[THS] Marines Ignore Poppy Crops to Pacify Afghan Locals

[Peter Webster]

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/050708O.shtml

Marines Ignore Poppy Crops to Pacify Afghan Locals
    The Associated Press

    Tuesday 06 May 2008

    Garmser, Afghanistan - The Marines of Bravo Company's 1st Platoon
sleep beside a grove of poppies. Troops in the 2nd Platoon playfully swat at
the heavy opium bulbs while walking through the fields. Afghan laborers
scraping the plant's gooey resin smile and wave.

    Last week, the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit moved into southern
Helmand province, the world's largest opium poppy-growing region, and
now find themselves surrounded by green fields of the illegal plants that
produce the main ingredient of heroin.

    The Taliban, whose fighters are exchanging daily fire with the Marines in
Garmser, derives up to $100 million a year from the poppy harvest by
taxing farmers and charging safe passage fees - money that will buy
weapons for use against U.S., NATO and Afghan troops.

    Yet the Marines are not destroying the plants. In fact, they are
reassuring villagers the poppies won't be touched. American commanders
say the Marines would only alienate people and drive them to take up arms
if they eliminated the impoverished Afghans' only source of income.

    Many Marines in the field are scratching their heads over the situation.

    "It's kind of weird. We're coming over here to fight the Taliban. We see
this. We know it's bad. But at the same time we know it's the only way
locals can make money," said 1st Lt. Adam Lynch, 27, of Barnstable, Mass.

    The Marines' battalion commander, Lt. Col. Anthony Henderson, said in
an interview Tuesday that the poppy crop "will come and go" and that his
troops can't focus on it when Taliban fighters around Garmser are
"terrorizing the people."

    "I think by focusing on the Taliban, the poppies will go away," said
Henderson, a 41-year-old from Washington, D.C. He said once the militant
fighters are forced out, the Afghan government can move in and offer
alternatives.

    An expert on Afghanistan's drug trade, Barnett Rubin, complained that
the Marines are being put in such a situation by a "one-dimensional"
military policy that fails to integrate political and economic considerations
into long-range planning.

    "All we hear is, not enough troops, send more troops," said Rubin, a
professor at New York University. "Then you send in troops with no capacity
for assistance, no capacity for development, no capacity for aid, no capacity
for governance."

    Most of the 33,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan operate in the east, where
the poppy problem is not as great. But the 2,400-strong 24th Marines, have
taken the field in this southern growing region during harvest season.

    In the poppy fields 100 feet from the 2nd Platoon's headquarters, three
Afghan brothers scraped opium resin over the weekend. The youngest, 23-
year-old Sardar, said his family would earn little money from the harvest.

    "We receive money from the shopkeepers, then they will sell it," said
Sardar, who was afraid to give his last name. "We don't have enough
money to buy flour for our families. The smugglers make the money,"
added Sardar, who worked alongside his 11-year-old son just 20 yards from
a Marine guard post, its guns pointed across the field.

    Afghanistan supplies some 93 percent of the world's opium used to make
heroin, and the Taliban militants earn up to $100 million from the drug
trade, the United Nations estimates. The export value of this harvest was $4
billion - more than a third of the country's combined gross domestic
product.

    Though they aren't eradicating poppies, the Marines presence could still
have a positive effect. Henderson said the drug supply lines have been
disrupted at a crucial point in the harvest. And Marine commanders are
debating staying in Garmser longer than originally planned.

    Second Lt. Mark Greenlief, 24, a Monmouth, Ill., native who commands
the 2nd Platoon, said he originally wanted to make a helicopter landing
zone in Sardar's field. "But as you can see that would ruin their poppy field,
and we didn't want to ruin their livelihood."

    Sardar "basically said, 'This is my livelihood, I have to do what I can to
protect that,"' said Greenlief. "I told him we're not here to eradicate."

    The Taliban told Garmser residents that the Marines were moving in to
eradicate, hoping to encourage the villagers to rise up against the
Americans, said 2nd Lt. Brandon Barrett, 25, of Marion, Ind., commander of
the 1st Platoon.

    In the next field over from Sardar's, Khan Mohammad, an Afghan born
in Helmand province who lives in Pakistan and came to work the fields, said
he makes only $2 a day. He said the work is dangerous now that Taliban
militants are shooting at the U.S. positions.

    "We're stuck in the middle," he said. "If we go over there those guys will
fire at us. If we come here, we're in danger, too, but we have to work,"
said the 54-year-old Mohammad, who supports a family of 10.

    An even older laborer, his back bent by years of work, came over and
told the small gathering of Afghans, Marines and journalists that the
laborers had to get back to work "or the boss will get mad at us."

    Staff Sgt. Jeremy Stover, whose platoon is sleeping beside a poppy crop
planted in the interior courtyard of a mud-walled compound, said the
Marines' mission is to get rid of the "bad guys," and "the locals aren't the
bad guys."

    "Poppy fields in Afghanistan are the cornfields of Ohio," said Stover, 28,
of Marion, Ohio. "When we got here they were asking us if it's OK to
harvest poppy and we said, 'Yeah, just don't use an AK-47."'

  -------