Word: opium
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...Passive-Voice Era It's probably not a surprise that China is a bit ambivalent about the Western world order. Its association with it, after all, began violently: the shock of the Opium Wars 170 years ago, a collision that led to what the Chinese think of as a century of humiliation during which nine foreign nations tromped through the country. Americans often ask why Chinese care so much about sovereignty. To which Chinese say, Come back and ask after you've been invaded by nine countries. (See "Could Obama Get Around China's 'Great Firewall...
COMMANDER JEFFREY EGGERS, a top adviser to General Stanley McChrystal, on the reluctance of U.S. and NATO commanders to eradicate opium crops in Marjah; the stance is part of an effort to win over Afghans residing in former Taliban territory...
Worse, many believe the policies have helped stoke the Taliban's war against the coalition by uniting residents against the Afghan soldiers who destroyed their opium crops. "Eradicating marijuana and opium fields can breed resentment by people and be destabilizing," says John Dempsey, a rule-of-law adviser to U.S. and Afghan officials for the U.S. Institute of Peace. He cites the town of Marjah, in Helmand province, where U.S. forces rolled tanks over poppy fields in a major offensive in February, two years after Afghan forces destroyed the local farmers' opium crops. After those antidrug offensives, Dempsey says, "local...
Despite the new U.N. findings, Afghan and NATO forces are unlikely to start trying to eradicate the cannabis crops, in part because Western policies over the past several years aimed at eradicating Afghanistan's mammoth opium crops are widely regarded by U.S. officials as having failed miserably. Richard Holbrooke, the U.S. special representative for Pakistan and Afghanistan, told G-8 leaders in Italy last year that the antidrug efforts in Afghanistan "did not result in any damage to the Taliban, but they put farmers out of work." (See pictures of Afghanistan's dangerous Korengal Valley...
Dempsey believes farmers could be better persuaded to give up growing opium and cannabis if Western and Afghan officials introduced big incentives and subsidies for growing food crops and helped farmers sell them. One crucial problem, he says, is that the roads in southern Afghanistan are too dangerous for farmers to drive their crops to local markets. Groups of armed drug traffickers, meanwhile, travel through the countryside, buying opium and cannabis at the farm gates for cash. For many farmers in the area, making a living and staying alive - sadly - go hand in hand...