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.
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MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman