Pubdate: Wed, 01 Nov 2006 Source: Daily Observer, The (CN ON) Copyright: 2006, Osprey Media Group Inc. Contact: http://www.thedailyobserver.ca/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2615 Author: Scott Taylor WHY NOT BUY AFGHAN POPPY CROPS? Last Week in Ottawa There Was a Conference Outlining the Current Situation in Afghanistan. One of the primary reports was tabled by the independent Senlis Council headed by president-founder Norine MacDonald. For the past 14 months, MacDonald has lived and worked in the Kandahar region where her council has monitored the progress of international development efforts. Despite the obvious security risks, the Senlis team live among the Afghans and do not operate with military escorts. As such, they are one of the very few foreign agencies still providing an insight into this Taliban-infested hostile corner of Afghanistan. One of the recommendations put forward by Senlis is admittedly neither a new suggestion nor a novel proposal. It simply echoes those made by a number of other think tanks that call upon the international community to purchase the Afghan poppy crops rather than trying to eradicate them. At the moment, poverty and unemployment are plaguing Afghanistan's recovery and the only growth industry is the rampant illegal drug trade. Estimated to be worth $3 billion annually, opium sales constitute over 60 per cent of the Afghan economy and drug dealers employ about 80 per cent of the workforce. The U.S. has determined that this glut of narcotics must be eliminated from the world market and already its military forces have been actively involved in wiping out the poppy fields. Deprived of their livelihood, the Afghan farmers have proven to be eager recruits for the insurgency. What Senlis (and others) propose is that, instead of destroying the poppies, we should encourage their cultivation and purchase the crops at fair market value. These plants can then be used to produce legitimate pharmaceuticals that could provide affordable drugs for Third World consumers. It should be remembered that the Afghan farmers are producers not consumers of these narcotics, so they are not going to be concerned about what final product results from their crop sales. The key to preventing the poppies from ending up as street drugs is to simply control the harvest timing. There are only a few days in the growth cycle during which the sap flows freely through the stem. It is at this point that the opiates can easily be extracted and turned into street drugs. This short harvest window is why the poppy-pickers are the highest paid agricultural workers in all of central Asia and it explains why the schools around Kandahar are cleared of students at this time because everyone is out harvesting poppies. Should the sap be allowed to harden in the stems, the opiate extraction process is far more difficult and requires specialized equipment. This is generally how pharmaceutical companies produce such painkillers as codeine and morphine. Through the use of aerial observation of controlled crops, it is theoretically possible to delay the poppy harvest until the plant reaches this more inert state and thus turns the crop into a legitimate product. At the moment, the American eradication process is not offset with any cash subsidies for the farmers. This leaves the Afghans without any means of income and dependent upon foreign aid handouts to survive. Thus, the same foreign coalition soldiers who are destroying their crops are also tasked with handing out a meagre sustenance. Understandably, many of the poppy growers have chosen instead to join the insurgency. The increased violence has reduced the flow of relief supplies even further and, in turn, the Afghan villagers suffering has increased. Despite the fact that the Senlis poppy purchase makes a lot of sense, there are those in the Canadian military community who believe that any suggestion of a policy change is an attack against "the mission." They believe that "staying the course" means barreling down a path clearly marked as "impending disaster." As such, the Senlis proposal had barely been tabled before the tub-thumping colonel blimps jumped into the fray to denounce the whole idea as poppycock. Clever quip aside, the main thrust of the old officers argument was that buying poppies directly from farmers would deny the druglords their profitable little empires. The street cost of the poppies would be just $760 million, which would cut about $2.3 billion out of Afghanistan's black market. These are great numbers, but one has to ask why it's necessary to eliminate the existing supply hierarchy? Obviously, in Canada we don't buy our medicine directly from farmers. To do so would certainly cut into the profitable little empires of the pharmaceutical companies. I suggest that instead of calling them "druglords" we call the Afghan suppliers "pharmaceutical executives" and turn the black market into free enterprise. To keep the dollar figures in perspective, the U.S. and coalition forces are presently spending more than $20 billion annually on military operation in Afghanistan. By that scale, paying $3 billion to stabilize the enemy and eliminate the illegal drug trade seems like quite a bargain. - --- MAP posted-by: Elaine