British war on drugs fuckup

[IamSpartacus]

Extract from the UK broadsheet 'The Independent' http://comment.independent.co.uk/columnists_a_l/simon_carr/article354049.ece

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Now we're bouncing cheques on drug growers Simon Carr Published: 28 March 2006

The longer you sit up here watching them down there, the less confidence you have they can do anything right. It's one of the rewards of the job. There's one certainty: if they did less, they'd do less damage.

We were in Afghanistan. "Millions in compensation haven't been paid," one of them revealed. Apparently "400 cheques have bounced through insufficient funds."
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Fucking hell, it must be hard enough to win over farmers to grow proper crops rather than poppies ... and then the fucking twats British forget to put enough cash in the bank to cover the promises (cheques) they've given out. What utter incompetance. Don't they realise that the farmers cant just pop down to the High street a few minutes walk away ... and probably have to trog into local (large) town and lose a day or two just to get arsed about.

[IamSpartacus]

Extract from http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle.asp?xfile=data/theworld/2006/March/theworld_March800.xml&section=theworld

European group to help Afghan poppy farmers sue Britain (AFP) 26 March 2006

KABUL - A European-based drug-policy group said on Sunday it would help hundreds of Afghan opium farmers sue the British government to collect 21 million dollars owed to them for eradicating their poppy crop two years ago after the few cheques they received had bounced.

The Senlis Council, a Paris-based group, said farmers in southern Helmand province claim British officials had promised them 350 dollars for every jerib (one-fifth of a hectare) of their opium crop they destroyed in 2002.

The farmers said they had together torn up 62,000 jeribs of opium.

...blah blah blah ...

Helmand is the main producer of Afghanistan’s annual crop of about 4,000 tonnes of opium, which supplies about 90 percent of the heroin in Europe.

However only a few of them were paid and most of the cheques issued by British officials had bounced, the council said in a statement.

The situation has left a bad feeling towards Britain in the province, where 3,000 British troops are due to deploy to assist in the fight against Taleban insurgents and in opium eradication, the council said.