He admitted that 15 of them had been sent to facilities run by the Afghan intelligence service, the National Directorate of Security (NDS), which comes in for the harshest criticism in this month’s UN report on the Afghan government’s treatment of “conflict-related” detainees. When interviewed by the UN half of those detained by the NDS said they had been tortured, most of them badly tortured. Mapp told the NZ Listener that “it appears” most of those 15 Afghans were sent to the NDS Kabul facility 17/40, which the UN says has torture allegations against it. The UN is following up these allegations.

Some of these 15 prisoners would likely have been transferred from 17/40 facility to most notorious NDS Kabul prison Department 90/124, which the UN says engages in systematic torture, including shock treatment and sexual assault. Department 90/124 specialises in interrogating “high value” suspects generally captures by special forces (including international forces)  –  and it seems the prime special forces unit operating in Kabul, targeting high value suspects, is the SAS/CRU unit.

There don’t appear to be any procedures to stop such transfers of prisoners. All our SAS does is note the names of the SAS/CRU prisoners and where they are first placed, and passes this information on to the NATO/ISAF office – which doesn’t have a system to follow up individual prisoners.

Most of the 58 prisoners taken by the SAS/CRU are presumably first detained in an Afghan National Police (ANP) facility. However, the UN reports significant transfer of prisoners between the ANP and the NDS, so several of these ANP prisoners probably ended up being tortured in the NDS 90/124 prison. If they had stayed in ANP custody they would have been better off – only 33 percent of ANP prisoners are tortured, according to the UN survey.

It is hard to see how our government can avoid contravening the Geneva Conventions and the Convention Against Torture by allowing our SAS to continue to operate in this environment.

On the political level, the Taliban raid on the Intercontinental Hotel underlines the failure of the US-led war in Afghanistan. Rather than weakening the Taliban, the war has allowed them win recruits by presenting themselves as a patriotic force fighting the foreign invader.

Eight Taliban fighters were able to successfully enter what was, at that time, one of the most heavily defended locations in Afghanistan. A large number of governors, mayors and other officials were staying there, prior to a conference on NATO handing over certain responsibilities to the Afghans.

The response of the Afghan police was not inspiring. Noor Mohammad, who was in the hotel, said “We heard shooting and we saw the police dropping their weapons and running from the area.” He said: “How can they fight against the Taliban? No way, I don’t trust them at all.”

No wonder the eight Taliban were able to hold out for six and a half hours. Police running away may also explain what I just heard on the radio, that the SAS, who arrived in a “mentoring” role “had no choice but to get involved.”

The Taliban said the three aims of the operation were to disrupt the governor’s conference, sabotage the security transition and deny foreign intelligence officers a safe place to stay in the capital.

The nature of the Taliban attack, against a civilian target, underlines the nasty character of the war. Both sides believe civilians are fair game. The Taliban target governors and the Americans assassinate Taliban civilian leaders. Kate Clark of the Kabul-based Afghan Analysts Network has criticised the targeted killings and night raids by American forces, with their many civilian casualties. Even  Afghan president Hamid Karzai  has harshly criticised the Americans for air raids that kill innocent people.

It is not a war New Zealand should be involved in. We should be encouraging the talks that have begun between US officials and the Taliban for a negotiated solution. According to a recent article in Der Spiegel this is a possibiity with some Taliban leaders showing more willingness.

By the way, the debate over whether New Zealand media should pixilate photos of SAS soldiers involved in the hotel fighting is somewhat irrelevent. These AFP pictures have been published unpixilated around the world, and are readily available on the internet.

The first question McCully and Mapp should ask the British ministers is “Are you going to challenge the United States on its resort to cyberwarfare?”

The New York Times says American and Israeli experts have inserted a sophisticated virus into the computer system governing the operation of Iran’s nuclear enrichment programme.

There should be no tolerance of cyberwarfare, which can be just as destructive as any other warfare. Also, it can spin out of control, once several governments get in to it. Any government attacked will think they have the right to respond in kind.

It is also now starting to be used against NGOs, as in the recent denial of service attacks on Wikileaks sites.

The other thing Murray McCully and Wayne Mapp should do is resist any pressure from the Brits to keep the SAS on in Afghanistan beyond the March 2011 planned withdrawal date. The botched December 24 raid in Kabul, where two Afghan security guards were killed, shows that the continued SAS presence is not helping our reputation among the Afghan people.

In Britain, the High Court has upheld a ban on British forces transferring prisoners to the Afghan National Directorate for Security (NDS) because of the risk they may be tortured.

Both Keith Locke and I have raised this issue with the Government in the past, and I did so again yesterday during General Debate.

The Government says it is investigating whether New Zealand’s SAS soldiers there have handed prisoners over to the Afghan NDS.  Defence Minister Wayne Mapp has confirmed that the SAS works with the Afghan unit, which has transferred prisoners to the Centre named in the British judgement.

What the Government is keen to avoid acknowledging, and desperate for the NZ public to remain in the dark over, is that there is a potential risk that our soldiers there are individually liable in criminal law for their actions, not only under international law but in NZ domestic law too.

We should consider, in particular:

• the 1998 Statute of the International Criminal Court (Article 8 on war crimes) and its NZ counterpart, International Crimes and Criminal Court Act 2000 (Section 11.2.c);
• the 1949 Geneva Conventions (Common Article 3) on inhuman treatment of prisoners and its NZ counterpart, the Geneva Conventions Act 1958 (Section 3); and
• the 1984 Torture Convention (Article 3) and its NZ counterpart, the Crimes of Torture Act 1989 (Section 3).

I am not asserting categorically that NZ soldiers have violated these NZ laws.  But it is not impossible.  If our soldiers have directly captured individuals and handed them over, this is a clear violation of our criminal law.  If they are jointly engaged in military operations with the Afghan forces which do the direct capturing, the legal situation is less certain, but there may still be an indirect association.

The NZ Government may well be the slowest cab off the ranks to investigate and launch any prosecution of our own people (compare Canada and the UK).  But our soldiers’ vulnerability may extend beyond New Zealand.  If any of them were in another country where there may be a greater disposition to prosecute (even Canada or the UK), then a NZ national may be caught in the legal crossfire.  And there is also the case of a Kiwi soldier with dual citizenship – what of the legal responsibilities of that other country’s government?

This is more than just a matter of state responsibility for which the Government should investigate.  It involves the personal interests of our individual soldiers, for whom the Government carries a responsibility to ensure they are not given legally precarious roles.

The government owes our soldiers a duty not to put them into situations where they will have no option but to capture and transfer.  The dilemma is that this is essentially part of their mandate – their reason for being there.

That is why the Green Party has called for the return of the SAS, but for the continuation of New Zealand’s Provincial Reconstruction Team whose mandate is nation-building rather than ‘security’ and ‘stabilisation’ in what has become a civil war situation.

The issue of possible war crimes is too important a matter for the Government to envelop in a shroud of secrecy and bland prime ministerial assurances.

There may be a need for an independent enquiry into this matter.

Surely it’s time to rethink Afghanistan?

There is rightly not much enthusiasm for our soldiers risking their lives for the Hamid Karzai regime. In April the UN Commissioner for Human Rights said that patronage, corruption and impunity have contributed to increased poverty. One third of the population lives in ‘absolute poverty’ and only 23% have access to safe drinking water. Aid is being diverted by ‘power-holders…to increase their personal gain and wealth.’ Province governors appointed by Karzai ‘rarely enjoy the support of their constituents.’

The sooner our SAS soldiers are home the better.

It is a Twenty20 cricket match, played last Thursday, between Afghanistan and the  United States of America.

The teams played in good spirit, despite the underlying politics and war.  Afghanistan won by 28 runs, and subsequently defeated Ireland to qualify for the world Twenty20 cricket championship.

Big ups to the Afghan cricketers for such a momentous achievement coming from a country where they risk  facing bullets and/or missiles at any moment.

Oops, let’s think about this for a moment…

Bugger, I just recalled there are resources like oil and land and minerals and water involved.  Things that are up for grabs, if you have the military strength to acquire them.  Things that run out sometime soon if we don’t conserve them.

President Obama and Prime Minister Brown, take note!  And I hope the Indian and Pakistani and Afghan political leaders take note  too.  Oh, and John Key as well.

What a pity it is that international disputes cannot be resolved by  friendly games of cricket such as the one Afghanistan and the USA just played, rather than protracted wars in which many innocent people die.

And, in the spirit of cricket, the resolution of the dispute should leave the loser with sufficient resources to play again another day.   Anything else is just not cricket.

Mind you, we won’t always be getting the gospel truth. The Defence spindoctors will be prettying up the stories to make their people look good. Which is why Guyon Espinor’s blog on the TVNZ site today, headed “Media cooperation over the SAS compromises us all”,  is so valuable.

As Guyon points out, ‘if the media signs up to a “cooperation” deal with the defence force we are also signing up to the purpose of the war and the way that war is conducted. It is a war that has now dragged on for nearly a decade – nearly as long as World War I and II combined – with no end in sight.’

The Defence Force chiefs don’t fully understand democracy, as evidenced by their communications director Shaun Fogarty’s opinion piece in the NZ Herald (January23). He claims that one of the reasons for keeping the identities of SAS soldiers secret is to stop New Zealanders protesting against their families. Now, I have yet to hear of demonstrations here against family members of soldiers or public officials, on any political issue. Such protests would be repugnant to New Zealanders. But to start censoring for such reasons would be to go down a slippery slope. Logically, it would be followed by a ban on mentioning the names of other state servants engaged in implementing controversial policies. Where would it end?

We absolutely need an independent media which, in the words of Guyon Espiner, might find out things ‘outside the comfort zone of the military and their political masters’.

The Christchurch Press argues this morning that it was just sharing a photo ‘that anyone could see on the internet’. The Press denies this puts Corporal Apiata at more risk. ‘Every Western soldier in Afghanistan is already a target.’ Other commentators have argued that because Willie Apiata is a VC winner, and now known to be operating in the SAS unit in Kabul, he could now be more of a target.

My question is that if the NZ Defence Force is so aware of the risk to our VC winner, why did they:
A. send him back to Afghanistan?
B. help anyone in Afghanistan to recognise him by publishing on the NZ Army website a picture of a bearded Apiata, in combat fatigues, apparently in the field. (Also see Tim Watkins on this)?

The other important question, forthrightly addressed in Saturday’s NZ Herald editorial, is why the government still has such an impenetrable blanket of secrecy around what our SAS troops are doing in Afghanistan. In my opinion, both Labour and National administrations have done this to inhibit debate over the mission, which is not popular among New Zealanders.

There is no good reason for our government to be less open than the Australian government, which discloses where its special forces are based in Afghanistan, and issues some post-operation reports on what they are doing.

New Zealanders deserve better. For a start we need accurate information on what is the general mission of our SAS unit. Last October Prime Minister Key said it was training Afghan soldiers – and then assured us they wouldn’t be involved ‘in theatre’ with the Afghan troops. This squares with what MPs like myself were told last year. It was considered too problematic and dangerous for our special forces to be operating as a subsidiary part of an Afghan combat unit.

Now it appears our SAS was involved with Afghan soldiers in last Monday’s response to a Taliban operation in the centre of Kabul. In yesterday’s Sunday Star-Times Anthony Hubbard and Jon Stephenson laid out the evidence that some of our SAS soldiers were right there with the Afghan Crisis Response Unit, which they also train.

Photographer Philip Poupin took the picture of Willie Apiata and his colleague as they came out of the building where Afghan commandos had shot three Taliban, and a Norwegian correspondent, Tom Bakkeli, said the Crisis Response Unit was ‘absolutely involved in the fighting’.

I will be asking the government some direct questions about these matters when Parliament resumes in February.

I’m asking John Key to look at whether our SAS troops should now be brought home. Why should New Zealand troops be risked in President Obama’s new misguided ‘surge’ strategy. It is going to be a more dangerous environment for our SAS people.

Throwing more American troops at the problem isn’t the answer. In fact, the growing presence of foreign occupation troops will probably push more Afghans towards the extremist Taliban.

Wars can’t be won defending a corrupt government – like the Karzai government – which doesn’t have the support of the people. That is the lesson of Vietnam.

It is now generally recognised that the solution in Afghanistan is political not military. It requires a dialogue between the various factions, plus the strengthening of civil institutions and making them more accountability to the public.

So why send more troops, costing $1 million annually for each new US soldier, rather than put that money into social and economic projects in the country?

Yes, the country does need ‘security’. But security for President Karzai and the warlords that surround him – which is what this ‘surge’ is all about – is different from security in the villages of Afghanistan. A stepped up war is not good for the Afghan people. More will be killed by stray bombs.

It is sad to see President Obama trotting out the tired old line that the troops are needed to stop Al Qaeda threatening America. Everyone knows Al Qaeda has been seriously degraded and the war is really about who rules Afghanistan, and whether there can be a more inclusive government in that country.

No other NATO country has stomach for the future there, and certainly not Britain with five fewer soldiers this week.

The UN is reduced to a cipher that acknowledges through Security Council resolutions what NATO decides to do, which is what Washington decides to do.  We witness unilateral hegemony masked in regional alliance diplomacy masked in an illusion of global legitimacy.  Everybody’s nightmare.  Especially the Afghanis.

The Afghanistan intervention began in the name of self-defence, post-9/11.  That was the first mistake – by the UN.  Terrorism has to be seen as an international crime, for an effective jurisdictional reach.  It is not a matter of war between states, even if you are harbouring them.

Issuing the Manichean ultimatum of ‘for or against’ us in the ill-described ‘war on terror’ was the second mistake – by the US.  Getting sucked into that false choice was the third – by New Zealand.

In ’01, the Taliban were an extremist regime, unrecognized at the UN.  They should have, could have, been handled differently, through tough sanctions that would have eventually brought them around or down, as happened with others (Rhodesia, Libya).  Inter-state invasions and air-strikes on wedding celebrants tend to glorify the extremists.  The diplomatic battle lines harden along with the military, to the point of sclerosis.

Now the situation is redolent of Vietnam, with the West, not the UN, fighting an extremist regime of a fundamentally different culture.  There is no win-win to these, not in the Middle East, not in South Asia.  The Viet Cong are today’s Taliban.  The Vietnamese won, then stabilized, then reconciled, then became a respected member of the international community.  The US lost, then stabilized, then reconciled, yet fails to learn the searing lessons of global leadership.

The US claims, with continually less conviction and credibility, that the conflict in Afghanistan is about self-defence.  If it is US self-defence, let them state it clearly and fight it alone.  If it is NATO self-defence, the same goes.  If it is the self-defence of the West, how do we prove that New Zealand is threatened by the Taliban?

I do not feel threatened by the Taliban.  I find some of their policies odious.  That is not the basis for self-defence.  Al Qaeda is different.  They are a terrorist organization and should be subject to criminal jurisdiction.  But you need to separate the two out.  The previous US administration policy of deliberately conflating them has sown an impenetrable policy thicket from which it is not easy to emerge.

Afghanistan is no longer about self-defence, it is about nation-building.  You do not do nation-building from Washington.  You do it from New York– through genuine plans drawn up by the Secretariat and put forward to the Security Council.  You do not receive reports from NATO.  The only non-UN official inside the UN Secretariat building is a NATO liaison officer.

Until the West agrees to an equal input into Security Council policy-making by China and Russia, the strategic skew will always undermine crisis management and nation-building.

The counter-terrorism operation in Afghanistan never had a sound legal basis.  Now OEF has been conflated into ISAF, the stabilization force.  While that force is legal, it has lost its political credibility, because the premise on which it rests (legitimate representative government) has collapsed.  Time the Security Council terminated its mandate.

The NZ-SAS, having been attacked already, stand to be attacked again.  Our troops are capable and tough.  All the more reason to make sure they are legal and properly deployed.  They are there, we’re told, to prove we can play our part.  But in what?

Are we confined simply to numerical additionality of vanishingly modest proportion, or are we capable of thinking for ourselves?  We tend to lump our SAS in with the All Blacks.  The SAS is different.  If you fight and kill, you must make sure it is legal and it is politically wise.  Karzai’s Afghanistan is neither, with or without Abdullah.

It is time to bring the SAS home.

Dr. Kennedy Graham, MP,

Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand

Wellington

Open Letter to President Barack Obama

Dear Mr President,

Congratulations on the award of the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009.  Many around the world will welcome the award and be inspired by the tribute accorded to you.  

The Prize, no doubt, reflects equally your achievements for peace in attaining the presidency itself as much as those recorded during the fleeting presidential period before closure of nominations.  It is not my purpose to over-rate your achievements to date or to query whether they are sufficient to have earned the high accolade that has been given to you.  The Nobel Committee members will be confident that they know what they are doing.

My purpose in writing is rather to consider the new political situation you are now in, and in some ways the new challenges you face, as a result of having been awarded the Prize.  For from now on, the peoples of the world will perceive you in a new light, with heightened expectations.  Those perceptions will reflect a daunting multiplicity of beliefs, apprehensions and hopes.  In a sense, the Prize has upped the ante for you in your strategic policy-making for the remainder of at least your first presidential term.

It seems there are two central challenges for you to address, as national commander-in-chief and now global peacemaker-in-chief.  One is the continuing existence of nuclear weapons in the world.  The other is the legitimising of the use of force for global governance.  The two are closely related, and you are at the centre of their vortex.

Your ringing, if carefully-crafted, declaratory rhetoric about creating the conditions for a nuclear-free world will come across to all as highly welcome.  How to translate that into practical initiative is less easy.  But the options do exist. 

They do not lie in tinkering at the margin with vertical non-proliferation measures such as, for example, test bans, fissile material cut-offs, or seeking ratification of the South Pacific Nuclear-free Zone’s Protocol, as important as those might be.  Nor do they even lie in greater assertiveness towards the horizontal non-proliferation regime, such as curtailing Iran and North Korea, India and Pakistan and, if we may dare mention it, Israel.  These are critical issues but they are not at the epicentre of the nuclear dilemma.  The dilemma is, actually, your country.  For yours is the leader – both politically and militarily.

The option lies in addressing the central reliance of the US itself on nuclear deterrence, both in force posture and doctrinal tenets.  For nuclear deterrence has, for over half a century, underpinned what passes for strategic stability, and it has been the US that has led the trend.  It is the US that first acquired the weapon, the US that offered to place it under international control, and when that extraordinarily visionary initiative failed, it is the US that has led the nuclear arms race.  And even today, it is the US (followed by the other four permanent members of the UN Security Council) that steadfastly refuses to lessen its reliance on nuclear weapons and deterrence theory.

To reduce the numerical surplus of nuclear weapons, from some 20,000 in the national arsenal to some 5,000 is laudable, but it does not confront the central challenge – which is to cross the threshold of minimal deterrence.  Russia and the others will follow, but the lead can only come from the US. 

In the 1980s, some countries used to propose a 20-year phase-out programme for a nuclear-free world.  The US and other major powers ignored the plan as if it did not exist.  Today, a refashioned and improved version lies before the UN – a nuclear weapons convention which would result in a nuclear-free world by 2030. 

Total bans have been put in place for chemical and biological weapons.  But unlike those weapons, the nuclear military machine is central to the global power configuration.  It will take huge political skill and courage – of the kind only that wins Nobel Peace Prizes – to lead the world through the psychological nuclear deterrence barrier, and towards a nuclear-free world that such a convention offers.

To get there requires equal courage on the other front – the use of force – because they are intimately related.  For the United Nations, as with the League of Nations before it, rested global stability on the idea of collective security using conventional weapons.  It is one of history’s greater ironies that a month after the ink on the UN Charter was dry, the world moved from the conventional to the nuclear age.

There are those who say that nuclear deterrence makes the world safe.  There are those who say the price is too high, through the risk of failure. Until the world agrees that global stability can be secured through conventional weapons again, with nuclear weapons either absent, or on a near-deployment status, or at least off high-alert, then we shall never be able to attain a nuclear-free world.

So the twin challenge is to wean the US, and the world, off nuclear deterrence and replace it with a credible alternative means of securing global governance through conventional weaponry. 

That brings us to the Afghanistan crisis.  For it is the litmus test of all of the above.

Your electoral success in exiting Iraq through re-focusing on counter-terrorism in Afghanistan was politically astute.  Yet in politics every solution bequeaths the next problem and, as you know well, Afghanistan could doom your presidency if it is not satisfactorily handled within your first term.  The Nobel Prize places you with excruciating precision between a rock and a hard place.  A troop surge will make the Prize twist hypocritically in the wind.  A rapid exit will produce a Republican presidential challenger to ‘save America from a weak dreamer whose Nobel Prize went to his head’.  You go down either road, now, at your political peril.

There is a third option.  It is to return to a genuine multilateralism at the United Nations – of the kind that the United States envisioned when it created the system in the 1940s.  Your records will show that defence officials reported to the US Congress in the mid-‘40s that it could provide a conventional military force in support of the UN.

Mr President, go back to the Security Council, once more in person, and refer the situation of Afghanistan to Member States for a genuine deliberation.  Not as in a US lead that has been worked out within the State Dept. the week before, calibrated in London and Paris, then cajoled through Moscow and Beijing before being imposed on the elected ten.  I mean refer Afghanistan to the UN, without a preconceived American solution.  Leave it to a Security Council committee to emerge with a proposal.

At the same time, reiterate US military support for a UN-led (not US-led) mission.  Only then will the conflict that has become a civil war in that country be handled in an objective manner, and nation-building become an authentic undertaking.  Only then will Taliban engage in dialogue.

Only then, when the UN is given a chance to function as an effective multilateral agency, not one brought to its knees by the US and major power rivalry; only then, will you have the twin opportunity of leading towards a world that does not have to rely on nuclear deterrence but can govern itself well.  Ditch the regional nuclear defence alliance system that is intoxicatingly addictive and hideously dangerous at the same time.  Adopt a global conventional collective security system that can evolve to something more sane, and civilised.

It is one almighty punt.  But the Nobel Prize gives you little choice, now.  And you are probably the only person, with the right skills and vision, in the right place at the right time, to be able historically to pull it off.  If you do not, probably no-one ever will.

With sincere respect,

Dr. Kennedy Graham, MP

However, it is still not entirely clear what will happen to any prisoners our SAS hands over to the Afghan authorities. Jon Stephenson says Afghanistan has now promised, in writing, that prisoners transferred by New Zealand forces will not be mistreated or tortured and will not face the death penalty.

One can’t help being suspicious because, according to Jon Stephenson, Afghanistan only signed ‘on condition the existence of the agreement and its details were suppressed.’

Perhaps the secrecy is to avoid embarrassment when the Afghan authorities don’t live up to their written promise. The UN Human Rights Council, in a report in February this year, says that ‘torture, degradation and violent behaviours still continue in some of the [Afghan] detention centres.’

I will be try to get to the bottom of this in Written Parliamentary Questions to the Defence Minister this week.

Images courtesy of Radio Live

*****

The three Kiwi soldiers in Afghanistan might have seen it as a bit of harmless fun. To help a drink promotion they slapped a Demon sticker reading “No Limits, No Laws” on a 2000 lb bomb attached to the undercarriage of a [presumably] American plane at [presumably] Bagram airbase. The NZ Defence Force has logistics liaison personnel at Bagram.

All very funny, except that Bagram base is notorious for torturing Afghan prisoners under a “No Limits, No Laws” principle. In fact, American soldiers tortured several Afghans to death. This is now being looked in to.

Some of the prisoners mistreated at Bagram may have come from an earlier Kiwi SAS contingent. It is known that in 2002 our SAS handed over to the American forces 70 prisoners, without any follow-up about what happened to them.

It’s true that the treatment of prisoners might have improved under Obama, but I haven’t yet seen that Bagram prison has been given a clean bill of health.

Also, Bagram has been the launch-pad for many American airstrikes criticised even by the UN Secretary General for killing too many civilians.

Wedding parties and the like have been bombed. The Americans have operated their air war on a “No [Geneva] Laws” principle regarding “collateral” civilian damage”.

We now hear that American strategy has changed, and they are engaged more in “surgical” air strikes. Funny then how they are still using 2000 pound bombs. It doesn’t sound very surgical.

Update: and now sheep – speaks for itself really.

• Introduces into our trading framework with other countries values like human rights, labour and environmental standards, ecologically-sustainable practices, local values and cultures, the right of all to equal access to water for basic needs and the right of all countries and peoples to produce and grow their own food
• Increases New Zealand’s Overseas Development Aid budget to the international standard of 0.7 percent of gross national income by 2015.
• Opposes New Zealand involvement in United States-led coalition military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan (but support UN peace-building there); and oppose any intelligence assistance to these wars by closing down the satellite communications interception station at Waihopai.
• Undertakes, as a legally-binding obligation in domestic law, never to commit armed forces for military action beyond our national territory without a UN Security Council authorisation.
• Advocates for human rights in a principled, international way that won’t be muted for economic, political or military reasons.

22 pages. That’s a bit swotty really.

Haji Dawood, a farmer who used to cultivate poppy but now farms wheat in the Daman district, near Kandahar in the south, said his family had benefited from the wheat boom. “It’s the first time since I planted wheat that I can afford to feed my family … it’s going well because the price of opium has come down, and the price for my wheat has gone up. Each new season we get more money from the crop than from the previous one,” he said.

The ironic thing here is that grain and wheat farms here are either converting to dairy or growing crop to feed dairy cows. If we were in the same situation as Afghanistan we’d now have cows eating opium poppies as feed stock.

Phot Credit: sirslushy