-based products than it is for eradication.
The health issues, while of course a concern, is a DISTRACTION and at best a minor non-issue compared to the financial support given to illegal US operations through the sale of herion.
This program is an emulation of the failed Plan Columbia program that has been in operation for the last decade in Latin American.
If you would like to obtain further information on what the United States plans to do in Afghanistan and what its effects on the environment and its populace will be then watch the following documentary: Plan Colombia (1:00:24)
http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=-8209584922518474909&q=plan+colombia&total=251&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0
Additional information available at following post: “United States to begin Chemical Warfare operations in Afghanistan”
http://www.chycho.com/?q=Chemical_Warfare