At last — a success story from Afghanistan! Or perhaps not. From today’s New York Times…

KABUL, Afghanistan, Sept. 2 — Afghanistan’s opium harvest this year has reached the highest levels ever recorded, showing an increase of almost 50 percent from last year, the executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Antonio Maria Costa, said Saturday in Kabul.

He described the figures as “alarming” and “very bad news” for the Afghan government and international donors who have poured millions of dollars into programs to reduce the poppy crop since 2001. He said the increase in cultivation was significantly fueled by the resurgence of Taliban rebels in the south, the country’s prime opium growing region.

As the insurgents have stepped up attacks, they have also encouraged and profited from the drug trade, promising protection to growers if they expanded their opium operations. “This year’s harvest will be around 6,100 metric tons of opium — a staggering 92 percent of total world supply. It exceeds global consumption by 30 percent,” Mr. Costa said at a news briefing.He said the harvest increased by 49 percent from the year before, and it drastically outpaced the previous record of 4,600 metric tons, set in 1999 while the Taliban governed the country. The area cultivated increased by 59 percent, with more than 400,000 acres planted with poppies in 2006 compared with less than 260,000 in 2005…

The US marine corps has been forced to call up its reserves for compulsory service in Iraq and Afghanistan because it has not been able to find enough volunteers – a reflection of the strain the two wars are putting on America’s armed forces.

The marines’ involuntary call-up, seen as a “back-door draft” by Pentagon critics, is the first since the start of the Iraq war, and will begin in a few months when a first batch of up to 2,500 reservists will be summoned back to active service for a year or more. The army has already sent 2,200 reservists back to the front, of which only about 350 went voluntarily.

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This is the PowerPoint slide used to brief Donald Rumsfeld about plans for the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq. Tells you everything you need to know, really.

I bet Edward Tufte will have this as a case study in the next edition of his legendary pamphlet.

[Source]

Well, well. According to the New York Times,

BAGHDAD, Iraq, July 29 — The State Department agency in charge of $1.4 billion in reconstruction money in Iraq used an accounting shell game to hide ballooning cost overruns on its projects there and knowingly withheld information on schedule delays from Congress, a federal audit released late Friday has found…

Now, why are we not surprised by this?

From this morning’s New York Times…

Three years later, the [Iraqi] police are a battered and dysfunctional force that has helped bring Iraq to the brink of civil war. Police units stand accused of operating death squads for powerful political groups or simple profit. Citizens, deeply distrustful of the force, are setting up their own neighborhood security squads. Killings of police officers are rampant, with at least 547 slain this year, roughly as many as Iraqi and American soldiers combined, records show.

The police, initially envisioned by the Bush administration as a cornerstone in a new democracy, have instead become part of Iraq’s grim constellation of shadowy commandos, ruthless political militias and other armed groups. Iraq’s new prime minister and senior American officials now say the country’s future — and the ability of America to withdraw its troops — rests in large measure on whether the police can be reformed and rogue groups reined in…

From a piece by Zaid Salah in OpenDemocracy…

It was revealed on 9 March 2006 that oil production in Iraq is in fact at the lowest rate since the war. In August 2004, oil exports stood at 1.9 million barrels per day (mbd). Less than a year later, in July 2005, they had fallen to 1.42 mbd. We have now learned that in December 2005 exports fell to 1.1 mbd, their lowest rate since the war. This stands in complete contrast to the declarations made by US and Iraqi officials on the state of Iraq’s oil industry. From Paul Wolfowitz, who famously declared that Iraq would be able to finance its own reconstruction, to Iraqi officials who declared in December 2004 that oil production would reach 3.5 mbd within less than twelve months: all have been involved in a huge operation of deceit.

The oil industry is crumbling, and the more it crumbles, the more we can write off any hopes for the rest of the country. This development impacts on Iraq in three ways. First, it translates into less monies available for the government’s general budget (by way of example, the ministry of justice’s budget for 2006 was reduced by two-thirds in comparison to 2005); second, oil shortages can be felt at petrol stations throughout the country, where average Iraqis often have to queue for days at a time in order to fill up their gas tanks.

Third, it affects electricity production, which incredibly also declined to its lowest point since the start of the war in March 2003, with the overstressed power network producing less than half the electricity needed to meet Iraqi demand. Most of Iraq’s power installations run on oil, so the fuel shortages have a direct impact on electricity production throughout the country. In addition, the fact that Iraq is exporting less will necessarily mean that reconstruction of the electricity sector, and even maintenance of the inadequate supply that is currently available, will suffer as a result.