Drug traffickers 'executing farmers, taking children'

poledriver

poledriver

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Shocking evidence has been uncovered of people in Afghanistan being executed or forced to give up their children to repay drug traffickers.

The issue is explored in a disturbing documentary to be shown on Four Corners on Monday night, and is an indirect result of NATO policy.

NATO forces are encouraging the destruction of lucrative opium crops in favour of farmers growing food.

But while the opium crops are destroyed, the farmers' debts to the traffickers remain.

The documentary shows that farmers in Afghanistan are being executed by drug gangs because they cannot pay the debts.

Children are also at risk.

The giving up of children to pay debts is a custom which has been practised for many years in Afghanistan, but the documentary shows drug gangs are now exploiting the tradition to devastating effect.

Amina, 14, has found herself used as a tradeable commodity.

AUDIO: Plight of Afghanistan's opium girls (AM)
She is in hiding, constantly moving around Afghanistan on foot to avoid being taken by drug traffickers.

"I'm at home because of the smugglers. They gave us money and we can't repay them. Now they want to take me by force," she said.

Dire ultimatum

Amina's farmer has been warned: pay up or hand over your daughter.

Like many Afghan farmers, he is tens of thousands of dollars in debt to drug traffickers.

"My father wanted to sell me to drug smugglers but I didn't want to get married. He beat me. My father would beat me and pull my hair," Amina said.

"He would kick me and my mother and would threaten to drag us out of the house.

"My father had taken money from them and then promised that I would marry that man."

The reporter for the story Opium Brides was Najibullah Quraisi, who journeyed deep into the Afghan countryside to reveal the personal and social devastation the opium eradication program is causing.

The producer was Jamie Doran, who explains what happened to the girls they tracked for the documentary.

"The situation is exactly the same. The two girls who were free are still free we're glad to say but they're having to move constantly to stay one step ahead of the traffickers," he said.

"Will they survive? I don't know.

"Eighty-five per cent of the population live in the country mainly uneducated.

"They're at the beck and call in many ways of the Taliban, the Taliban controls huge areas and the Taliban get most of their funding of course from the drugs traffickers."

Opium Brides can be seen on Four Corners on ABC1 (AUS) at 8:30 on Monday night.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-07-14/drug-traffickers-executing-farmers-taking-children/4130678
 
I think the Afghan drug traffickers might match or beat Mexican drug cartels in the fucked up shit department.
 
I've read about this. And, as usual, its our (the USA's) fault. The Taliban is funded by drug traffickers who supply 80% of the worlds opium to countries like the US. Instead of planting normal agricultural crops to feed and fund their families, like nearly every country in the free world does, theyre forced to grow poppies that are imported into the US for big pharma, street gangs and everyone that uses morphine/heroin. Can't pay the Taliban because you barely have enough to feed your family? The Taliban decreases the size of your family. This is nothing new, and it's a direct consequence of the never-ending war on drugs. We created the Taliban, and it is our addiction to war and to drugs that permits them to carry out such acts. Our reasons for military presence there are drugs, oil, and military infrastructure.
 
trees_please said:
The Taliban is funded by drug traffickers who supply 80% of the worlds opium to countries like the US. Instead of planting normal agricultural crops to feed and fund their families, like nearly every country in the free world does, theyre forced to grow poppies that are imported into the US for big pharma, street gangs and everyone that uses morphine/heroin.
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First, Karzai's people make just as much or more money from H. Second you can use the poppy leaves to feed cattle, and the seeds are edible. Third, none of it goes to legit pharms, though it has been proposed that Afghanistan should be allowed to grow poppies for legal medicine like India or Turkey, because there's a shortage of opiates in most of the world. Lastly the opium and H does not reach the US in significant amounts. It goes to Europe, Asia, and Africa, basically everywhere but the Americas. Most of the heroin in the US comes from Mexico or Colombia. Why we don't see Afghan brown more, I don't know. It's a mystery like why hasn't meth caught on in Europe or New England, or what happened to Quaalude.

I do agree with the gist of some of what you said.
 
I understand what youre talking about, and I'm by no means well educated on the subject. however, being a citizen in the largest drug consuming nation in the world, I imagine some of that nearly 85% does make it through trade routes into europe, to india, vietnam, and other major ports where it does eventually slip through the cracks, i mean we certainly get heroin from europe.. and europe does not grow opium. the climate doesnt support it.
 
trees_please said:
i mean we certainly get heroin from europe.. and europe does not grow opium. the climate doesnt support it.
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Believe it or not Europe is a big producer of poppies and poppy products. Netherlands, Poland and the Czech Republic grow it primary for seeds. Macedonia for morphine, they once made a strong but bland opium. France and Spain grow Thebaine producing poppies for oxycodone and buprenorphine, among other shit.Some of the most potent opium was made in northern Europe like Denmark. It had morphine up to 25%, though it didn't produce as much opium as Indian poppies. Also the Soviet Union and Hungary were once top producers of opiates, not sure where they stand now.

Funny about those thebaine poppies, the pharmaceutical industry portrayed it as a way to combat addiction, yet it's fueling the oxycodone, hydrocodone and buprenorphine epidemics. Before thebaine was self-limiting, for only India produced opium with enough thebaine to be viable. It's still only a fraction of the morphine content. But now they can produce as much as they want, drug treaties aside.

There was a time when most of the heroin in the US came from France and Italy. But the French-Connection is long dead and the Italian Mafia's not as prominent in the heroin trade as it used to be.
 
Doesn't Tasmania here in Australia produce a lot of poppies for big pharma co's? I've wondered sometimes why we don't have masses of heroin around when there are large poppie farms in Tassy, i guess its well guarded and there isn't corruption to divert it to the black market? Afaik most, if not all our heroin is imported from other countries and next to none is produced locally. But i don't know much about it all, just wondered why. I mean in the 80's, and early to mid 90's we had loads of heroin here, now apparently its been a big drought for heroin for quite along time, probably because of Customs and LE doing more busts and searches of shipping containers and taking out the corrupt people in the airports and sea ports? Same with MDMA pills, we used to have shit loads in the late 80's and early to mid 90's, but again like heroin, it's not nearly as common and available, afaik anyway.
 
^Yes, Tasmania is the leading producer of opiate in the world. A lot are toxic thebaine strains that are useless unless you know chemistry, however most are strong morphine strains. Some of the strongest in history. They don't tell the farmers which is which to deter diversion. I think the thebaine strains tend to produce a red or pink opium, but so do a lot of morphine strains. I think there is a test for it, forgot what. Besides one gets you high, the other gives you strychnine like convulsions.

I've heard that they aren't particularly well guarded. I've heard of some walk right up to the farms, no one there to stop them except a small barbed wire fence with a warning sign that says it's toxic.

Sadly the thebaine seeds are burned and the morphine strain seeds are treated so they can't grow. You can still find viable seeds for them, not sure if they're the up to date new and improved ones.

Supposedly Tasmania has a relatively low drug abuse rate. One of the reason's big pharma choose them, that and the climate.

Strangely Australia does have home grown heroin production. It's homebake like New Zealand has, made from OTC codeine pills rather than poppies from Tasmania. Not as common as New Zealand, where I get the impression it's as common as cooking crack is in the US. Also seems to be on the decline.
poledriver said:
I mean in the 80's, and early to mid 90's we had loads of heroin here, now apparently its been a big drought for heroin for quite along time, probably because of Customs and LE doing more busts and searches of shipping containers and taking out the corrupt people in the airports and sea ports
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I get the impression that Australian pigs are cleaner than US pigs. Too bad:(.
 
Strangely Australia does have home grown heroin production. It's homebake like New Zealand has, made from OTC codeine pills rather than poppies from Tasmania. Not as common as New Zealand, where I get the impression it's as common as cooking crack is in the US. Also seems to be on the decline.
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Oh yeah I heard of that homebake method recently on an article on here where some guy gave a chick her first shot of heroin and it was homebake and she OD'ed and he took like half a day or something to get her help, she died and he got sent to jail I think.

I've heard stories of people going into those poppie fields and trying some and dying, yeah I guess it would be hard to guard areas that are probably huge, unless there's some rednecks who own the land and drive around in trucks with guns, not sure how it works, i've never been there personally.

Thanks for the info.
 
THC- any idea where street H comes from (in the USA) if its not afghanistan? i mean, i know iran has astronomical addiction rates, but i presume thats due to their position on trade routes- they dont grow opium.. i assume.
 
West of the Mississippi and a few other states east it comes from Mexico. East of it, it comes from Colombia. Tiny amounts of poppies are also grown in Guatemala, Peru, and Venezuela. Also I think Chicago and Detroit might get some Afghan shit. Chicago actually gets it from all source nations. Mexico comes in third after Burma in heroin production, think I read they may now be second to Afghanistan.

What I don't get is if according to the government poppy production in Colombia is way down, how is at least half the heroin or more seized in the US from Colombia? I mean do they have a stockpile to last years, is the acreage or yield grossly underestimated, are they just wrong about the origins, or are they lying for political reasons? Could it be that higher purity Mexican dope or Afghan #4 heroin hcl is more common than believed?

Hell the book "Opium Poppy Garden: The Way Of A Chinese Grower" took place in Colombia, though it was a grow guide disguised as a work of fiction. It claimed it's possible to get an ounce a plant. Maybe they are getting crazy yields? Although I don't think Colombia had much of a history with Chinese growers like Mexico did. Colombian poppy growing started in the 80's. The story is fiction, and I don't know how accurate the info in the book is. Mexico started growing poppies in the 19th century, before it was even banned.

The way this is known is the DEA gets forensic scientist to study the chemical profile of heroin and other drugs seized. Different countries have different types of opium, uses different methods to make H, and use different cuts sometimes. This results in different impurities. They use the info to find out where it's coming from. However it's not perfect. High purity white heroin can be hard to differentiate, sometimes the heroin is mixed with different types, and sometimes it comes from two sources at different stages. For example when Mexico cracked down hard on weed and poppy growers in the 70's so the cartels were forced to use South East Asian heroin, even mixing it in with theirs or dyeing it brown so it'd look like Mexican mud. Also in Burma the United Wa State Army started importing impure #2 heroin base from Afghanistan and turned it into purer white #4 heroin HCl to supplement their own opium production.

It would seem that once Asia, Europe Oceania and Africa are done with it there isn't much left for the US. That's like tens of millions of people. But even then there has been droughts in Europe and other parts that can't be explained. Sometimes during years of high opium yield. It could be that some countries like Russia, China, India and others are grossly underestimating heroin consumption, or the Afghans are holding back to drive up prices. Kind of like what De Beers does with diamonds.

Nearly all the heroin from Afghanistan is lower purity #2 heroin freebase for smoking. It could be that they tried to move it in the US, but the junkies didn't know what to do with it. It won't dissolve in water, maybe some tried injecting it without an acid or snort it and thought they got ripped off. Black tar smokers would probably take to it like a fish to water, but the Mexicans aren't known for sharing. No way the Afghans/South Asians, so few in numbers in the US, could take on the Mexican mafia. They make plenty of there own shit.
 
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