Another frontier in Wars on Terror and Drugs

The US is currently pressuring a reluctant Afghan government for permission to do aerial spraying of poppy fields.

As heroin exports rise and battlefield successes become rarer, the US intends to start doing what they have been doing in Colombia for years: Carpet bombing the drug crop fields with Monsanto-made glyphosate, Roundup Ultra. What could seem like a win-win strategy has many darker sides to it though.

"Aerial spraying is a bad idea, first because the Afghans have to do the eradication if it is to avoid a backlash from farmers and play into the hands of Taliban propaganda. Western aircraft spraying Afghan fields doesn't look like the government is responsible. There are also bound to be charges that people's health or animals have been affected and there is sure to be collateral damage to legal crops." - European counter-narcotics official in the Telegraph article

Read Telegraph / US officials push to spray Afghan drug crops, thepeoplesvoice.org/ United States to begin Chemical Warfare operations in Afghanistan.

So, how has the Chemical War on Drugs fared in Colombia? Well, most biologically interesting is the appearance of a glyphosate resistant - "Roundup Ready" - variety of the coca bush (source: Wired, Wikipedia)! And yes, there has been reports of health problems in farmer populations and damage to legal crops. One lengthy, thorough and critical look at Plan Colombia is CorpWatch.org's Toxic Drift: Monsanto and the Drug War in Colombia (2001). From that article:

"The twelve indigenous peoples have been suffering under this plague as if it were a government decree to exterminate our culture and our very survival. Our legal crops -- our only sustenance -- manioc, banana, palms, sugar cane, and corn have been fumigated. Our sources of water, creeks, rivers, lakes, have been poisoned, killing our fish and other living things. Today, hunger is our daily bread. In the name of the Amazonian Indigenous people I ask that the fumigations be immediately suspended." - José Francisco Tenorio.

Of course, there is also a lot of information on Wikipedia: see entries Plan Colombia and Coca eradication.

A short, short summary is billions of tax payer's money have been spent, wide stretches of Colombian biosphere scorched, coca production is up, cocaine prices are down and abuse on the rise, the civil war is still raging and the Monsanto stock price is up and climbing. Of course, each of these results have been influenced by numerous factors, not just Roundup. But personally I fail to see the big success worth copying.

Experts: Climate change threatens peace

"Climate change is and will be a significant threat to our national security and in a larger sense to life on Earth as we know it to be"

- retired Gen. Gordon R. Sullivan, former U.S. Army chief of staff.

"[climate change] could potentially destabilize the geopolitical environment, leading to skirmishes, battles, and even war due to resource constraints."

- Pentagon report.

Many modern conflicts are food wars

Holistic approach built on food security can stabilize postwar societies

Source: ReliefWeb Press Releases: Many modern conflicts are food wars, say experts

Lebanon: the environmental impact of the conflict with Israel

A year since the war between Israel and Hezbollah [...] in Lebanon, the consequences on the environment are still calamitous and putting the lives of thousands of people in the country at risk.

Source: Equilibri.net / Lebanon: the environmental impact of the conflict with Israel

• 70% of the South Lebanese depend on subsistence farming. But 90% of their arable land has been effectively mined by Israel's intensive use of cluster bombs.


• Wildlife severely harmed and tourism devastated due to extreme pollution of coasts and water resources.


• Article also details clean-up efforts.

War. Pollution. Religion.

Contra

For years, concern about global ecology has been perceived in Israel as a luxury that the country cannot afford while it is in the midst of an existential security struggle. Some people noted, and rightly, that preventing a single war in [the Middle East] would contribute a great deal more to the environment and our health than all the environmental campaigns of all the green organizations put together. [...] Jews and Muslims alike, have become entrenched in petrified doctrines and archaic views of "holiness," especially the sanctity of land, that have nothing in common with the needs and lives of human beings under changing political and ecological conditions.

Source: Greener than the pope - Haaretz

the U.S. military is the world’s largest consumer of oil and the world’s largest polluter. America is also addicted to war for oil [...] The 101st Airborne Division really did name a Base Exxon and a Base Shell somewhere in the deserts of Iraq! [...] “men lead us to war for enough oil to continue to go to war for oil.”

Source: Dissident Voice : Oil Wars: Fueling Both U.S. Empire & Ecocide

Pro

The IUCN-World Conservation Union [Wikipedia] recently named Israel the nation with the highest percentage of preserved land in the Mediterranean region. [...] a major portion of the Israeli open space which was included in the organization's survey is also used in military training exercises. [...] Military activity in these areas impacts nature, but most of the damage is minimal due to a unique agreement between the IDF and the Israel Nature & National Parks Protection Authority (INNPPA). [...] the general trend, in which animal and plant species in the region are becoming extinct, has not been halted.

Source: Water Cooperation in the Middle East