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The beheading of an Afghan man with a pen knife is traced to US advocacy of destroying Afghan opium poppy fields.
1/25/13, "Selling little girls to pay back debt," CNN, Samuel Burke
"The mother of a little Afghan girl cannot even turn to face her
daughter. She looks down in shame as she explains why she must hand the
girl over to drug lords.
The father of the girl has done what many Afghan farmers must do to
finance their opium farms: borrow money from drug traffickers. But the
Afghan government and international forces’ attempt to halt the opium
trade has quashed the father’s poppy business, and with it, his ability
to pay back the lenders.
The drug lords have taken him hostage to extract a payment.
“I have to give my daughter to release my husband,” the mother explains with the girl at her side. She looks no older than six.
Ninety percent of the world's opium – the
raw source of heroin – comes from Afghanistan. Growing poppy there has
been a lucrative industry.
The Afghan government has been cracking down and destroying illegal
crops, leaving many farmers in the same horrifying situation as the
family forced to use their own daughter as collateral for the loan.
“They’re way more dangerous and powerful than the Taliban,” one
father of two kidnapped children says about the drug lords. He looks at a
text messaged picture of his daughter being held in captivity as the
captors demand $20,000 from the man over the telephone.
These tragic stories are documented in PBS’ award-winning Frontline film, "Opium Brides,” which was made by investigative Afghan reporter Najibullah Quraishi and producer Jamie Doran.
Quraishi told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour that when the families give
up their children, they are often taken to other countries, like
Pakistan or Iran, where they are used for transporting drugs or put into
sex slavery.
The film traces another story of an ill-fated Afghan farmer. “It just
seemed too awful to be true,” producer Jamie Doran told Amanpour about
that man’s plight. “[He] couldn't pay the traffickers back and refused
to give his daughter away. And we actually have the entire film of him
being beheaded with a penknife. That's what they do if you refuse to
hand over your daughters.”
The reporter behind the film says the government is aware that it is
destroying families’ lives along with their crops, but policymakers have
yet to come up with a solution to safeguard the farmers’ families while
trying to end the opium trade.
One little girl who was lucky enough to escape her captors recounts
just how horrible the conditions were. “They wouldn't allow me to change
my clothes. They wouldn't give me soap to wash them. My clothes became
worn out on my body. They did every possible cruelty to me. I really
fear that those smugglers will take me again.”
Even if the girls do escape, they often have nowhere to go while they
search for their families. The filmmakers did find one halfway house,
but it was only enough for about 30 girls.
The filmmakers believe there are many hundreds, if not thousands of girls on the run from the traffickers.
“The role of NATO and the United Nations is fascinating in this
situation,” Doran said. “The U.N. and NATO ISAF will tell you it's not
their responsibility nor do they advocate the destruction – the
eradication of the poppy. But they supply the protection for the police
to actually do it. So they're saying on one hand, 'we have nothing to do
with this.' But the Afghan police couldn't do without NATO support.”
But Doran points out that the root of the problem is the opium drug
users. “I don't know if there's a solution because the world demands
poppy cultivation for its heroin addiction. So you know, maybe the blame
shouldn't just be put onto the Afghan government. Maybe we should be
looking inside ourselves a little more,” Qaurishi said.
The looming fear is that this horrendous situation could worsen when international troops leave Afghanistan in 2014."
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Ed. note: "Looming fear" it will be worse when billions of US tax dollars stop flowing to organized crime in this hell hole? They always throw this line out to keep US taxpayer cash flowing for dozens more years. "We should look inside ourselves," the pathetic filmmaker says. The left's answer to every brutal crime is it's all our fault. OK, fine, that being the case, why didn't we leave years ago? Our "forces" in this fake "war" are strictly forbidden from attempting to change the culture there. The culture is the cause of all of this. The article makes clear we know this is going on but do nothing to stop it. Where is the screaming media? Where are rights groups, anti war groups? They won't say a word now that the radical left is in the White House. A man is beheaded with a pen knife, 6 year old girls are given to drug lords, and we continue business as usual.
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