Pubdate: Tue, 16 Jan 2007
Source: Washington Post (DC)
Page: A19
Copyright: 2007 The Washington Post Company
Contact:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/491
Author: Anne Applebaum
Cited: http://www.senliscouncil.org/modules/Opium_licensing
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topics/Senlis+Council
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topic/Afghanistan

ENDING AN OPIUM WAR

Poppies and Afghan Recovery Can Both Bloom

Once, the British Empire fought a war for the right to sell opium in 
China. In retrospect, history has judged that war destructive and 
wasteful, a shameless battle of colonizers against the colonized that 
in the end helped neither one.

Now, NATO is fighting a war to eradicate opium from Afghanistan. 
Allegedly, the goals this time around are different. According to the 
British government, Afghanistan's illicit drug trade poses the 
"gravest threat to the long term security, development, and effective 
governance of Afghanistan," particularly since the Taliban is 
believed to be the biggest beneficiary of drug sales. Convinced that 
this time they are doing the morally right thing, Western governments 
are spending hundreds of millions of dollars bulldozing poppy fields, 
building up counternarcotics squads and financing alternative crops 
in Afghanistan. Chemical spraying may begin as early as this spring. 
But in retrospect, might history not judge this war to be every bit 
as destructive and wasteful as the original Opium Wars?

Of course it isn't fashionable right now to argue for any legal form 
of opiate cultivation. But look at the evidence. At the moment, 
Afghanistan's opium exports account for somewhere between one-third 
and two-thirds of the country's gross domestic product, depending on 
whose statistics you believe. The biggest producers are in the 
southern provinces where the Taliban is at its strongest, and no 
wonder: Every time a poppy field is destroyed, a poor person becomes 
poorer -- and more likely to support the Taliban against the Western 
forces who wrecked his crops. Yet little changes: The amount of land 
dedicated to poppy production grew last year by more than 60 percent, 
as The Post reported last month.

So central is the problem that Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, 
has called opium a "cancer" worse than terrorism -- and crop-spraying 
may make things worse. Not only will it cause environmental and 
health damage, it will feel to the local population like a military 
attack, as Western planes drop poisonous chemicals from the sky.

Yet by far the most depressing aspect of the Afghan poppy crisis is 
that it exists at all -- because it doesn't have to. To see what I 
mean, look at the history of Turkey, where once upon a time the drug 
trade also threatened the country's political and economic stability. 
Just like Afghanistan, Turkey had a long tradition of poppy 
cultivation. Just like Afghanistan, Turkey worried that poppy 
eradication could "bring down the government." Just like Afghanistan, 
Turkey -- this was the era of "Midnight Express"-- was identified as 
the main source of the heroin sold in the West. Just like in 
Afghanistan, a ban was tried, and it failed.

As a result, in 1974 the Turks, with American and U.N. support, tried 
a different tactic. They began licensing poppy cultivation for the 
purpose of producing morphine, codeine and other legal opiates. Legal 
factories were built to replace the illegal ones. Farmers registered 
to grow poppies, and they paid taxes. You wouldn't necessarily know 
this from the latest White House drug strategy report-- which devotes 
several pages to Afghanistan but doesn't mention Turkey -- but the 
U.S. government still supports the Turkish program, even requiring 
U.S. drug companies to purchase 80 percent of what the legal 
documents euphemistically refer to as "narcotic raw materials" from 
the two traditional producers, Turkey and India.

Why not add Afghanistan to this list? The only good arguments against 
doing so -- as opposed to the silly, politically correct "just say 
no" arguments -- are technical: that the same weak or nonexistent 
bureaucracy will be no better at licensing poppy fields than it has 
been at destroying them, or that some of the raw material will still 
fall into the hands of the drug cartels. Yet some of these issues can 
be resolved, by building processing factories at the local level and 
working within local power structures. And even if the program 
succeeds in stopping only half of the drug trade, a huge chunk of 
Afghanistan's economy will still emerge from the gray market; the 
power of the drug barons will be reduced; and, most important, 
Western money will have been visibly spent helping Afghan farmers 
survive, instead of destroying their livelihoods. The director of the 
Senlis Council, a group that studies the drug problem in Afghanistan, 
told me he reckons that the best way to "ensure more Western soldiers 
get killed" is to expand poppy eradication.

Besides, things really could get worse. It isn't so hard to imagine, 
two or three years down the line, yet another emergency presidential 
speech, calling for a "surge" of troops to southern Afghanistan -- 
where impoverished villagers, having turned against the West, are 
joining the Taliban in droves. Before we get there, maybe it's worth 
letting some legal poppies bloom. 
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake