"American" Afghanistan’s Three Major Crops: Opium, Human Organs and Children

I just heard an eyewitness account of life in Afghanistan that curdled my blood. Have you heard similar reports? "Since the American takeover of Afghanistan, the major crops there are now opium, human organs and children." What is the lowest denominator that human beings can sink to? It’s all happening in American Afghanistan.

Of course we know about the secret torture chambers that American and Pakistani contractors have set up there. But do you know why they are there? "People are being grabbed off the street and tortured in order to get information out of them. These torturers think that somehow, if they torture enough people, they will get lucky and discover information that the Americans might be willing to pay for."

We already know about Afghanistan’s opium trade. Under American supervision, Afghanistan has become the world’s number one heroin supplier—even outdistancing Burma’s infamous Golden Triangle. "Since America has taken over, there is more opium being grown in Afghanistan than there are vegetables." How to relate it to our own experiences? It would be as if our great California central valley was now devoted solely to growing opium. If that were to happen here, what would Californians eat? Ask that same question in Afghanistan. The answer is, "Not much."

It’s clear to anyone who is up on current events in this region that Prime Minister Hamid Karzai is pretty much a puppet. "He is hardly more than the Mayor of Kabul. If that."

Besides these well-known incompetencies, corruptions and crimes against humanity, what else is new in American Afghanistan?

"Children in Afghanistan are being kidnapped—from off the streets and even from out of their homes." According to the Pakistan News Service, one Afghani father was asked to pay $4,500 in ransom for his kidnapped son. At first the kidnappers sent the distraught father his son’s finger—with a note attached saying, "Next time it will be his head." The father payed the ransom money. The boy was returned naked and drugged.

In American Afghanistan, young girls are being sold to American contractors to use for sex. "Even the American-sponsored hospitals are not safe. There have been instances of girls and young women going there, being anesthetized for one reason or another and then, when they come out of the anesthesia, discovering that they have been raped."

Children have become a cash crop in American Afghanistan. Our "Northern Alliance" buddies are harvesting children over there just like the way we in America are harvesting wheat.

In America, George Bush supporters are trying to instigate a Constitutional amendment outlawing gay marriage. Instead, let’s instigate an amendment making it illegal to give US taxpayer money to support Afghani warlords who participate in the rape and sale of children.

And if Americans are willing to pay big bucks for nation-building in Afghanistan, let’s do it right. Let’s stop giving tanks and dollars to sleazy warlords and start giving books and food to RAWA, the only organization that effectively fought the Taliban and is now in a position to actually help the people of Afghanistan.

In American Afghanistan, there is another all-too-familiar harvest: Human organs. "It is a common occurrence for the bodies of young people to be found with their hearts, kidneys, livers and even their eyes carefully and surgically cut out." No organ is wasted. What would you call this? Recycling? Ecology? Organic farming?

This is our "Christian" government’s finest hour? America’s presentation of democracy to the world? This behavior sickens me. Usually I like to suggest some upbeat answer to every problem but I don’t even want to talk about it any more.

Jane Stillwater