“Britain should abandon its anti-drug role in Afghanistan and focus on securing the country against the Taliban insurgency, a prominent group of U.K. lawmakers said Sunday,” according to the Associated Press. The story goes on to note that hundreds of millions of dollars (along with several billion dollars from the U.S.) has not noticeably contributed to a reduction of the poppy crop… and, let us be honest, has probably made the problem worse.
It seems British lawmakers are begging the Brown government to abandon the counterproductive war on farmers in favor of providing security and governance support. I dunno, that sounds familiar, somehow.
This post was written by...
Joshua Foust – author of 1771 posts on Registan.net.
Joshua Foust is a Fellow at the American Security Project and the author of Afghanistan Journal: Selections from Registan.net. His research focuses primarily on Central and South Asia. Joshua is a correspondent for The Atlantic and a columnist for PBS Need to Know. Joshua appears regularly on the BBC World News, Aljazeera, and international public radio. Joshua is also a regular contributor to Foreign Policy’s AfPak Channel, and his writing has appeared in the New York Times, Reuters, and the Christian Science Monitor. Follow him on twitter: @joshuafoust