Pubdate: Fri, 23 Feb 2007 Source: Vancouver Sun (CN BC) Copyright: 2007 The Vancouver Sun Contact: http://www.canada.com/vancouver/vancouversun/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/477 Author: Barbara Yaffe, Vancouver Sun Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/decrim.htm (Decrim/Legalization) DION IS RIGHT: IT'S TIME TO TRY BACKING AFGHAN POPPY INDUSTRY At last -- some common sense is being brought to the debate about poppy cultivation in Afghanistan, thanks to the Liberal party. In a speech Thursday at the University of Montreal, Liberal leader Stephane Dion outlined his party's position on Canada's military role in the impoverished, war-ravaged nation. Sensibly, he advocated that Canada set a 2009 deadline for its NATO participation, after which another of the 26 member states can take over. He called for Canada to focus more on reconstruction and training, to enable the Afghans to run the show. Dion also echoed an endorsement last week by deputy leader Michael Ignatieff of the Senlis Council's proposal for a pilot project to test a highly controversial initiative -- nurturing a legitimate industry from poppy fields that traditionally have supplied the illegal global opium trade and, in the process, given economic sustenance to Afghan farmers. At present, when it comes to poppy production -- an enterprise accounting for a stunning 60 per cent of Afghanistan's GDP -- NATO's entire focus is on eradicating the crop. The council -- an international policy think-tank with offices in the Afghan cities of Kabul, Kandahar and Helmand, several European capitals and, just recently, Ottawa -- has for some time been saying that poppy eradication negatively affects support for NATO. It argues that, instead of winning hearts and minds, poppy culls are fuelling the insurgency. This isn't a far-fetched analysis. If NATO troops are taking away the only economic option many Afghans have, why would they be supportive? Desperate people are less interested in democracy than in feeding their families. Afghans are so desperate some four million have become refugees in Iran and Pakistan. The country of 25 million has a 36-per-cent literacy rate. Unemployment runs at 40 per cent. It's not as though near-term prospects for developing high-tech or tourism industries are promising. Who would invest where there's so much violence and infrastructure gaps are overwhelming? Poppy-growing is what Afghans know. Climate and soil conditions are right. Other crops? A quarter-century of war has left farm infrastructure such as grain silos and sugar mills in ruins. As Vanda Felbab-Brown, a Harvard University researcher, wrote last March in the Christian Science Monitor, "the success in curbing drug production in Afghanistan has thus come at the price of undermining state-building and empowering the insurgency." Meanwhile, the Senlis Council notes that the World Health Organization has cited an unprecedented global pain crisis, and that "Afghanistan has an unprecedented potential for producing a significant part of the missing opium-based medicines." According to the Vienna-based International Narcotics Control Board, nearly 80 per cent of opium-based painkillers are consumed in just seven wealthy countries: the U.S., the U.K., France, Spain, Italy, Japan and Australia. Opiate medicines are under-prescribed due, in part, to cost considerations. And so, official estimated requirements that regulate the globally permitted production of opiates habitually underestimate genuine need. The Senlis Council calculates that, in 2002, more than 10 per cent of Afghanistan's annual production of 4,100 tonnes of opium could be diverted be from the illegal drug trade as part of a new system of licensed opium production. NATO money being spent on counter-insurgency and counter-narcotics initiatives is in a sense money down the drain, fighting causes that are difficult or impossible to win. Why not channel those dollars into a regulated industry in Afghanistan, one that would help people get out of poverty and perhaps develop a stake in having an orderly economy free of drug-financed warlords? The question isn't even under discussion by NATO-member governments. A knee-jerk anti-drug posture appears to be thwarting any experimentation with new strategies. So kudos to Dion, who, in his Montreal speech advocating the proposed pilot project on legalized poppy production, stated, "If we do not start to think creatively about the problem of the drug economy the situation will never get better." Canada has a large stake in seeing the Afghan economy improve, particularly in the south where poppies flourish. It's time to debate pros and cons of legalized poppy production. - --- MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman