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Re: "Pipe Dreams", Montreal Gazette, (A-27), Nov.11,2009.
In the photo accompanying said article, published on Remembrance Day, U.S. Marines are shown patrolling a flourishing poppy field in Farah province, Afghanistan.
Despite the best efforts of Nato troops to eradicate the Afghan poppy harvest, the rate of opium production has actually increased twofold since 9/11, making Afghanistan the world's largest producer and supplier of opium and heroin.
According to the U.N., Afghan opium kills 100,000 people each year worldwide, while Afghan heroin kills 5 times as many people in Nato countries each year as the total number of Nato soldiers killed in 8 years of combat in Afghanistan.
Moreover, other than the Karzai government which profits from taxing poppy farmers, the Taliban receives about $150 Million from the drug trade annually, which is used to finance terrorism and their insurgency against the Afghan population and coalition forces, including Canadian soldiers.
Ironically, while we here in Canada wear red poppies, on or around Remembrance Day, to honour and remember our military veterans and fallen soldiers of past and present wars, current young Canadian soldiers and others continue to be maimed and killed in Afghanistan thanks in part to the unabated production of Afghan poppies.
Perhaps the opening lines of Canadian Army surgeon, Captain John McCrae's
famous World War I poem, "In Flander's Fields", should read as follows:
In Afghanistan,
The poppies grow,
Beneath rugged mountains,
Covering fields below...
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