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Terrorism and Opium Farms
Over the past weekend, reports from Afghanistan indicated that poppy farmers began to use armed resistance to the interim government’s efforts to eradicate the profitable cultivation of opium poppies, just as the harvest comes due.
USM professor Michael Steinberg studies why people grow drugs and why government eradication programs fail. He gave a paper on poppy farming at a February conference addressing how science can respond to terrorism. His paper on "Afghanistan's Harvest of Violence: Opium Poppies, Rural Development and Civil War," was featured during a symposium on "Afghanistan and Terrorism: World Transformation?" at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, in Boston, February 14 - 18.
Steinberg's research is focused on the relationship between indigenous people/ethnic minorities and drug plant production, trade, and eradication. He is the editor of a forthcoming Oxford University Press book, "Dangerous Harvest: Drug Plants and the Transformation of Indigenous Landscapes." In January, he presented his research findings on the connections between drugs and terrorism at a National Science Foundation sponsored workshop/symposium in Washington, D.C. He is organizing an international conference on "Nations, States, Drugs and Terrorism: Collusions & Conflicts" to be co-sponsored by USM and the American Geographical Society in May 2003.
Editor's Note: Professor Steinberg can be reached at 207-780-5322, or
e-mail mstein@usm.maine.edu
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