Bert’s job in Afghanistan was managing a team of Afghans to work on the ground with farmers, government officials, NATO forces, and aid agencies to try and bring drug production under control in a country that produces over 90% of the world’s heroin. He lived and worked in Kandahar, in the middle of a war zone, as an official with the Ministry of Counter Narcotics. Over the course of the 13.5 months that he was there, 44 of our country’s soldiers died in Kandahar, along with hundreds of Afghans including several with whom Bert worked directly. Bert himself narrowly avoided being killed several times by suicide bombers, including one whose remains rained down on his office after detonating short of his target. Despite these challenges, his team helped reduce the heroin yield by 18% in Kandahar during the first year, and similar results are anticipated this year. Bert credits this achievement to the Afghan members of his team, who risked death by both working in counter-narcotics and by working with Westerners.
Bert Tatham was sentenced to 4 years in prison in Dubai after a search traces hashish in the seams of his clothing during a stop-over on his flight home.
You can read more here.
And people say we don’t need a Navy.
And we’re allowing this Government (Dubai) to buy up a Calgary oil firm?
Not thinkin straight.
Poetic justice.
manuel…please explain “poetic justice”
Poppies in Canada
Police bust poppy grow-op in Calgary backyard
cbc.ca/canada/calgary/story/2007/07/27/poppy-bust.html
Thanks for risking your life to improve the lives of Muslims, Bert Tatham. Now prepare to be repeatedly raped and tortured in a Muslim prison, a la William Sampson.
Moral of the story: Never, ever, ever help Muslims.
Slightly off topic I fear, but I want to know why don’t we fly Hercules crop sprayers filled with “roundup” or it’s generic equivalent over these poppy fields?
‘Cause then all the poppy growers will starve. And they all have guns.
An armed society is a polite society. So we politely don’t treat the Afgan poppy dudes the way we treat Western wheat farmers.
LT, I can answer the question for you, If we destroy the poppy fields, those afgan citizens would have no jobs and it would drive them to work for the Taliban as suicide bombers/combatants. Its a huge catch 22, the poppy fields help fund the taliban but well they are growing and being harvested the money the drug lords pay to the afgans working in them helps to keep them from joining the taliban. There are only two possible solutions for this, and one is being tried, helping to introduce another cash crop that the world can buy or two, its been floated that we the western world just outright allow the poppy fields to continue and we buy the product or assist the pharmaceutical companies to buy it for manufacturing into pain killers.
Why not own the market
Canada is the world’s no. 1 consumer of codeine, importing an estimated $100 million worth of opium-related painkillers every year, Facchini said.
It makes sense for Alberta farmers to consider growing opium poppies, he said.
“Farmers benefit because they could cultivate the opium poppy as a cash crop to supplement their production of commodities like wheat and barley, for example,” he said.
“You could also build the processing plant nearby. This is what has been done in Tasmania in Australia, where the raw plant material would be transported to a nearby pharmaceutical processing plant and turned into pharmaceutical products.”
Facchini said the industry could inject $100 million a year into the Canadian economy.
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/edmonton/story/2007/02/06/alberta-poppies.html
I suspect he was a spy and these things happen in that business. There’s more going on here than we’re being told.
Exile, I personally don’t care about the plight of Bert, except to ask if he was truly given due process, which I doubt. Anyway, re: poppy crop – there is only one solution, and it is a military one. Whether the decision is to buy or destroy the crop, larger military forces will be required. My preference is that the crop be bought for the legal opiate market; but, Taliban Jack types must be on opium if they think it’s that simple. The warlords and Taliban (one in the same IMO) who presently control distribution are not going to stand by. The Pakistani/Afghan border will have to be sealed, and any incursions must be met by swift and decisive action (not going to happen because civilians would get killed, and, after all, that is the Taliban’s job)
Of course none of this is going to happen, because the left has such sway in the West that they get to have it both ways – they sabotage the means for victory (idiotic rules of engagement, kumbaya crap about negotiations, insistence we anounce our departure now), then claim the mission is failing because of military and government incompetence to score political points.
When government tries to explain good military forces are doing and plan for next evolution of mission, then MSM hypocritically says Harper not sticking with mission. What a bunch of moonbat idiots, making a major attack, and subsequent world war type of conflict inevitable. Of course, that’ll be Duya’s fault, even though he was still in school snorting coke when this current s**t streak began.
Looking forward to General Grant’s presentations, though unlikely to get proper hearing on MSM – it’s up to Kate and others to carry ball on this issue. MSM will keep doing what they’ve been doing all along, moving the goalposts. It’s up to the public to listen and educate themselves on this issue; not real optimistic on that front either. We’re gonna have to shoot the works and go for CPC majority ASAP.
Yowza- buy the crop, sell it to the CIA, (they can import it into the USA by stuffing it into the coffins of dead US soldiers. Sell it in the States, and use the profits to supply weapons to the Contras! Bizness as usual…….
Here we have a war on drugs hawk doing serious time for a drug non-crime, just like innumerable drug war victims worldwide. Poetic justice. Sweet.
Sheik Yerbottie, you’ve just illustrated the idiot moonbat front approach. I guess you think it’s funny when women have no rights whatsoever, and nutbars plan the destruction of free society.
It seems beyond you to say anything constructive, just stupid comments about something that happened twenty years ago that has absolutely zero to do with we’re taking about here. Keep drinking that anti-Bush/USA koolaid, you twerp.
F*****g moron!! You need to spend some time with the Taliban. For a real laugh tell them you’re a socialist homosexual – they’ll love that.
Folks, this twit is precisely what I’m referring to – moonbat idiots who get their info from Taliban Jack and James Travers, who have no problem enabling horrendous suffering and exposing us to a major war.
When this does happen, Sheik, I hope you get drafted for the fron lines – that would be delicious irony.
I have read the occasional media reports around Bert and his situation. And I have been to the site link that Kate provided here, as well as the links within that site.
I still do not know what entity pays Bert to be in Afghanistan, working with the locals and their ‘poppy crop’. It does appear that Bert decided, against better advice, to spend a “day and a half” in Dubai: a territory with, it seems, zero tolerance for illicit drugs. Bert’s friends describe him as a likeable, intelligent guy. Fair enough. But still an uninformed guy for someone working, legally we are told, with illicit drugs. None of this explains why he seemingly chose to put the zero-tolerance position of his Dubai hosts to the test. Or why he wanted to buy a gold watch in Dubai: or where he got the money to buy said watch. Nor does it explain why the Dubai authorities were reportedly able to detect illicit materials in urine samples Bert apparently provided. When all is said and done, it is the law of Dubai that is going to prevail in this case. Bert is described as an educated man…….who, like others before him, rolled the dice. Until some of these anomalies are suitably explained, and notwithstanding the whining from his ‘left’ coast NDP groupie friends, Canada’s New Government should not touch this case with the proverbial ‘bargepole’!
Well said, Shamrock. Not the first time that leftard has made an idiotic comment. If the draft does come, there is no doubt that I would be recalled for training purposes. How sweet would that be. Running moonbats through boot camp. Delicious irony indeed! GO ARMY!
Richfisher
One potential issue/ non issue (depends on which side of the border you sit) with “Owning the market” I could imagine; is the simple minded PC idiots that would then decide to flood the Canadian market with thousands of ex Taliban refugee “experts” to manage and maintain the crops. Only they would know how to grow the desired poppy strains, and it would be deemed our duty to replace their livelihoods. We could then feel content that we’ve done the right thing for these unfortunate mutants and grow even more as Canadians with their cultural blessings. Eventually over time as their voting numbers along their welfare subsidized farming communities swell, they would repay us in kind. We’d save them a ton of money in export costs not to mention it would be legal – just like back in the old country. At least Canadian soldiers wouldn’t need to travel far to peace keep.
It would appear that some countries don’t have “anything goes” laws.
@kingstontard:
You might as well savour the irony. Left-liberals coddling their all-but-explicit foes is a leading indicator of war clouds. All it’ll take for them to become bellicose is hard evidence that Islamo-fascists always meant what they said re. womens’ rights, “minority” rights and civil liberties.
It’s interesting, though, that the left-liberal practice of coddling Islamofascists shows that they now believe that words don’t mean all that much….
not a canadian in denial??