Afghanistan Bananastan

Just read a story in the paper about finding 500,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate fertilizer in Afghanistan (couldn't find the story on my paper's website, or the Times either, whence it supposedly came). They busted a couple of dozen people. It looks like they were using this stuff to make bombs. But then I thought: it could all be a put up job. Any countries biggest business is agriculture (big in volume of material and land area, not in money), and fertilizer has legitimate uses, like being used as fertilizer. So secret bomb material cache -or- legitimate fertilizer warehouse? Of course, having a bunch of other bomb making material on hand (like timers, wires, diesel fuel) does make it look a little suspicious. Of course, those items also have legitimate uses in agriculture. Farm equipment runs on diesel, irrigation needs timers, and timers need wires, and a dry place like Afghanistan could use some irrigation. So if it's not just the good ol' boys havin' a little fun, then we may have put a real crimp in bomb making in Afghanistan .

This whole Afghanistan thing has been percolating in the back of my mind lately, and I am beginning to wonder just why we are there. Our avowed purpose is to wipe out Al-Queda and terrorism in general, but we don't seem to be making any real progress there. I mean we are trying to stop the beaters from beating other people, and at the same time we are trying to teach them to be civilized, and all the while we are trying to pull the wagon train out of swamp where it has been mired for the last 500 years. I am beginning to think it is just all too much.

Then there is the conspiracy theory that says we want control of Afghanistan so we can build a pipeline to India. That one has to be really convoluted because the Russians would be using it to sell the oil to India. Okay, we could have some Russians and Indians in cahoots with some people in Washington to get this done, but man, the payoff time is in years, and iffy to boot. It's a stretch to believe something like that.

But then we have heroin. Whenever TV show detectives get some screwed up case that makes no sense, they fall back on the adage of "follow the money", and the only money in Afghanistan is in poppies. But then we still don't know who is benefiting from the US being there. Are we trying to make Afghanistan safe for heroin producers? Or are we trying to gain control so we can suppress it, because Afghan heroin is competing with SE Asian heroin, and somebody doesn't like that.

Title comes from a line in the movie The Hot Rock. It seems to be a popular title for articles this week.