Will Narco-trafficking ever stop in Afghanistan?

Résumé du document

Since December 1979 and the Soviet Christmas invasion of the country, we could say that peace has never been satisfactorily reached again in the country. The Afghan War has firstly destroyed the country from 1979 to 1989 and caused the death of nearly 2 million civilian victims among the Afghan people and then the Enduring Freedom Operation for which no civilian toll is available, which seems quite mysterious. This country has been the theatre of devastation for more than three decades, without any tangible results. Today's situation may appear more satisfying since there is an elected president since 2004 and the nations re-building process is supposed to be in progress. Actually, today's Afghanistan seem to be reviving his old demons, with an endemic corruption of the whole state, war lords acting as local kings in their respective provincial strongholds and opium trafficking increasing substantially.

Extraits

[...] And now that their presence is highly necessary, countries such as France are becoming nervous and impatient to drive off the sector. In this context of small relapse, the statements of French Defence Ministry Mr. Hervé Morin are just scandalous, especially when he talks about the “very important French implication, with more than 2000 people”[16] and then evokes the sudden darkening of the situation. A recommendation would be for the Occidental power to stop using ethnocentrism as a way to find solution for Afghanistan: reflection must be led together with the newly established Afghan authorities. [...]

[...] Opium can easily grow in such an arid land. It does not necessarily necessitate irrigation if there is, it is also more productive. In addition, its annual characteristic makes it a very mobile culture and that is quite important in case of an eventual destruction campaign that could take place in a province and not in the other. To sum up, opium's own properties make it a perfect culture for Afghanistan. We can nevertheless wonder about the motivation of these farmers to plant opium instead of wheat. [...]

[...] The six years that followed brought opium production from record to record and the 2007 production is estimated to reach 8,200 tons twice much than in 2005[3]. However, since 2001, the United-States' troops and then NATO's and now governmental forces are supposed to be fighting drug trafficking. The previous figures are overwhelmingly criticizing the international strategy that is used in Afghanistan. And we can wonder why such a failure is happening, according to all the financial means that are used. [...]

[...] Will narco-trafficking ever stop in Afghanistan? Table of contents Introduction 1. Opium cultivation is still dramatically increasing in the post 9.11 Afghanistan: a Poppy culture in Afghanistan: reasons why it appeared: Opium is still a mainstay of this highly unstable society: 2. Usual methods used for the drug wars have actually failed or are in total inadequacy with the afghan context: a The failure of the application of the past drug wars: The particularities that make the Afghan case totally unique: 3. [...]

[...] The strength of the Poppy for Medicine (P4M) program is actually that it involves all local stakeholders in the same legal process: they would at last be in charge with their own destiny. It could maybe bring more cohesion to the Afghan people and surely more international credibility and respectability which the country currently terribly lacks. This could be the way to rescue the country's economy from becoming more and more dependant from poppy culture and to increase more and more its production. Once again, the issue is here the development of the country as a unified entity. [...]