John Oliver discusses the United States Agency for International Development, why the Trump Administration has gutted it, who is being impacted, and how the Cha Cha Slide can help us get to the bottom of this.
John Oliver discusses the United States Agency for International Development, why the Trump Administration has gutted it, who is being impacted, and how the Cha Cha Slide can help us get to the bottom of this.
From an article dated last year:
“This is false. USAID never intended to support opium poppy cultivation or the Taliban, and in fact the United States sought to stem it. The White House cites a right-wing news site’s account of a 2018 report by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) — whom President Donald Trump recently fired — that found that USAID efforts to fund alternative development projects during the George W. Bush administration (2005 to 2008) had failed. The Taliban before 2001 had successfully banned poppy cultivation, but the U.S. invasion led to a power vacuum that was exploited by poppy growers. USAID was the lead U.S. agency for implementing alternative development projects, modeled after a more successful effort in Colombia, but the report documented how conflicts among agencies and with allies hampered the effort. It’s a stretch to now, years later, accuse USAID of helping the Taliban.”
Also, before you come at me for posting a WaPo link, the author of that Yahoo article is a hardline Libertarian and right wing weirdo. He’s literally an editor of Reason Magazine. So, I’ll take the WaPo article over him just about any day of the week.
Is the US or the Taliban responsible?
The power vacuum created by the invasion of Afghanistan is not the same as USAID funding poppy farming. Correlation is not causation. When the Taliban was overthrown local poppy growers took advantage. We didn’t move in there with the intent to grow more opium.