Taleban seeking missiles to attack Nato helicopters

[tigershark]

Taleban seeking missiles to attack Nato helicopters

TALEBAN warlords are using cash from Afghanistan's bumper opium poppy crop to try to buy shoulder-launched ground-to-air missiles, the country's anti- narcotics tsar has warned.
The surface-to-air missiles played a key role in driving out Soviet troops in the 1980s because they let mujahideen fighters shoot down Russian helicopters. Military commanders fear that such attacks could paralyse current Nato operations.

Afghanistan's counter-narcotics minister, General Khodaidad, said the Taleban was busily scouring illegal arms markets for better anti-aircraft weapons.

He said: "They are trying to get weapons to shoot down helicopters. They are trying to get ground-to-air missiles
and they are trying to get anti-aircraft guns.

"If they get them they would limit the movement of helicopters and take away Nato's main advantage."

Afghanistan's opium trade is worth £2 billion a year, almost half the country's GDP, and UN officials say the Taleban gets up to 60 per cent of its income from drugs.

Gen Khodaidad has first-hand experience of the devastation ground-to-air missiles can cause. He spent seven years fighting the mujahideen as part of Afghanistan's communist army.

He said: "They cause a lot of casualties, they bring down the morale of the armed forces and they limit the movement of helicopters."

Some British outposts are so far inside Taleban territory that it is too dangerous to reach them by road, so everything, from men to ammunition, has to be flown in by helicopter, and Attack helicopters have a key role supporting ground forces.

Link
http://news.scotsman.com/world/Taleban-seeking-missiles-to-attack.3951186.jp

[RecceJet]

Considering that the crop from Afghanistan ends up providing 80-90% of European heroin, I'm surprised NATO hasn't thrown more troops into the region. This issues is very complex to tackle, and it's not just a matter of destroying the crops. A large part of Afghanistan's population survives on growing these crops and to just destroy them would play right into the Taliban's hands.

The trick is to somehow replace this drug crop with something that brings more wealth to the farmers and more use for legitimate exports. Even then, there still is the problem of getting the Taliban out of the production altogether so that they don't skim the funds from the exports.

[Webmaster]

Well, it's difficult. As long as Taliban have any power over the irrigated areas there will be poppy farmers. Remove the Taliban (more troops needed) from these areas and the farmers don't get paid, then you can have them cultivate the traditional crops. To get the farming industry up again, there has be a lot more reconstruction (irrigating/infrastructure/education), that needs more security and stability (more troops).

But instead of more troops, they are trying to reduce the taliban's funds by going after the crops directly, and then you need a pretty good argument/alternative for the farmers. And offering them money for the destruction, and then afterwards not paying up, doesn't help! Neither does chemical spraying, as also the problem in Columbia, the poppy (or coca in Columbia) will be back in months, but it takes years before food crops can grow. Even destruction of the crops will not help, as the price will just go up, making it even more interesting for the farmers and more important for the Taliban to move back into the 'cleared' areas.

Now we don't want to supply more troops, so the crops have to be replaced or bought by the coalition partners for legal use (medicine). As a replacement it has long been suggested that saffron would be a good alternative. At $200 a kilo ($300 a kilo for poppy), this expensive spice is so far the only alternative that offers the kind of money the farmers would like, trials were started in 2004:

Abdul Samed, a former poppy farmer, is looking forward to harvesting his saffron, grown on an acre of land. "Saffron is slowly improving our lives and it is not difficult work," he said.

"Our country is getting better every day. I know farmers here who are growing poppy, but I am trying to encourage them to grow saffron. If I make a profit I will share it with other neighbours so that they see how good it can be."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/04/04/wafgh04.xml

I don't know what's the latest on this, but the Dutch awarded the first certificates for trained saffron growers in Aug 2007. Looks like progress is slow. The only problem is that when supply increases, prices will come down... so maybe Greek and Spanish farmers need to be subsidized with EU funds to switch to yet another alternative?! Ouch!