https://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle-old/382/afghanistan.shtml

What was supposed to have been a model for the Afghan government's new opium eradication program ended in violent confrontation Monday as poppy-growing peasants in the town of Maiwand in Kandahar province greeted Afghan eradicators led by American mercenaries with rocks, clubs, and bullets. According to reports in Reuters and the British newspaper The Independent, at least nine people, including one American, were wounded, and as many as five people were killed.

	incised papaver specimens (opium poppies

The Bush administration has budgeted some $700 million this year for opium eradication in Afghanistan, which last year produced an estimated 86% of the global opium crop. But the US and its Afghan ally, President Hamid Karzai, are in a tough position: If they are successful in disrupting the opium crop, they face the wrath of peasants, millions of whom are making a living from the crop. That could destabilize the Karzai government as it and the Americans battle remnants of the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

Some 4,000 protesting villagers blocked the highway from Kandahar with burning tires and confronted the eradicators, and some villagers began throwing rocks at the intruders. Then, according to Reuters, both sides opened fire with assault rifles. "One local was killed and six wounded," a local official told the news agency. Three eradicators, including one identified as a US soldier by Maiwand district chief Khan Agha, were also wounded.

By day's end, according to The Independent, the American security contractors were said to be hunkered down behind razor wire at a protected camp, and the death toll had risen to five. The newspaper reported dense smoke hanging over the town of Maiwan, hundreds of rounds fired, and American helicopter gunships flying overhead.

Maiwan was chosen as a demonstration project because it was considered friendly territory in firm government control. But by mid-week, local political leaders were unable to negotiate a resumption of eradication with angry farmers. Some farmers complained of inequities in the eradication program. "The farmers are angry with the Americans and the Kabul government," one told the Independent. "It is only the fields of the poor that are being destroyed, not the fields of the rich." He also said that wealthy warlords get to keep their stockpiles of opium while farmers lose their crops. And he complained that crops will be spared if the farmer pays bribes or shares kinship ties with the eradicators.

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