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canada goose coats WASHINGTON (Reuters) To understand why the war in Afghanistan, now in cheap Canada Goose its eighth year, is not going well for the United States and its NATO allies, take a look at two statistics. canada goose coats

canada goose One is Afghanistan ranking on an international index measuring corruption: 176 out of 180 countries. (Somalia is 180th). The other is Afghanistan position as the world Number 1 producer cheap canada goose uk of illicit opium, the raw material for heroin. canada goose

canada goose black friday sale The two statistics are inextricably linked and, a year ago, prompted Richard Holbrooke, the man President Barack Obama has just picked as special envoy for Afghanistan, to write: the narco state in Afghanistan is essential or all else will fail. canada goose black friday sale

Canada Goose sale Holbrooke, who was not in government service at the time, took particular issue with the counter narcotics strategy the Bush administration pursued Canada Goose Coats On Sale in Afghanistan. Canada Goose sale

Canada Goose Jackets . program, which costs around $1 billion a year, may be the single most ineffective policy in the history of American foreign policy, he wrote in an op ed in the Washington Post. not just a waste of money. It actually strengthens the canadian goose jacket Taliban and al Qaeda, as canada goose uk black friday well as criminal elements within Afghanistan. Canada Goose Jackets

buy canada goose jacket cheap Exactly what the Obama administration intends to do about that, and how it might break the narco state, has yet to be articulated. Sending more troops to fight a growing insurgency does not necessarily translate into progress toward dismantling the eliminating corruption or cutting down on the opium production whose proceeds help finance the Taliban. buy canada goose jacket cheap

canada goose coats on sale ON canada goose clearance DRUGS The counter narcotics strategy Canada Goose Outlet Holbrook criticized so harshly centers on the eradication of drug crops, and canada goose has been the main weapon in the on drugs the United States has been waging for decades around the world. That canada goose uk shop war failed to curb the production of illicit drugs and often proved counter productive. canada goose coats on sale

canada goose store De emphasizing eradication in Afghanistan would amount to an implicit admission of the failure of policies pursued since the https://www.canadagooseonline.org 1970s by both Democratic and Republican administrations. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, addressing the Senate Armed Services Committee this week, described Afghanistan as greatest military challenge right canada goose coats now but said there could be no purely military solution not even with the additional 30,000 troops Obama plans to dispatch over the next buy canada goose jacket 18 months. canada goose store

cheap Canada Goose So if there no purely military solution, what are canada goose uk outlet the chances of progress on the political front? An unnamed White Canada Goose Online House official sounded hopeful this week that the United States could push Afghan President Hamid Karzai into extending government control beyond the capital and stepping up the Canada Goose Jackets fight against corruption. cheap Canada Goose

canadian goose jacket It is the same Karzai who declared jihad (holy war) on the drugs trade canada goose black friday sale in 2004, a few days after he was sworn in as Afghanistan first democratically buy canada goose jacket cheap elected leader. That holy war made no dent in opium production and corruption blossomed. canadian goose jacket

buy canada goose jacket was playing us like a fiddle, Thomas Schweich, a former top anti narcotics canada goose clearance sale official in canada goose store Afghanistan, wrote in the New York Times last summer. and its allies would fight the Taliban; Karzai friends would get rich off the Canada Goose online drug trade; he could blame the West for his problems; and in 2009 he would be elected to a new term. buy canada goose jacket

canada goose clearance KARZAI THE PROBLEM In other words, Karzai is not part of the solution, he part of the problem. As to solutions: One uk canada goose outlet novel idea on opium and corruption comes from James Nathan, a political science professor at Auburn University in canadagooseonline Alabama and former State Department official. He argues in a forthcoming paper that the most efficient way to tackle the problem would be for the United States or NATO to buy up the entire Afghan opium crop. canada goose clearance

Canada Goose Parka the whole crop would take it away from the traffickers without cutting more than half the economy of Afghanistan, Nathan said in an interview. a purchase would directly confront Afghanistan most corrosive corruption. It would end the Taliban money stream. Canada Goose Parka

canada goose deals On a more modest scale than Nathan buy it all idea, a Canada Goose sale European think tank, the International Council on Security and Development (ICOS), is lobbying for an alternative to traditional counter narcotics policies dubbed Poppy for Medicine. canada goose deals

Canada Goose online That involves granting international licenses to poppy farmers in Afghan villages, where the crop would be turned into opiate based medicines such as canada goose factory sale morphine or codeine, and then shipped out to the canada goose coats on sale legal market. Canada Goose online

canada goose clearance sale It would place Afghanistan alongside Turkey (where the United States helped to introduce a similar program in 1974), India and Australia as legal producers of opium. Canada Goose Parka Could it work? When ICOS, formerly known as the Senlis Council, first came up with the idea, the State Department cold shouldered it canada goose clearance sale.