"Made in Afghanistan"

"In no case have countries undergone a transition from an economy based on cash crop exports back to subsistence farming. Alternative livelihood programs have to follow in the footsteps of the drug traffickers, linking Afghan farmers to the market, but with licit crops that, alas, cannot profit from Afghanistan's comparative advantage in producing illegality, but that might be able to profits from international interest through a "Made in Afghanistan" brand. This is what Gulestan is trying to do. Given the significant capacity for production, marketing, and finance that the opiate economy has developed in Afghanistan, we need to transform rather than destroy much of this capacity, a goal that should inform our approach to the 80 percent of the value of opiates produced by processing and trading."

http://icga.blogspot.com/2007/08/counter-narcotics-in-afghanistan-ii.htm...