Download or read book Poppies Politics and Power written by James Tharin Bradford and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2019-06-15 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Historians have long neglected Afghanistan's broader history when portraying the opium industry. But in Poppies, Politics, and Power, James Tharin Bradford rebalances the discourse, showing that it is not the past forty years of lawlessness that makes the opium industry what it is, but the sheer breadth of the twentieth-century Afghanistan experience. Rather than byproducts of a failed contemporary system, argues Bradford, drugs, especially opium, were critical components in the formation and failure of the Afghan state. In this history of drugs and drug control in Afghanistan, Bradford shows us how the country moved from licit supply of the global opium trade to one of the major suppliers of hashish and opium through changes in drug control policy shaped largely by the outside force of the United States. Poppies, Politics, and Power breaks the conventional modes of national histories that fail to fully encapsulate the global nature of the drug trade. By providing a global history of opium within the borders of Afghanistan, Bradford demonstrates that the country's drug trade and the government's position on that trade were shaped by the global illegal market and international efforts to suppress it. By weaving together this global history of the drug trade and drug policy with the formation of the Afghan state and issues within Afghan political culture, Bradford completely recasts the current Afghan, and global, drug trade.

Download or read book The Global Afghan Opium Trade written by and published by UN. This book was released on 2011 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Opiates originating in Afghanistan threaten the health and well-being of people in many regions of the world. Their illicit trade also adversely impacts governance, security, stability and development in Afghanistan, in its neighbors, in the broader region and beyond. This report, the second such report of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime research project on the topic, covers worldwide flows of Afghan opiates, as well as trafficking in precursor chemicals used to turn opium into heroin. By providing a better understanding of the global impact of Afghan opiates, this report can help the international community identify vulnerabilities and possible countermeasures. This report presents data on the distribution of trafficking flows for Afghan opiates and their health impact throughout the world. A worrying development that requires international attention is the increasing use of Africa as a way station for Afghan heroin shipments to Europe, North America and Oceania. This is fuelling heroin consumption in Africa, a region generally ill-equipped to provide treatment to drug users and to fight off the corrupting effects of drug money. Another new trend is the growing use of sea and air transport to move Afghan heroin around the world, as well as to smuggle chemicals used in heroin production into Afghanistan. Traffickers in Afghan heroin have traditionally relied on overland routes, and law enforcement services will need to respond to this new threat. The findings of this report identify areas that need more attention. Strengthening border controls at the most vulnerable points, such as along Afghanistan's border with Pakistan's Baluchistan province, could help stem the largest flows of heroin, opium and precursor chemicals. Increasing the capacity to monitor and search shipping containers in airports, seaports and dry ports at key transit points and in destination countries could improve interdiction rates. Building capacity and fostering intelligence sharing between ports and law enforcement authorities in key countries and regions would help step up interdiction of both opiates and precursor chemicals. Addressing Afghan opium and insecurity will help the entire region, with ripple effects that spread much farther. Enhancing security, the rule of law and rural development are all necessary to achieve sustainable results in reducing poppy cultivation and poverty in Afghanistan. This will benefit the Afghan people, the wider region and the international community as a whole. But addressing the supply side and trafficking is not enough. We need a balanced approach that gives equal weight to counteracting demand for opiates.

Download or read book Seeds of Terror written by Gretchen Peters and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2009-05-12 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Revealing the astonishing story of how Afghanistan's booming opium trade is bankrolling Al Qaeda and the Taliban, "Seeds of Terror" follows the drugs from the fields of the small farmers to the clandestine deals of the weapons merchants.

Download or read book The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia written by Alfred W. McCoy and published by . This book was released on 1973 with total page 522 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Counternarcotics written by CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2018-08-20 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Counternarcotics : lessons from the U.S. experience in Afghanistan.

Download or read book Shooting Up written by Vanda Felbab-Brown and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2009-12-01 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most policymakers see counterinsurgency and counternarcotics policy as two sides of the same coin. Stop the flow of drug money, the logic goes, and the insurgency will wither away. But the conventional wisdom is dangerously wrongheaded, as Vanda Felbab-Brown argues in Shooting Up. Counternarcotics campaigns, particularly those focused on eradication, typically fail to bankrupt belligerent groups that rely on the drug trade for financing. Worse, they actually strengthen insurgents by increasing their legitimacy and popular support. Felbab-Brown, a leading expert on drug interdiction efforts and counterinsurgency, draws on interviews and fieldwork in some of the world's most dangerous regions to explain how belligerent groups have become involved in drug trafficking and related activities, including kidnapping, extortion, and smuggling. Shooting Up shows vividly how powerful guerrilla and terrorist organizations — including Peru's Shining Path, the FARC and the paramilitaries in Colombia, and the Taliban in Afghanistan — have learned to exploit illicit markets. In addition, the author explores the interaction between insurgent groups and illicit economies in frequently overlooked settings, such as Northern Ireland, Turkey, and Burma. While aggressive efforts to suppress the drug trade typically backfire, Shooting Up shows that a laissez-faire policy toward illicit crop cultivation can reduce support for the belligerents and, critically, increase cooperation with government intelligence gathering. When combined with interdiction targeting major traffickers, this strategy gives policymakers a better chance of winning both the war against the insurgents and the war on drugs.

Download or read book Drugs Oil and War written by Peter Dale Scott and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2003 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Peter Dale Scott's brilliantly researched tour de force illuminates the underlying forces that drive U.S. global policy from Vietnam to Colombia and now to Afghanistan and Iraq. He brings to light the intertwined patterns of drugs, oil politics, and intelligence networks that have been so central to the larger workings of U.S. intervention and escalation in Third World countries through alliances with drug-trafficking proxies. This strategy was originally developed in the late 1940s to contain communist China; it has since been used to secure control over foreign petroleum resources. The result has been a staggering increase in the global drug traffic and the mafias associated with it--a problem that will worsen until there is a change in policy. Scott argues that covert operations almost always outlast the specific purpose for which they were designed. Instead, they grow and become part of a hostile constellation of forces. The author terms this phenomenon parapolitics--the exercise of power by covert means--which tends to metastasize into deep politics--the interplay of unacknowledged forces that spin out of the control of the original policy initiators. We must recognize that U.S. influence is grounded not just in military and economic superiority, Scott contends, but also in so-called soft power. We need a "soft politics" of persuasion and nonviolence, especially as America is embroiled in yet another disastrous intervention, this time in Iraq.

Download or read book Drugs in Afghanistan written by David Macdonald and published by Pluto Press (UK). This book was released on 2007-01-20 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Afghanistan is the world's largest producer of opium and heroin. This book explores the devastating impact that the drugs trade has had on the Afghan people. Author David Macdonald has worked as a drugs advisor to the UN. Based on his extensive experience, this book breaks down the myths surrounding the cultivation and consumption of drugs, providing a detailed analysis of the history of drug use within the country. He examines the impact of over 25 years of continuous conflict, and shows how poverty and instability has led to an increase in drugs consumption. He also considers the recent rise in the use of pharmaceutical drugs, resulting in dangerous chemical cocktails and analyses the effect of Afghanistan's drug trade on neighbouring countries.

Download or read book The Opium Economy in Afghanistan written by United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “The present study goes beyond reporting on a single year's production and value. It examines Afghanistan's opium economy in order to understand its dynamics, the reasons for its success, its beneficiaries and victims, and the problems it has caused domestically and abroad.”-- Executive summary.

Download or read book Drugs Politics written by Maziyar Ghiabi and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-06-20 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offers new and cutting-edge research on the role of drugs in Iranian society and government. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Download or read book Poppy written by Gregor Salmon and published by Random House Australia. This book was released on 2010-05-01 with total page 533 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Life, Death and Addiction Inside Afghanistan’s Opium Trade The farmer’s survival. The Taliban’s fight. The warlord’s power. Democracy’s ruin. Afghanistan has become the world's largest producer of opium and its offshoot, heroin - all under the noses of Western civil and military stakeholders. At the nexus of the War on Terror and the War on Drugs, truth is as elusive and fragile as the new democracy itself, now on the brink of being consumed by an expanding mire of chaos. Stranger in a strange land, Gregor Salmon entered the war-torn country alone and spent eight months investigating Afghanistan's dependence on poppy. Who depends on poppy profits? And who pays the ultimate cost? Along the way he encountered Afghans whose lives were intimately tied to the trade: farmers, harvesters, eradicators, smugglers, police, doctors, addicts, warlords, gun-runners, politicians - even a pop-song loving Taliban commander. The result is a tense, fascinating and deeply moving journey along the narcotics trail, and a story about keeping your sanity in a senseless world.

Download or read book OPIUM AND AFGHANISTAN REASSESSING U S COUNTERNARCOTICS STRATEGY written by John A. Glaze and published by . This book was released on 2022 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Cruel Harvest written by Julien Mercille and published by Pluto Press. This book was released on 2012-12-24 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mainstream commentators claim that the Taliban are the main culprits behind Afghanistan's skyrocketing drug trade and that the US military is waging a war on drugs in Afghanistan to weaken the insurgency and keep our streets free of heroin. Cruel Harvest lifts the lid on the reality behind the mainstream narrative, showing that the United States in fact shares a large part of the responsibility by supporting drug lords, refusing to adopt effective drug control policies and failing to crack down on drug money laundered through Western banks. Julien Mercille argues that the United States is not concerned about waging a real war on drugs, and that alleged concerns about narco-terrorism mostly act as pretexts to justify occupation. In a powerful conclusion Mercille contends that US intervention in Afghanistan is motivated by power imperatives, not benign intentions.

Download or read book U S Counternarcotics Strategy for Afghanistan written by and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 86 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Golden Triangle written by Ko-lin Chin and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2011-02-23 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Golden Triangle region that joins Burma, Thailand, and Laos is one of the global centers of opiate and methamphetamine production. Opportunistic Chinese businessmen and leaders of various armed groups are largely responsible for the manufacture of these drugs. The region is defined by the apparently conflicting parallel strands of criminality and efforts at state building, a tension embodied by a group of individuals who are simultaneously local political leaders, drug entrepreneurs, and members of heavily armed militias.Ko-lin Chin, a Chinese American criminologist who was born and raised in Burma, conducted five hundred face-to-face interviews with poppy growers, drug dealers, drug users, armed group leaders, law-enforcement authorities, and other key informants in Burma, Thailand, and China. The Golden Triangle provides a lively portrait of a region in constant transition, a place where political development is intimately linked to the vagaries of the global market in illicit drugs.Chin explains the nature of opium growing, heroin and methamphetamine production, drug sales, and drug use. He also shows how government officials who live in these areas view themselves not as drug kingpins, but as people who are carrying the responsibility for local economic development on their shoulders.

Download or read book Drug Policies and Development written by Julia Buxton and published by International Development Poli. This book was released on 2020 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The 12th volume of International Development Policy explores the relationship between international drug policy and development goals, both current and within a historical perspective. Contributions address the drugs and development nexus from a range of critical viewpoints, highlighting gaps and contradictions, as well as exploring strategies and opportunities for enhanced linkages between drug control and development programming. Criminalisation and coercive law enforcement-based responses in international and national level drug control are shown to undermine peace, security and development objectives. Contributors include: Kenza Afsahi, Damon Barrett, David Bewley-Taylor, Daniel Brombacher, Julia Buxton, Mary Chinery-Hesse, John Collins, Joanne Csete, Sarah David, Ann Fordham, Corina Giacomello, Martin Jelsma, Sylvia Kay, Diederik Lohman, David Mansfield, José Ramos-Horta, Tuesday Reitano, Andrew Scheibe, Shaun Shelly, Khalid Tinasti, and Anna Versfeld"--

Download or read book Seeds of Terror written by Gretchen Peters and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2012-08-07 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: September 11 cost al Qaeda only $500,000. Terrorist groups can now earn that from the dope trade every week.” We think of the Taliban and al Qaeda as jihadis fighting an Islamic crusade from caves in Afghanistan. But that doesn’t explain why, eight years after the war on terror was declared, the CIA says these groups are better armed and better funded than ever. Seeds of Terror will reshape the way we think about the Taliban and al Qaeda, revealing them less as ideologues and more as criminals who earn half a billion dollars every year off the opium trade. With the breakneck pace of a thriller, author Gretchen Peters traces their activities from the vast poppy fields of Helmand to heroin labs run by Taliban commanders, from drug convoys protected by Stinger missiles to Dawood Ibrahim's money-laundering services in Karachi and Dubai. In this book, information gleaned from hundreds of interviews with Taliban fighters, smugglers, and law enforcement and intelligence agents is matched by intelligence reports shown to the author by frustrated U.S. officials who fear the next 9/11 will be far deadlier than the first––and paid for with drug profits. Seeds of Terror makes the case that we must cut terrorists off from their drug earnings if we ever hope to beat them. This war isn’t about ideology or religion. It’s about creating a new economy for the region: the war on terror must equally be a war on drugs.