Russia bemoans US war on drugs

[grace]

US marines cross a poppy field near the town of Garmser in Helmand Province of Afghanistan.

Russian State Duma Speaker Boris Gryzlov says the US-led war on drug production and trafficking in Afghanistan has been all but efficient.

 

"Didn't the Bush administration state fighting opium production as one of the main objectives of its attack on Afghanistan," Gryzlov on Thursday asked State Duma of Russia, the lower house of the parliament.

 

"I just want to ask one question, What are the efforts of the international coalition in the fight against drug trafficking," he said. "They are zero and in fact negative."

 

Gryzlov said the West has failed the fight on poppy cultivation in Afghanistan.

The Bush administration waged "Operation Enduring Freedom" on Afghanistan in 2001, to capture Osama bin Laden, destroy al-Qaeda and remove the Taliban regime.

 

The invasion of Afghanistan was also justified as part of the West's "war on drugs."

 

"The al-Qaeda network and the Taliban regime are funded in large part [by] the drugs trade," ex-British Prime Minister Tony Blair said in 2001 when confirming London's participation in the US attack on Afghanistan.

 

Eight years later, Afghanistan is the second biggest opium producer, supplying 90 percent of the world's illegal drugs trade, the UN's drugs monitoring body said on Wednesday.

 

The UN's International Narcotics Control Board also marked an increase in the cultivation of cannabis in Afghanistan, the most widely used drug in Europe.

 

"Farmers have been switching from opium poppy cultivation to cannabis cultivation, as cannabis cultivation is becoming increasingly lucrative in Afghanistan and no action has been taken by the government to prevent such cultivation," the body's annual report noted.

 

Author: Unknown

Date: 19 February 2009

Source: Press TV

Copyright: Press TV 2007

http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=86152...ionid=351020403