The War-Ravaged, Opium-Dependent Country Lives In Fear Of A New Drug War The rotund landlord, Mr. Attock, sits on the carpeted floor of his little office and living quarters in Jalalabad, Afghanistan. From this one room he publishes a slight and sporadic weekly or sometimes monthly newspaper, but like most people around here, his real business is farming opium poppy. Mr. Attock's land lies about an hour and a half away in the countryside of Nangarhar province, near the Pakistani border, not too far from Tora Bora. [continues 3177 words]
The rotund landlord, Mr. Attock, sits on the carpeted floor of his little office and living quarters in Jalalabad, Afghanistan. From this one room he publishes a slight and sporadic weekly or sometimes monthly newspaper, but like most people around here, his real business is farming opium poppy. Mr. Attock's land lies about an hour and a half away in the countryside of Nangarhar province, near the Pakistani border, not too far from Tora Bora. "My dear, everyone grows poppy. Even me," says Mr. Attock in slightly awkward English as he leans over to grab my leg, again. Mr. Attock is a bundle of physical and intellectual energy, not all of it well focused. "My dear, you see. Listen. My dear, wheat is worthless. Everyone grows poppy. We will go to my village and you will see." [continues 3124 words]
It is noon in northern Afghanistan, Balkh province. The autumn sky is empty and bright. A tough 60-year-old farmer named Mamood sits for an interview in the shade of a tree. Surrounding us in all directions are fields of marijuana on the verge of harvest. The plants are tall, thick and fragrant, their dark green flowers glistening with potent oils. Soon the crop will be cut, dried and beaten against linen in small rooms to extract the resin that makes hashish. It's dirty work that falls primarily to women and children. The rooms fill with dust; asthma is a common occupational hazard. In a month the farmers will sow these same fields with opium poppy. After each crop come the marauding gunmen who collect "taxes" of 20 percent on the harvest. [continues 478 words]
Could it be that America's massive prison expansion is becoming another Vietnam: an intractable war full of lies and viciousness that lacerates society before finally collapsing in defeat? If so, that may be the good news. Vietnam eventually ended, but the insanity and racism of the American prison boom - we have four percent of the world's population but 25 percent of all prisoners, and half of all U.S. prisoners are black - are still in a "pre-Tet" stage of escalation. [continues 373 words]
More surveillance, less regard for due process marks collaboration among cops, feds, and military. FROM THE dark wastelands overlooking Tijuana's eastern slums, U.S. Border Patrol agent Albert Barrajas watches ghostly figures on the small black-and-white screen of his army-surplus infrared scope. "Aliens on the fence line," he informs me quietly. Three pale figures hoist themselves over the fence. Radios crackle, and Barrajas directs his team of Bronco-driving agents down toward "echo four section." The would-be migrants scatter; two dash into a drainpipe leading back to Mexico, while the third runs panicked along the cold metal fence. [continues 2580 words]
By Christian Parenti In 1964 a tsunami swept over Crescent City, California completely destroying the downtown. Only nine people died, but the town nestled just below the Oregon bordernever recovered. It was rebuilt as a shabby imitation of Southern California's worst planning examples; empty parking spaces and boxlike buildings dominate the landscape. In 1989 another tsunami hitthis time the tidal wave was political. The California Department of Corrections (CDC) rolled in, and with little opposition, built the sprawling, $277.5 million Pelican Bay State Prison, one of the newest, meanest supermax prisons in the system. Pelican Bay is now an international model of sensory deprivation and isolation; half the inmates are deemed incorrigible and locked in their cells 23 hoursaday. The prison is also Crescent City and Del Norte county's largest employerand, some say, its new colonial master. The new prison has political and economic clout which is all the more exaggerated due to Crescent City's extreme isolation and poverty. Only 4 of the area's 17 sawmills were still in operation when the prison arrived, commercial salmon fishing was dead, and during the mid 1980s, 164 businesses had gone under. By the time the CDC came scouting for a new prison site, unemployment had reached 20 percent. Del Norte County, with Crescent City at its heart, was in a seemingly terminal economic torporthe prison was its only hope. It is a situation that has been replicated a dozen times in recent yearsfrom Bowling Green, Missouri to rural Florida to Dannemora, New Yorkeconomically battered small towns are rolling over for new prisons. In fact, punishment is such a big industry in the American countryside, that, according to the National Criminal Justice Commission, 5 percent of the growth in rural population between 1980 and 1990 is accounted for by prisoners. But the story of the rural prison boom is not all rosy economic statistics, critics say prisons bring an array of political costs. "We're a penal colony, plain and simple. This is California's Siberia or Guyana," says John Levy, a Crescent City lawyer, who used to make his living defending Pelican Bay prisoners charged with committing crimes in prison. Levy says that, at least in Crescent City, the CDC's power extends far beyond the prison gate and prison officials use economic leverage and violent intimidation to silence dissent. Several other persecuted defense attorneys, former guards, and community members, tell a similar story. For the most part, people in Del Norte county don't agree, they're just happy to have jobs. Pelican Bay provides 1,500 jobs, an annual payroll of $50 million dollars, and a budget of over $90 million. Indirectly, the prison has created work in everything from construction and pumping gas, to domestic violence counseling. The contract for hauling away the prison's garbage is worth $ 130,000 a yearbig money in the state's poorest county. Following the employment boom came almost 6,000 new residents, Del Norte's population (including 4,000 prisoners) is now 28,000. In the last ten years the average rate of housing starts doubled as has the value of local real estate. With the building boom came a huge Ace Hardware, a private hospital, and a 90,000 square foot KMart. Across from KMart is an equally mammoth Safeway. "In 1986 the county collected $73 million in sales tax; last year it was $142 million," says county assessor Jerry Cochran. On top of that, local government is saving money by using lowsecurity "levelone" prisoners instead of public works crews. Between January 1990 and December 1996, Pelican Bay inmates worked almost 150,000 hours on everything from school grounds to public buildings. According to one report, the prison labor, billed at $7 hour, would have cost the county at least $766,300. "Without the prison we wouldn't exist," says Cochran. [continues 1499 words]
