Pubdate: Tue, 24 Jan 2006
Source: Korea Herald, The (South Korea)
Copyright: 2006 Korea Herald
Contact:  http://www.koreaherald.co.kr/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/909
Author: Emma Bonino
Note: Emma Bonino is a member of the European Parliament
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topics/afghanistan

AFGHANISTAN'S OPIUM FUTURE

This month, the European Parliament adopted a resolution on
Afghanistan that could pave the way for a new and more open-minded
approach to counter-narcotics strategies worldwide.

In fact, the resolution calls on the participants at a conference of
donors, to take place in London at the end of January, "to take into
consideration the proposal of licensed production of opium for medical
purposes, as already granted to a number of countries."

This proposal was originally made by the Senlis Council, an
independent organization based in Paris, during a workshop in Kabul
last September. The text introduced by the European Liberal Democrats,
with the support of virtually all political groups in the European
Parliament, is revolutionary, not only because it goes against
conventional thinking, but also because it raises the issue above the
stagnant reality of the "war on drugs." In Afghanistan, that so-called
war has essentially been based on eradication campaigns and
alternative livelihood projects, which have achieved only scant results.

The European Parliament's new stance may, I hope, mark the beginning
of a radical policy shift by all actors involved in rebuilding
Afghanistan.

According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, despite
concerted efforts at eradication and crop substitution, Afghanistan
produced 87 percent of the world's opium in 2005 - roughly 4.1 tons -
generating $2.7 billion of illegal revenue, which amounts to roughly
52 percent of the country's GDP. The 2005 Afghanistan Opium Survey,
released last November, estimates that the total value of this opium,
once turned into heroin and distributed around the world, could reach
more than $40 billion.

Moreover, in recent years, factories and laboratories for processing
opium into heroin have been sprouting in Afghanistan, producing 420
tons of heroin last year alone.

The increase in domestic heroin production has provided a massive
boost to the local retail market, giving rise to concerns about
HIV/AIDS spreading in a country with poor infrastructure and
nonexistent health services.

In addition, the itineraries used by the export convoys are no longer
limited to the infamous "golden route" through Pakistan and Iran, but
have multiplied, employing exit points in former Soviet Republics such
as Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan. This is helping to
promote further instability in already volatile political contexts.

International counter-narcotics policy is currently driven by pressure
for rapid and visible results.

But eradication and alternative livelihood projects mainly affect the
lowest end of the value-added chain, the farmers, with no real impact
on those higher up, such as large landowners and local traffickers,
not to mention the extremely powerful drug lords and the international
cartels and mafias.

Most landless farmers find it difficult to switch to different crops,
being caught up as they are in the illegal opium-denominated market,
which forces them to live at the mercy of the drug traffickers, who
provide them with access to credit and market outlets.

The result of this was laid out in a report by the European Union's
Election Observation Mission that I presented in Kabul last December:
Afghanistan risks becoming a "rentier" state with easy access to
resources that lubricate corruption throughout its entire political
system, finance illegal armed groups, and fuel regional
destabilization. Illicit Afghan networks, replicating well-known
methods that organized crime has applied successfully for decades in
other parts of the world, are mobile and resourceful, and can plug into
a range of legal economic activities to sustain themselves.

This might lead Afghanistan into a situation of no return: becoming a
narco-state that drifts away from any form of rule of law and
disengages itself from the fragile social contract with its own
citizens that it has started to establish.

As New York University's Barnett Rubin, an expert on Afghan society
has put it: "Afghanistan cannot be stabilized while the most dynamic
sector of its economy is illegal, nor if more than half of its economy
is destroyed."

So what should be done?

Because of the serious threat that the illegal drug economy poses to
stability and democracy in Afghanistan, we must start thinking in
terms of regulated poppy growing for medical purposes, in particular
for painkillers, with the active participation of donor countries and
the United Nations itself.

Indeed, the United Nations estimates that just six countries prescribe
78 percent of the total legal production of opiates, implying
shortages of opium-based painkillers in many of the United Nations'
185 other member states.

Hence the potential legal demand is huge.

Moreover, the United Nations also estimates that there are 45 million
people living with HIV/AIDS in countries where health systems are
either absent or very poor, and that over the next 20 years there will
be some 10 million new cases of cancer in the developing world.

These estimates, together with poor countries' additional needs when
natural catastrophes strike, imply that the potential legal demand for
medicinal opiates is even higher.

An increase in production of "medical" opium would address its lack of
availability worldwide.

It would also provide Afghan peasants, who have been growing poppy
despite forced eradication of the plant and incentives to change
crops, with an option that is regulated by law and that, in time,
could have an impact on the heroin trade.

Governments, international organizations and individuals that
participate in the London conference must not dismiss the call made by
the European Parliament, for it offers a far more workable strategy to
promote Afghanistan's future than the current counter-narcotics
policies permit.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Larry Seguin