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.
[...] - SCOTT DALE (Peter), Drugs, oil, and war: the United States in Afghanistan, Colombia, and Indochina, Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, July 2003. - SABBAGH (Daniel), La politique étrangère américaine de lutte contre la drogue et l'Amérique Latine: émergence d'un enjeu et évolution des stratégies, in. Relations internationales et stratégiques, fall 1996, p.57-65. - UNITED NATIONS OFFICE ON DRUGS AND CRIME, Annual Report 2007, at http://www.unodc.org/pdf/annual_report_2007/europeWestcentralasia.pdf. - GLAZE (John Opium and Afghanistan: Reassessing U.S. counter narcotics strategy, at http://www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pdffiles/pub804.pdf October 2007. [...]
[...] What is also important for selling this production is that an increasing demand for heroin exists and is estimated to more than 15.6 millions people[6], mainly in occidental countries, but what is more worrying is the booming demand of Russia and Asia that will surely not dissuade any afghan farmer to begin the culture of opium. All these reasons still make it an attractive culture to develop and explain why it appeared and will certainly not disappear in a decade. [...]
[...] Then again, the question of the outlet for all these medicines is highly neglected and some just say that a market is possibly to create[14]; so let us imagine if the program was set up in Afghanistan and this famous new painkiller market does not emerge, what will they do with their production? The fact is that this market of the painkillers is too small to deal with the arrival of a huge production such as Afghanistan's and in one year of poppy production Afghanistan produces the equivalent of five years of the rest of the world's morphine production[15]. [...]
[...] Opium has to be fought because will always prevent the afghan state from getting more power, since narco-trafficking stimulates local powers, and a vicious circle is created, because the weak state will not be able to fight against a new increase in poppy culture. Unfortunately, even though the United-States have already run drug wars in Colombia for example, this will not mean that the old formula will be efficient in a laid waste by war Afghanistan. a The failure of the application of the past drug wars Counter-narcotic strategies are always following the same lines of action, divided into three main directions. [...]
[...] Nevertheless there are serious doubts whether the money will fall in the right pockets, since it has not been the case in previous experiences. In addition, in a country without nearly any infrastructure, opium has the advantage that it is really profitable, easily storable and transportable, contrary to the other cultures; and that could explain the local reluctances to adopt the alternative measures proposed by this kind of programs. For example, some programmes are set up without taking into account the local parameters, and some farmers are proposed to plant fruits, even though they are not even able to reach any place to sell them, since the roads are destroyed. [...]
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