poppy plant in afghanistan
...paying farmers to eradicate poppy fields. This did not solve the problem; the financial incentive only led to new farmers to jump in. To add to the level of difficultness of this problem, no one has found an alternative crop that is as resourceful. In February of 2004, NATO’s military commander, US Marine Gen. James Jones, said the drug trade in Afghanistan must be curbed because it is “an economic lifeline that probably fuels what’s left of the Taliban and Al Queda. Jones made this comment but never stated who was going to break this problem. So who is? 10,000 American soldiers are too busy trying to find what remains of the Taliban and The Al Queda guerrillas in the continuing of Operation Freedom more than two years later. 5,500 NATO troops are playing the role as peacekeepers as they protect a new unstable government. The Afghan military and police forces are mainly still in training. One elite unit of Afghan police recently conducted a major drug raid on a drug factory. US planes later bombed the factory. This is about all the US has done to curb this problem. The US already on shaky grounds in Afghanistan is afraid to do much more. They fear they will alienate farmers and others while trying to build democracy in the country. America does however fear that Afghanistan could become a country like Columbia and become a “narco-state.” With the rapidly expanding narcotics trade eating into the early progress toward a stable government, someone must think of or do something that will help. A writer who wrote to The Christian Science Monitor proposed a solution that I agree with and do not agree with. The Monitor’s writer proposed that if unless Afghan forces can be expanded more rapidly to counter the drug trade, the US military should think about more intervention. The writer wrote that “the mop up military fight against guerrillas could go hand in hand with drug interdiction.” I agree with the fact that the drug problem stemming from Afghanistan needs to be stopped. I do not however agree with the US intervening. I think that we were there to take care of the Taliban and Al Qaeda and to help the people set up a better government. I don’t think we should step in and take away the farmer’s only real source of income until we have another source lined up for them. The author of this article did not offer any opinions on what we will or should do for these people who rely so heavily on the sale of their poppy plants. If the US is so confident in weeding out terrorists, then we shouldn’t be so worried about their sources of income since we should’ve broken up these terrorist groups. I need more information about what the US would do to create different means of incomes for the farmers who grow poppy plants in order to say that the US should intervene. We would just be taking one problem away, and most likely creating a new one. The farmers in Afghanistan could start rebell...