Opium and Afghanistan

(First written November 2004)

So, opium production has grown by about two
thirds during this last year in Afghanistan and
is now back to the record levels of the past.

Very strange isn't it when in the last year of
Taliban rule, although having no doubt financed
their campaigns this way in the early years, they
were well on the way to eradicating it, applying
their characteristic uncompromising methods, and
they may well have succeeded if they had not
been eradicated themselves by the Coalition of
the Killing on the pretext that they were looking
for Osama bin Laden & Co.

If this is what "enforced democracy" does to
a country which has never known it, probably
does not need it, may not even want it and,
if established, it almost certainly will not last,
then all I can say is:

More poppies please so long as it all ends up
as heroin on the streets of Western cities!