Declaring victory...and abandoning Afghanistan to its opium barons?

“Afghanistan is still a violent place, a dangerous place for its citizens, and we’re working to improve things for them. But this country does not represent a geo-strategic risk to the world. It is no longer a source of global terrorism. This is a tremendous accomplishment, one that obviously serves Canadian interests.”

So said Canada’s recently re-elected Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper on Monday, as he hailed the end of his country’s armed forces’ combat role in the Afghan province of Kandahar.

The prime minister went out of his way to put an optimistic spin on another aspect of the situation in Afghanistan that never gets much mention in the Canadian media (and sporadic coverage in Western media generally). A reporter claims to have overheard Harper observe that “he saw fewer opium poppy fields than before [on previous visits to Afghanistan].”