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Vendaval -> "Good and bad news from the poppy fields" (3/19/2007 5:10:05 PM)
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From Times Online
March 01, 2007
"Good and bad news from the poppy fields"
Bronwen Maddox: World Briefing
" The INCB is hardly the first to point out that this narco-trade undermines international efforts to build Afghanistan into a normal country. Drugs make up a third of the economy, it says — a modest estimate (and for all the attention that the poppies get, cannabis also easily grows wild there, it says).
The Taleban banned the crop (although there were some signs that, had their regime persisted, they may have restarted it). When they fell, the resurgence of poppy growing rapidly put power and cash in the hands of the warlords in the south and west.
Afghanistan’s neighbours bear the brunt of this torrent, particularly Iran, where the number of addicts is rising sharply, and where the cost of trying to shut the border takes a heavy toll in military lives each year. "
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/bronwen_maddox/article1454569.ece
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