Refreshingly, Emerson is at least partly right on the Afghan poppy trade
Our Foreign Affairs Minister David Emerson, in an interview this weekend stated that the eradication or spraying of the poppy fields is not the answer in Afghanistan. Emerson says burning poppy crops in southern Afghanistan is not the way to stem the tide of opium and heroin coming out of the war-ravaged region. Speaking on a national news program, Emerson says the solution might be to step up interdiction efforts at the processing and shipment levels as the drugs make their way out of the country. Although somewhat refreshing from the blind obedience to the US "spray the crops" mantra (although maybe that is changing), Emerson is naive if he believes that Nato can stop the production and exportation of opium from Afghanistan. The so called drug traffickers (by western standards) are the business elite in Afghanistan that are fully ingrained with the unfortunately corrupted political establishment. Afghanistan has become an opium economy. The growing and harvesting of poppie...