Afghan eradication begins badly

Pete at Drug War Rant already covered this and I blogged it in Detroit, but it's worth posting again. It appears day one of the US sponsored poppy eradication program in Afghanistan didn't go well. They had a big hoo-haw going out into the fields but by the end of the day five farmers were dead after a fierce battle with the local "cops" and the private US security forces (mostly ex-cops from here) were cowering in razor-wired compounds. And this was supposed to the be the easy target.

"The farmers are angry with the Americans and the Kabul government," said Ahmed Weil. "It is only the fields of the poor that are being destroyed, not the fields of the rich." Afghans complain that wealthy warlords keep their stockpiles of opium while poor farmers are stopped from growing the crop or have their fields cut down.

This eradication program will be every bit a disaster as Plan Colombia is for coca farmers. The difference is that the Afghanis have been fighting foreign occupiers for decades now. They're much more apt to resist. This is a tinder keg just waiting to blow Bush's carefully crafted vision of a peaceful Afghanistan to smithereens.