If I could, sir, I just want to get to that poppy one and those farmers, before I lose my train of thought—I'm a pretty simple soldier here.
We have to be careful about drawing direct linkages between eradication and starvation. In the first place, there is a lot of mythology about the Afghanistan counter-narcotics strategy. I don't have it at hand, but there is a comprehensive strategy, and eradication is not the main focus of that strategy; alternative livelihoods are.
But it's more complicated than that. To create alternative livelihoods you have to have roads that can take crops from the farmer's field to the market centre, and you need a market, both internal and external, etc. It's a complicated economic process.
Whether the poppy is eradicated or not, or whether that guy is growing it or not, the farmer is at the bottom end of the poppy-growing food chain in terms of the money. The economic model is like post-U.S. Civil War share-cropping at the end of an AK-47. The cartels provide the seed, the fertilizer, and what's needed to grow the crop. Once the crop is cut, they come and get it, so the farmer doesn't have to worry about all that stuff. But he's in debt for all of it. And when the crop comes off, he gets a certain amount of money, enough to basically keep his nose above water and feed his family at subsistence levels until the next cycle starts again. These guys are trapped, and it's very complex. So eradication is really the last resort, and I guess I can leave that one there.