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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: thames_sider who wrote (11699)	11/27/2001 10:30:12 AM
From: Mac Con Ulaidh	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

And what percentage of that heroin is on the market... uhm, pick a country. Bad, bad grower. They are making us buy it. Yep. Bad people for growing a crop that makes them incredible percentages more than wheat when there is a market for it that they didn't create. Imagine that? How could they not want to be hungry and shoeless.

To: thames_sider who wrote (11699)	11/27/2001 10:32:59 AM
From: maceng2	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Try 90% of illegal Heroin in the UK originates in Afghanistan. Europe Officials Fear Cheap Opium AP: International - BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) - Officials fear that Afghan opium traders are flooding the markets in order to make quick money ahead of a feared U.S. retaliatory strike on the country harboring Osama bin Laden. The sell-off following the Sept. 11 terror attacks has partly led to a sharp decrease in the price of opium in Afghanistan, the world's leading supplier. But lower prices have yet to be felt on the streets of Europe were most of the opium ends up, law enforcement officials say. Production of opium - a derivative of poppies and the raw material for heroin - has been an important source of revenue for Afghanistan's ruling Taliban which has earned tens of millions of dollars by taxing poppy farmers and traffickers. Last year, the Taliban imposed a ban on poppy growing, an industry the hardline rulers deemed ``unIslamic.'' But the ban applied only to cultivation and officials believe drug trading continues from a stockpile estimated at 2,900 tons - more than a year's supply. In a speech Tuesday, British Prime Minister Tony Blair accused the Taliban of controlling ``the biggest drugs hoard in the world.'' In Britain, it accounts for 90 percent of the heroin sold, according to government figures. ``The arms the Taliban are buying today are paid for with the lives of young British people buying their drugs on British streets,'' Blair said. ``That is another part of their regime that we should seek to destroy.'' Since the terror attacks, opium prices in Afghanistan have plummeted 80 percent, a development experts say is partly due to the quick selling. ``One could say that farmers trying to flee and people who have the stocks are trying to make some cash and go to a safe place,'' said Mohammad Amirkhizi, senior policy adviser at the U.N. Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention in Vienna, Austria. A U.S. official charged that the Taliban is likely behind the sudden increase in opium that is making its way into Europe and Asia. ``I think it is very much in control of the Taliban,'' said the U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Amirkhizi said his agency was not mandated to determine who controls the stocks but, he added, ``there have been these linkages between the Taliban and production because of their tax system.'' The U.N. drug control agency chief, Pino Arlacchi, said last week that the supplies probably were in the hands of ``criminal groups who are as powerful as the Taliban and as powerful as anyone else in Afghanistan.'' The 2000 opium crop sold before the ban on new cultivation at $30 per kilogram meant roughly $100 million for farmers and tens of millions of dollars in taxes for the Taliban, who collect 10 percent tax from farmers - no matter what the crop - and 20 percent from traders. The ban on cultivation in July 2000 sent the price soaring to a peak of $700 last March pushing the Taliban's take even higher. Bernard Frahi, the U.N. agency's regional representative in Pakistan said that since the terror attacks, however, the price has fallen back down to $120 a kilo. Some of that drop can be attributed to a rush of people selling ``whatever they have to get cash before a military attack,'' Frahi said. Other factors pushing down prices include border-tightening around Afghanistan since the attacks. In London this week, Blair's office said Afghan traders were ``unloading stock'' more quickly onto the market. Law enforcement and drug control agencies in London, Amsterdam and elsewhere say they haven't noticed any change yet in heroin prices on the street, where a gram goes for anywhere from $20 in the Netherlands to $235 in Sweden. Swings in raw material prices usually take months to filter down, they say. Doubts are also increasing about whether the Taliban will be able to keep its cultivation ban in place if they come under attack - meaning prices may stay down long-term. ``You cannot punish a tribe for planting poppies and at the same time ask them to take up weapons to defend you,'' Frahi said. news.crosswalk.com