A recent opinion article in the Stumptown news argued that if Vietnam is any example, then we should stay the course in Afghanistan. A picture of uniformed workers in a clean, modern Nike shoe factory was thoughtfully provided should any reader wish to doubt the author's claim of Vietnam's unqualified postwar economic success.
US Person read another news story that gave him more than enough reason not to want a repeat of the "success" of Vietna
m. Vietnam's Ministry of Agriculture & Rural Development
told workshop attendees that at the end of the war in 1975, an estimated 2,000 Asian elephants still roamed the forests. Now, that number has dropped to 80. There may have been a million elephants living across Asia as late as 1900 [map]. Predictably, deforestation and poaching are the main reasons given by the Ministry for the precipitous drop in population. The Vietnam War took a huge toll on Vietnam's forests which were bombed and defoliated with Agent Orange. Undoubtedly elephants were among the victims of the US campaign against an enemy that used the forests as a stronghold. Human population increases and economic development after the war have also been responsible for rapid loss of elephant habitat. There have been news reports of enraged elephants attacking villagers as their terr
itories shrink. The few elephants remaining in the wild are grouped in the Central Highlands and southern Dong Nai Province. Estimates of illegal wildlife products passing through Vietnam are around 4,000 tons a year, and Vietnamese ivory prices could be the highest in the world with reports of tusks selling for up $1500 a kilogram. Smaller cut pieces are sold for as much as $1863 according to
TRAFFIC, an international conservation group that monitors the trade. Selling ivory was outlawed in Vietnam in 1992, but a loophole allows traders to sell the stock in their possession prior to the ban, making law enforcement difficult.