Afghan Field Spraying Rebuffed

by clorenz1 | January 25, 2007 at 04:40 pm

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Nice one, President Karzai decides not to poison his people and the land they live on by spraying poppy fields. Regardless of the "war on drugs," propaganda that will follow this decision, he is making the right choice.

Rebuffing months of U.S. pressure, President Hamid Karzai has decided Afghanistan will not implement a Colombia-style program to spray the country's heroin-producing poppies, bowing to pressure from top Cabinet members who feared a popular backlash, officials said Thursday.

The decision dashes U.S. hopes that herbicide sprayed by ground applicators would help combat Afghanistan's opium trade after a record crop in 2006.

Karzai instead "made a very strong commitment" to lead the country's manual eradication efforts this year, and said that if production didn't go down he would allow spraying in 2008, a Western official said on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.