Hacker Cinema
The Battle for Marjah
2010 · Film · documentary · 68 min
Directed by Anthony Wonke
Tells the story of Operation Moshtarak, the biggest operation since the start of the Afghanistan war, whose main target was the Taliban stronghold of Marjah. For two months, VBS correspondent Ben Anderson got to know the American forces behind Operation Moshtarak and filmed the brutal realities of their life on the front lines.
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Spraying would be effective at destroying poppies in Afghanistan. There's nothing technical stopping poppies from being eradicated in Afghanistan, it's political more than anything. Opium cultivation in Afghanistan has been tolerated by the US and Afghan governments for a variety of reasons.
The USA discovered in the Vietnam War that destroying people's livelihood isn't a great way to win hearts and minds. Unfortunately half of Afghanistan's GDP comes from opium and heroin.
The Afghan government doesn't want to eradicate opium production because half of the government is involved in the opium trade.
The Russians actually wanted to spray the fields back in 2010, but the USA declined [1].
ISAF actually specifically avoided destroying poppy fields, if you watch documentaries from the Afghan War, like Restrepo or The Battle for Marjah, you'll see American troops just walking right through poppy fields and doing nothing.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-nato-russia-afghanistan/nato-rejects-russian-call-for-afghan-poppy-spraying-idUKTRE62N56U20100324