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TechnoratiWASHINGTON - In 2004, U.S.-contracted aircraft secretly sprayed harmless plastic granules over poppy fields in Afghanistan to gauge public reaction to using herbicides to kill the opium poppies that help fund the Taliban and al Qaida.
The mysterious granules ignited a major outcry from poor farmers, tribal chiefs and government officials up to President Hamid Karzai, who demanded to know if the spraying was part of a poppy eradication program. At the time, U.S officials up to the level of Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad denied any knowledge of the program.
U.S. officials declined to identify the agency that oversaw the test spraying, but pointed out that the State Department oversees U.S. counter-narcotics efforts in Afghanistan. The department's bureau of international narcotics and law enforcement declined to comment. U.S. officials spoke to McClatchy Newspapers on condition of anonymity because the tests remain classified.
Now the Bush administration is pressing Karzai to spray real herbicide against what's expected to be another record opium poppy crop, which is refined into heroin. There's wide opposition - from Karzai and his government, NATO allies such as Britain with troops in Afghanistan and even major parts of the U.S. government, including the Pentagon, the CIA and U.S. military commanders.
Afghanistan's opium production is one of the biggest challenges confronting the United States in Afghanistan: No matter what action the U.S. government takes, it seems likely to benefit the Taliban insurgents. Opponents fear that spraying would trigger a backlash against Karzai, who's already politically weak, said U.S. and European officials, and deliver a propaganda bonanza to the Taliban. At the same time, a great percentage of the proceeds of opium poppy farming, if unchecked, will go to the Taliban.
The officials who confirmed details of the 2004 spraying for the first time made no secret of their opposition to the program that's being contemplated.
"It was a dry run," said a senior State Department official. "People freaked out."
"The results of those inert tests were: 'Don't do this, don't do this,'" recalled another senior U.S. official. "Every goat with a bad ear and every (legitimate) crop that doesn't grow will be blamed" on the spraying.
In the 2004 trials, U.S.-contracted aircraft dispersed the plastic granules over isolated poppy fields in the Shinwar district of eastern Nangarhar Province and a part of southwestern Farah Province in late 2004.
Farmers and local officials reported at the time that mysterious aircraft released the granules at night, and they worried that the material was toxic and would harm their families and destroy their livestock and crops.
The outcry is only one reason for Karzai's resistance to the latest State Department plan for extensive ground and aerial spraying of poppy fields before a projected record harvest of opium next spring. Karzai's agriculture ministry said it opposes spraying because the chemicals could destroy legal subsistence crops that are often cultivated alongside poppy. The public health ministry has warned of the threat spraying poses to drinking water, 80 percent of which comes from streams and open water sources.
The problem facing both Afghanistan and the United States is that opium production is almost out of control.
Last year, Afghanistan produced a record 93 percent of the world's opium - 17 percent more than in 2005. Opium production and heroin trafficking are fueling epidemic corruption and providing the Taliban with an estimated $30 million to $100 million per year for their war against Karzai's government and 40,000 U.S. and NATO-led troops.
The new counter-narcotics strategy combines poppy eradication with a massive grass-roots information campaign on the evils of opium, the substitution of crops for opium, stepped-up interdiction efforts, the targeting narcotics kingpins for arrest and financial rewards for provinces that slash poppy cultivation.
The State Department insists that ground and aerial spraying won't be conducted without Karzai's consent. But he's under enormous pressure to agree, the U.S. officials said.
Advocates argue that spraying is the most effective method to reduce poppy cultivation. They insist that the herbicide glyphosate - marketed in the United States as Roundup weed-killer - has long proved safe for humans and livestock.
Thomas Schweich, the State Department's coordinator for counter-narcotics in Afghanistan, told a House of Representatives committee on Oct. 4 that Afghan eradication teams were able to destroy only about 10 percent of last year's poppy crop by hand and machine.
Moreover, wealthy warlords and tribal chiefs prevented the teams from destroying their crops and channeled them toward those grown by less powerful farmers and sharecroppers who depend on poppy to pay debts and feed their families, he said.
"We do need to crop eradicate, but it needs to be done differently than it's been done in the past," said Schweich. United Nations experts believe that destroying up to 30 percent of the poppy crop will deter widespread poppy planting next year, he added.
Schweich told McClatchy Newspapers in a brief interview Thursday that if Afghan officials "want to go ground, we'll go for that. If they want to go aerial, we'll go for that."
He warned, however, that ground-spraying teams would require extensive security. "You will have to fight your way in. You will have to fight your way out," he said.
Ali Jalali, a scholar at the National Defense University who was Afghanistan's interior minister when the spraying trials were conducted, recalled the "strong reaction" that the tests provoked. He warned that the outcry would be even greater if large-scale spraying is undertaken.
"There is a strong opposition from the Afghan government and a perception that it (herbicide) can harm animals and human beings and crops," he said. "Whether it is true or not, this is a perception there. The Taliban can exploit this."
© McClatchy Newspapers 2007
15 Comments so far
Show AllThe truth is that illegal drugs have always been used to finance wars and proxy wars, this is not a new concept. The only pardon GHWB made when he left office was a heroin dealer from Afghanistan.
Rice is probably one of the biggest drug dealers in the world.
The North Pole is melting and our leaders are afraid somebody might get high. With leaders like this maybe we should all get high. Hell, maybe that's what they want. If we are all high they can get richer by trashing the planet. Sure they will die along with everybody else but their pockets will be full of paper money, and that means they won.
When we went to Afghanistan to get Osama bin Laden and The Taliban, we forgot to ask what we would do with the other problems in that country. We didn't know then, and we still don't.
I think every now and then this country is going to hell in a hand basket. The lunacy that pervades our government grows weirder by the day. We have a bunch of moralist's in Washington who are worried about drugs, gays and abortion's while they commit every crime in the book and don't seem to have the value system to see what's wrong with their perfect society. I am 65 years old and ever since I can remember drugs have been a problem in this country. You would think eventually they would wise up to the issue that they aren't going to control people's behavior. I think they need to legalize it, tax the hell out of it (like they do cigarettes) and deal with the results. But, no! It's easier to make it illegal, waste billions upon billions trying to stamp it out and let criminal's roam free while they fill the prisons with drug dealers and addicts. That really makes a whole lot of sense. All in the name of the Christian moralist's who run this country. I wish these people would grow up and stop using religion as a guideline for behavior. If they would just get some common sense into their laws this country would be much better off. We might actually survive into the next century.
Harmless plastic granules?
Studies have shown that the bird population is going down because of birds eating little bits of plastic thinking it is a food. The plastic granules or similar pieces clog up the birds' gullets and digestive systems. DEAD BIRDS.
The ignorance and stupidity of the Bush Administration, Congress, both Dems and Repugs and, Bush's appointee loyalists in whatever capacity and the full-spectrum programs to control, conquer, acquire and mind everybody elses' business, but our own is far past SICKO.
The unawareness level and total carelessness and callousness regarding the global environment and its wildlife, including the two-legged variety, are beyond idiocy.
Karmic doom approaching ... This cannot go on. It's Cosmic Law.
This is a real funny kind of a hoax now isn't it. These people are too sick for words.
Don't be fooled, folks. Chevron, Unocal, etc., who puppet their mouthpieces in government, definitely don't want eradication of poppy. The mouthpieces, in turn, serve their masters through these theatrics of "trying to help the people of Afghanistan" blah, blah ad nauseum. They in fact need dysfunction in Afghanistan to minimize the cost of pipeline construction. Herbicide spraying accomplishes this by condoning infighting while appearing to us as addressing the "problem".
Buying the crop, or subsidization, as suggested by some here, would indeed be a more effective way to control supply if that's what they really wanted to do.
Of course, legalization of all drugs commonly abused in the developed world, also suggested here, would be a step in the right direction as far as eroding the criminal element of the poppies-to-opium/heroin trade. Since conservatives are so quick to trumpet the virtues of American churches, schools, and family units, shouldn't the issue of drug addiction be placed in the very capable hands of those institutions?
Or are drug laws intended to create a need for military intervention under the cover of fighting "the war on drugs"? How transparent is that?
Ken Nuti,
Medford, MA
Deal with our addiction problem here at home and stop trying to ruin poor third-world farmers. Either buy up their crop or subsidize them to plant something else.
Oh just legalize the damn stuff, dispense it from drugstores, and stop whining about the frigging morality of drugs. That would cut the legs out of the criminal drug industry, free up tens, if not hundreds, of billions of dollars around the world, cut crime by some huge percentage, cut prison costs by equally huge percentages, slash terrorist funding, and make it impossible for Republicans to come up with these damned hairbrained schemes that get hundreds of thousands of people killed. In fact, maybe legalization will encourage a bunch of Republicans to get stoned instead of just being paranoid dumb psychotics all the time.
in order to bust the drug kingpins, you would have to bust every warlord that fights alongside the american military especially in the north. Plus they would have to bust and arrest 90% of the cabinet ministers. 80% of all adults, eat opium with their tea and smoke hashish in the backrooms of the teashops. This is a tradition and culture which goes back a thousand years. What choice does the poor Afghani have: either to grow opium and make money to feed his family thru the winter or not grow it and let your family starve to death. Bush and Co. would allow the families to starve and die so he can say that he's doing what needs to be done fighting the "war on drugs." The Bush administration is now propagandizing the use of drugs to the war on terrorism. So soon every drug user in america will be sent to a Gitmo in each state for "helping the terroists kill good americans." Then they will be used as cheap labor to manufacture goods while in prison to compete with China's cheap labor. And congress has already given the Dept. of Prisons the go-ahead and are using prisoners now to help the farmers pick their crops for free. and the prison system makes all the profit from the prisoners that are forced to work in the fields. Of course they don't "have" to but it's in the prisoner's best interest. Let's just put it that way for now. By the year 2015 we'll have nearly 50 million qualified workers all from the prison system working for pennies per hour. Put that in your pipe and smoke it. Cause it's coming.
Lets see in addition to poppies this will poison the land and the Afghan food supply so in addition to the DU they are all exposed to lets see how long the entire population comes down with cancer thanks to Pesticides. I guess thats when big Pharma will find a new market.
Just watched a piece on tv news (CBC Newsworld)with anchor interviewing a doctor in Southern California. The doctor was relating stories about the breathing problems of patients she is seeing, and giving advice about the bad air and precautions people should take in the burned out areas.
So then I read this article and the sneering attitudes of the American officials toward the people in Afghanistan who know only that they have been sprayed, but do not know what it is that they have been sprayed with.
No wonder we have to use military, rather than business or diplomatic means, to deal with 3rd and 4rth world peoples!
This is so Alice in Wonderland. The US is obsessed with having a "drug free" society and will destroy the environment to accomplish this. Am I missing something here?
Bush hates Heroin...he's a Cocaine man from way back
Like someone suggested here and like Middle East oil, it's cheaper to buy the entire crop, keep Afghans and farmers happy and not ruin their soil and food crops with toxic chemicals. But we will spend billions in lost good will, in herbicides and their delivery and in futile interdiction efforts that will raise the price of the commodity to avoid sending the wrong message by politicians whose career is based on their anti-drug message and funding. Nothing makes sense today. The oligarchy sees opportunity in chaos.