afghanistan & drugs
die puny humans links to a story on opium in afghanistan:
Afghanistan's opium cultivation jumped 64 percent to a record 324,000 acres this year and drug exports now account for more than 60 percent of the economy...
"This year Afghanistan has established a double record -- the highest drug cultivation in the country's history, and the largest in the world,"...
...Ten percent of the population, or 2.3 million people, helped farm it because grinding poverty made it more attractive than other crops.
"Cultivation has spread ... making narcotics the main engine of economic growth and the strongest bond among previously quarrelsome peoples," Costa said. "Valued at $2.8 billion, the opium economy is now equivalent to over 60 percent of Afghanistan's 2003 gross domestic product."
2 Comments:
And the new democratically elected Prime Minister is known as "the Mayor of Kabul" outside Kabul. Afghanistan will always be the wild west that Republican geeks would aspire to.
i ran into hamid karzai and told him that line about 'the mayor of kabul,' and he said, "that's not what your mother's cousin brother calls me."
after a few moments of awkward silence, he said, "it's a lot funnier in farsi."
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