Afghanistan Farcical Situation

[Aizoon]

It's worth pointing out that there's a world shortage of opium for medical purposes. The sensible solution would be to buy it from the Taliban. That would keep them quiet and solve the shortage, but that wouldn't suit the Yanks' simplistic morality.

[Cambridge Batch Red]

I imagine the British Army were against spraying the opium fields in an attempt to win hearts and minds. Angry poor farmers are probably easy to recruit by the taliban.

[Red-Robbo]

Thing is though it's well documented that the yanks wanted to spray the opium field from the air to kill off the opium, but the british government were against it in case we alienate the afghan farmers, well hang on a mo they are growing drugs that make people rich and others poor worldwide and all we can think of is the poor farmers, wtf about people whose lives have been destroyed by opium.

i remember (i'm sure it was brown) our pm a few years ago making that point on the news, it was at that point that i realised our guys are dying for sweet **** all.

I've always held the belief that governments do not want a drug free society(the chance to destroy a large opium production centre was waved away because of the poor farmer). The war on drugs in the uk is farcical at best, have you ever wondered why they focus on cannabis, and not a large amount of hard drugs are ever seized(oh hang on a mo we have the chance to destroy one of the biggest sources of opium hmm ). to me it serves the purpose of diverting attention away from what's going on around people, as an example burglaries ,muggings etc get called drug related crimes, hookey cd's cheap fags etc, oh funding drug dealers. so a huge section of the population are focused on one belief instilled by the government, all crime is drug related. in that way bigger issues go under the radar.

The pipe line was again well publicised as i think it was to connect russia to the west as russia were going to supply cheap gas etc.

The simple facts of the matter is i have a huge pride in our forces and believe they should never have been sent to afghanistan, after all if the russians could not beat em( they fought fire with fire destroyed whole villages) , how the hell can anyone else (playing by the modern warfare rules).

Bring our boys home let the afghans carry on killing each other (not our problem), you will never beat an enemy when you cant fight on their level simple as. Maybe just maybe cameron wants our boys home and this is the quickest way of doing it , if i was pm i would have bought em home years ago.

Who is the 'they' who are focusing on cannabis? Whilst I agree the so-called 'war on drugs' is farcical, cannabis possession is de facto decriminalised in this country and most of the serious crims are in harder drug supply chains - ones you can't grow in your greenhouse or attic...

I don't necessarily disagree with most of what you write. The Russian gas pipeline goes through Belarus incidentally, not via central Asia, however I can't quite see what opium production has to do with war aims. Despite the fact that Afghan production accounts for 75% of the World total, it's not like Helmand is full of poppy fields - check any footage from there! Less of Afghanistan - a big country with much still off-limits to Western forces - is under poppy cultivar than the acreage of pea plants in England. Spraying opium plants was never more than a smokescreen to suggest that there were spin-off effects of having Isaf in the country.

What is interesting is that Iran encouraged cross-border opium smuggling as a way to advance its strategic aims, but its reward has now been to suffer one of the World's highest rates of heroin addiction. Indeed one reason why poppy eradication is not such of a priority for the West is that rates of heroin addiction in Europe and North America are falling steeply. It's Russia, the old Eastern Bloc and places like India and Thailand that are the new growth areas for the trade.

[bizi]

Red Robbo they referred to successive governments in england

Cannabis is still a class b drug (https://www.gov.uk/penalties-drug-possession-dealing) , i, you and many others know that most drug related crime is commited by people on harder drugs, but with the focus on siezing cannabis a lot more people assume that drug crime is mainly committed by cannabis users, hence my comments that while a huge section of society are so scared of drug related crime that they miss other stuff, yes i realise that the whole of afghanistan isnt covered by poppy fields but 75% of world production is a hell off a lot of opium, the bit that galls me is the fact that brown refused to destroy the opium fields as he was too concerned with keeping the afghan farmers happy, Think about it from outside the box(not having a dig) ,but if the opium fields were destroyed, then yes drug related crime would go up for a while, but more junkies would be arrested and recieve treatment , as no matter what your addicted too if it aint available you have to get clean, and with only 25% being available then hard drug use would again be the preserve of the upper middle and upperclasses.(also people would realise that the war on drugs is a joke).

i can understand where youre coming from with your mention of priorities, like many others i know people who have been addicted to heroin, some are no longer around, and i can only speak for myself here but if poppy crops were being destroyed maybe i would be more accepting of our troops over there, as at present they are suffering for nothing.

It will be interesting to see to see if opiates flood our streets again when our troops are back home, if they do then brown should be held accountable

Rant over and tinfoil hat being made

[CiderHider]

Ted, first of all, loved the passion in the post. I was with you all the way, got me off my seat and wanted you to explode in the last few sentences to the point where I wanted it to be an incomprehensible onslaught of F's P's and I would have allowed the C word just the once, but what happened?

You throttled right back and left us getting angry at how good this should have been, That last paragraph, WTF, is it too late to edit it out of my mind, you blew it big time with your wallowing in self pity part, you had us eating out of your hands with your passion and anger, and then it fell off a steep cliff of nothingness.

Yeah weird, what was i thinking there?

I guess I go into one ranting and forget what i'm even talking about somtimes, and towards the end i must have thought. wait Teddy.., you sound like a total psychopath, better balance it out a bit,.. but all it did was undo all my good work before.

My bad and thanks for brining me up on it, sorry I blame my despair.

[CiderHider]

I need to find out who approved the free movement of labour to our shores, wh osigned it off, who gave it the green light, who is responsible for the mind-blowing number of these Dogs over here now?

\Who is it, who the **** is it? Because i will grab their ******* scrawny neck and drag it through my town pointing out what they have done, why my town is looking like a ******* refugee camp.

I'm coming for them