Q: What is your assessment of the security situation in Afghanistan?
A (Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff): In the winter, it is harder for the Taliban and al Qaeda to operate because some of their safe havens are in the harshest parts of the country. Having said that, the overall trend in the security situation has been positive for a long time. In the summer, when the Taliban were starting to mass north of Kandahar and trying to make a major push, we disrupted that, killing many hundreds. And we sent a lot of them scurrying back to the border area for sanctuary. What we've seen since then are just isolated incidents where they are doing what terrorists do . . . . You can't stop all terrorist acts . . . it's a violent place, but it's a hell of a lot less violent than it was over two years ago when they were killing people in soccer fields.
Maybe a reporter should ask: why are there still safe havens and sanctuaries for the terrorists? What is being done to stop the growing of opium poppies?
For general information on Afghan redevelopment:
For information about drafting the new Afghan Constitution:
Here are recent articles on the difficulties in drafting the new Afghan Constitution:Radio Free Europe (run by the US government) Al Jazeera The Age (Australian newspaper)
For information on Afghan opium:
UNODC Opium Survey 2003 for Afghanistan (PDF file, 5.09 MB)
Conclusion
The results of the 2003 survey confirm that opium poppy cultivation and production continued to increase, though moderately, in Afghanistan. Their extension to previously unaffected, or marginally affected, areas is worrying. It can partly be explained by the persistence of high opium prices, which stimulate an activity now involving 264,000 rural families (representing 1.7 million people, or 7% of Afghanistan’s population). These families derive a potential income from opium that amounts to about US$ 1.02 billion in 2003. Although it is down 15% from last year, that income is still equivalent to almost one fifth of the country’s legitimate GDP. Taking into account the additional profits made by traffickers, the Afghan authorities must grapple, in their efforts to rebuild the country, with an illicit opium economy that generates revenues about half the size of the legitimate GDP. Even if forecasts of rapid growth of the legal economy materialize, the huge revenues generated by the illicit opium economy will continue to compromise governance of the country.
The Afghan Government has developed a drug control strategy to tackle the formidable task of dismantling the drug economy. Achieving that objective requires the implementation, under adverse conditions, of a complex and well balanced set of measures. They must increase the risk of illegality, unknot the intricate web of warlords and traffickers’ relations and remove the pressure they exert on local communities, while creating a socioeconomic environment that offers a way of life to rural households that reconciles the need to secure bare necessities with a sense of civic responsibility. Reaching these goals demands an effort on the part of Afghan society that is unlikely to be sustained unless the international community demonstrates an equal determination to support it.
Blah, blah, blah.
In whatever earthly state You will have me be
Not from sorrow, pain, or care Freedom dare I claim;
This alone shall be my prayer: Glorify Your name.--from New Year's Hymn by Lawrence Tuttiett, 1864 (alt.)
