Afghans Shoot Down Aerial Spraying

Protests from the new Afghan government have the U.S. rethinking its plans for aerial spraying to eradicate poppy crops, reports the Christian Science Monitor:

The US had earmarked $780 million this year for Afghanistan's drug fight, including $300 million for eradication and $152 million for aerial spraying due to start in March. Now, the US State Department is reportedly reworking the budget proposal, possibly removing funds for spraying.

"We don't know the side effects of spraying. Also, Afghans are not used to seeing this kind of thing [spraying], it could be seen as an attack on the people not just the poppy crops. That is a dangerous road to take," says Gen. Mohammed Daud, Head of the Anti-Narcotics Department at the Ministry of Interior.

If only Daud's level of sanity could prevail in Colombia as well.

[Link via Rational Review.]

Comments

[Dope Fiend]

phew! that was a close call!

[fyodor]

I was thinking that last line all the way through before I got to it. My friend in Argentina says the papers there report we spray in Peru as well.

[fyodor]

Clarification: last line of Doherty's post, not Dope Fiend's line!

[thoreau]

What could possibly go wrong with US planes spraying poison over civilian areas in a country where we're (supposedly) trying to "win hearts and minds"?

[Colonel Spraycrop]

I love the smell of DDT in the morning. It smells like responsibility. Maybe now the long-hairs back at the world will find jobs.

[zero]

Colonel Spraycrop:
Don't you mean the smell of Roundup(TM)? DDT is used to kill bugs not plants.

[joe]

That last line should read "...in WASHINGTON as well."

Put the blame for our South American chemical attacks where it belongs.

[a]

Don't the Afghans grow pot anymore? About twenty years ago i had some Afhgan hash that was the BOMB! Bring back the good old days.

[R C Dean]

Plus, maybe somebody recalled that the Afghans have proven themselves pretty adept with handheld surface-to-air missiles.

[Jon]

Y'know, for the last 2 years I've been wondering how, if we've "conquered" Afghanistan, they're still the #1 opium poppy producing nation in the world. Either the drug lords are meaner than the US military or we don't want to stop them, for whatever reason.

[fyodor]

joe,

"From December 2000 to December 2002, the Colombian Antinarcotics police (DIRAN), with the support of U.S. contractors, sprayed herbicide..." And with the aid of US dollars, too. There's clearly blame to go around. Still, would it be happening without the Columbian government's complicity? The blog post implies that that's what's different in Afghanistan.

[Juanita]

Well they have just shot down the most effective means of killing the drug plague. The drugs have worse health effects than roundup ever did. Drugs destroy the soul.

Let freedom ring!!!

J

[dhex]

just as i was going to ask "gee, where's juanita?" she comes and brightens my day.

thank you, dear heart.

[Adam]

a - they seem to be growing a helluva lot of hashish these days. check this out

[(Not)Juanita]

Some of these Juanita posts are just too hillarious. Is she/he a side post of hillarity for a regular poster? Perhaps a running gag that anyone can take up?

[Isaac Bartram]

The problem with Juanita's satire is that it reads too much like what about 82% of the people in this country believe.

[droogy]

The Colombian government is complicit is the spraying because the FARC - an insurgent army - funds themselves through coca cultivation. They are glad to get the millions in military aid and so they do whatever the US wants to get it.
Funnily enough the AUC,the rightist paramilitary group, also has links to narco-trafficking AND links to the Colombian government. Who, of course, denies this all day long.
This all leaves millions of campesinos in the middle of a war they want no part of, accused by all parties of aiding the other side, they get killed by one side and arrested by the other, or food blockades are put up to starve out entire villages, or they're forced at gunpoint or threat of starvation to grow coca - and then aerial spraying kills the coca and their food crops. Or sometimes just their food crops. (ooops! sorry guys).
I went to Colombia last year so I was able to hear this from the Colombian campesinos myself. They asked me why our government keeps on spraying and destroying their crops and their land when it obviously does no damn good.

[droogy]

Oh, and I hope you're happy Colonel Spraycrop!!