MASSIVE FAILURE - Good money after bad in Obama opium strategy

Despite American and Coalition expenditures in Afghanistan, that country has produced a record crop of opium. The crop is important because it is often used to finance extremism in the far-flung region.

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime is reporting a bumper crop for Afghan poppy farmers who have cultivated a record 209,000 hectares. The previous record was 193,000 hectares in 2007.

The figures are alarming because the proceeds from the crop will be used to undermine the Afghan government. The poppies themselves yield opium which is manufactured into illegal drugs and sold on the streets, contributing to the drug problem in many countries, including the United States.

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"All our efforts at counter-narcotics in Afghanistan have failed," Jonah Blank from the RAND Corporation told Al Jazeera. "You can't wage a counterinsurgency and conduct serious opium eradication at the same time. What you're doing is impoverishing farmers, you're saying, 'Trust us, and by the way we're going to destroy your crops and leave you with nothing,'" he explained.

Reports say that after the ouster of the Taliban, opium production has trended upwards. Even the 209,000 hectare record will probably be quickly broken. Farmers need to make a living and nothing brings in money so quickly as opium production.

U.S. strategy has entailed the courting of warlords and keeping them in alliances, often at the expense of the farming poor. The result is that grassroots support for the U.S. and its policies, and the government in Kabul, is very low.

Opium addiction is a significant problem, even in Afghanistan where many make the mistake of using their own product. As a result, prices and profits remain high. U.S. officials have tried to convince farmers to substitute crops and they have destroyed poppy fields, but no efforts have worked. The farmers just replant the fields and the outsiders cannot locate and destroy the fields fast enough.

Local corruption doesn't help either, rendering the government in Kabul ineffective when it comes to reducing the crop. Kabul has been accused of not pursuing drug lords and those driving the bulk of the opium trade.

The United States has spent $7.6 billion per since 2001 to reduce the crop. That money has yielded absolutely no return.

Furthermore, the drilling of wells to provide communities with reliable water sources has resulted in the conversion of desert land into farmland for poppies.

These facts suggest that further attempts to spend even more money to fight the poppy trade are simply good money after bad.

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