The Taliban...

[JG]

Just bin watching a video on the taliban and the drug profiting, they can make over 300k a week, just buy taking drugs over to *text deleted**text deleted*stan, and all the money they get will fund the taliban for future attacks, and the reporter said, its virtually impossible to gaurd the border as they will just choose another route, looks like its going to be going for a long long time this. Something needs to be done if we want to defeat the taliban.

 

[Seedytucker]

yeah well who do you think buys the drugs? i'll give you a clue, go to the scummy bit of your town/city and see how long it takes for someone to ask for 50p for the phone box...

 

[GreyWing]

Thing is that the taliban buy the poppies for peanuts from the Afghan farmers.

It might be me just being stupid, but why don't we buy the poppy's from the farmers and burn it. It's got to be cheaper than firing all our weaponary around. Farmers are happy, drug prices in the UK rise due to it become harder to buy poppy's.

I'm at a loss to why this hasn't been done but sure there will be a reason somewhere.

regards
GW

 

[Seedytucker]

very good point, it beats trying to convince them it's a bad idea to grow a profitable crop. problem is, especially with world downturn in food production, even less farmers would be growing food...

 

[jm745]

Thing is that the taliban buy the poppies for peanuts from the Afghan farmers.

It might be me just being stupid, but why don't we buy the poppy's from the farmers and burn it. It's got to be cheaper than firing all our weaponary around. Farmers are happy, drug prices in the UK rise due to it become harder to buy poppy's.

I'm at a loss to why this hasn't been done but sure there will be a reason somewhere.

regards
GW

That's actually a pretty good idea,
send it on a postcard to the MOD,
but I'm sure the Taliban would just start killing all farmers that sold their poppies to the British.

Joe

 

[GreyWing]

That's actually a pretty good idea,
send it on a postcard to the MOD,
but I'm sure the Taliban would just start killing all farmers that sold their poppies to the British.

Joe

But then the farmers start to inform on them.

It's too simple to be true, so one has to say is the real reason of going to war really about drugs and the taliban, the answer to that is "Who Knows?"

 

[MTW]

i *text deleted* that all the inoccent farmers rely on poppies to make an income, but in my opinion burn all the poppy feilds, confiscate the harvested crop, and outlaw it, its the only way...and help them plant and make an income from other crop like wheat etc

it will take years to beat the taliban fighting, but i think if we take out their prime funding aswell it would give us an immediate advantage. aswell as destroying 70% of the worlds heroin supplys.

 

[Seedytucker]

could just write the tally a strongly worded letter? the politics behind war can rarely be understood but i really think a mjor problem with your solution is that there would be no food farmers, if instead of buying the poppy crops farmers were subsidised to grow other crops and sell those via NATO/UN perhaps that would be a better solution?
Edit: reply to greywing's post

 

[Freddo]

we could purchase the poppys from the farmers, and give them security against the Taliban, or move them to a safer place.

however, im sure this would of been done already if it could be done. theres obviously a hell of alot we dont know.

the opium trade isnt the only place theyre getting their funding from though. super rich warlords fund them *text deleted* they believe in the cause.

i suppose they would always find a way to fund themselves no matter what we did, so i guess this is the reason we need to actually get rid of them.

 

[JG]

End of the day freddo, they also get their money from markets what the *text deleted**text deleted*s run, dvd's cheap electrical goods, some of that money goes towards funding the taliban.

 

[Ninja_Stoker]

The warlords in Afghanistan hold the farmers to ransom quite simply.

The poppy yields a reasonable income for farmers and farmers are threatened with with the loss of their livelihood & loss of family if they don't do as directed and sell the poppies to the warlords.

There have been several initiatives to try & get the farmers to grow cash crops such as spuds, but they just laugh at the cash yield per acre. If you set fire to the farmers fields you stand to make them destitute and ripe for recruitment by the taliban. It's far from straightforward unfortunately.

 

[Sotiris]

Arn't the farmers offered protection to grow something else? In this case I'm sure our boys would welcome the Talli as they try and move on them.

Honey trap anybody?

 

[Trace]

could just make a death penalty for being a drug abuser, and then enforce it a couple times in the newspapar, be more interesting to read then some mistake some celebrity made.