How Afghanistan's Opium can save the world - and itself !
In researching Funding Access-vs.-Prevention at 14th ICASA AIDS Conference in Nigeria there was this other topic, indirectly effecting the global HIV/AIDS pandemic. Its wider effects on the world stage are equally staggering, and it effects every person on every continent to some extent. The issue is the fledgling democracy of Afghanistan and threat that the illicit opium trade poses in destabilizing the democratic process and stability in the entire region. Opium is bleeding Afghanistan of its chances of democracy. Go anywhere in southern Kandahar, Afghanistan (the former spiritual stronghold of the Taliban) and you’ll run in to poppy fields. Drive 20 minutes in any direction and you’ll find farmers busy harvesting their crop, in spite of the Interim Authority's January 2002 ban in on poppy cultivation. An estimated 1.7 million people are directly involved in opium production, as widespread and family-based poppy cultivation proliferates in 28 of the 34 provinces of Afghanistan. ...