The world needs to invest more than US$2 billion in irrigation, roads and other rural development in Afghanistan to lure farmers away from booming opium cultivation, a World Bank report said yesterday.
The report, by the World Bank and the Britain-based Department for International Development, argued that the drug trade -- Afghanistan's top business -- can only be combatted if impoverished farmers have other means of making a living.
"Only as poor Afghan farmers gain other economic opportunities will they be able to be weaned away from dependence on opium production over time," William Byrd of the World Bank told reporters in Tokyo, where the report was released on the sidelines of an annual international conference on the country's reconstruction.
The report called for the more community-based development projects, expanded irrigation, increased use of livestock and assistance for rural businesses and entrepreneurs.
It recommended investments of US$1.2 billion to expand irrigated land, US$550 million to boost rural enterprise development, and US$400 million for rural road planning, construction and maintenance.
The money would be spent over up to 10 years, depending on the program.
The report's authors also called for greater coordination among Afghanistan's donors, who they said had failed to use their money in complementary ways.
"Assistance is fragmented with 62 donors, many with their own distinct security, political and development interests"' said Alastair McKechnie, Afghanistan country director for the World Bank.
Afghanistan representatives also appealed for help yesterday.
"We can only fight drugs in Afghanistan by the support of the international community," Acting Minister of Counter Narcotics Khodaidad, a former army general, told a news conference.
"We need the international community's support, our neighbors' support, to put more money to improve our police, to improve our counter narcotics police, to improve security resources and to block the border with our neighbors," he said.
KINGPIN: Marset allegedly laundered the proceeds of his drug enterprise by purchasing and sponsoring professional soccer teams and even put himself in the starting lineups Notorious Latin American narco trafficker Sebastian Marset, who eluded police for years, was handed over to US authorities after his arrest on Friday in Bolivia. Marset, a Uruguayan national who was on the US most-wanted list, was passed to agents of the US Drug Enforcement Administration at Santa Cruz airport in Bolivia, then put on a US airplane, Bolivian state television showed. “The arrest and deportation were carried out pursuant to a court order issued by the US justice system,” Bolivian Minister of Government Marco Antonio Oviedo told reporters. The alleged kingpin was arrested in an upscale neighborhood of Santa
ACTIONABLE ADVICE: The majority of chatbots tested provided guidance on weapons, tactics and target selections, with Perplexity and Meta AI deemed to be the least safe From school shootings to synagogue bombings, leading artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots helped researchers plot violent attacks, according to a study published on Wednesday that highlighted the technology’s potential for real-world harm. Researchers from the nonprofit watchdog Center for Countering Digital Hate and CNN posed as 13-year-old boys in the US and Ireland to test 10 chatbots, including ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Perplexity, Deepseek and Meta AI. Eight of the chatbots assisted the make-believe attackers in more than half the responses, providing advice on “locations to target” and “weapons to use” in an attack, the study said. The chatbots had become a “powerful accelerant for
SCANDAL: Other images discovered earlier show Andrew bent over a female and lying across the laps of a number of women, while Mandelson is pictured in his underpants A photograph of former British prince Andrew and veteran politician Peter Mandelson sitting in bathrobes alongside late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was unearthed on Friday in previously published documents. The image is believed to be the first known photograph of the two men with Epstein. They are currently engulfed in scandal in the UK over their ties to their mutual friend. The undated photograph, first reported by ITV News, shows King Charles III’s disgraced brother and former British ambassador to the US sitting barefoot outside on a wooden deck. They appear to have mugs with a US flag on them
Since the war in the Middle East began nearly two weeks ago, the telephone at Ron Hubbard’s bomb shelter company in Texas has not stopped ringing. Foreign and US clients are rushing to buy his bunkers, seeking refuge in case of air raids, nuclear fallout or apocalypse. With the US and Israel pounding Iran, and Tehran retaliating with strikes across the region, Hubbard has seen demand for his product soar, mostly from Gulf nation customers in Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates. “You can imagine how many people are thinking: ‘I wish I had a bomb shelter,’” Hubbard, 63, said in
RSS