Pubdate: Fri, 02 Mar 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: Andrew Thomson, CanWest News Service
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/heroin.htm (Heroin)

WORLD NEEDS AN OPIUM MARKETING BOARD: REPORT

Former NATO Official Criticizes Poppy-Eradication Programs

OTTAWA -- An international marketing board for opium, similar to 
Canada's wheat board, would better fight terrorism and the booming 
drug trade in Afghanistan instead of current poppy-eradication 
programs, a former NATO ambassador says.

Destroying poppy crops, a major plank of American and British policy, 
only drives farmers closer to the Taliban, said Gordon Smith, 
Canada's NATO ambassador between 1985 and 1990. He's the lead author 
of a report released Thursday that urges the continuation of Canada's 
military presence beyond the current 2009 deadline, but also says 
current NATO policies need a shake-up.

His study, prepared for the Calgary-based Canadian Defence and 
Foreign Affairs Institute, urged the creation of an international 
clearing house to purchase opium crops.

Afghanistan remains the largest heroin producing and trafficking 
country, producing more than 90 per cent of the world's opium poppy 
supply in 2006. That's 172,000 hectares according to recent American 
estimates -- a 61 per cent jump from the previous year. Opium exports 
account for one-third of the country's combined licit and illicit 
GDP, according to the United Nations.

"In a perfect world nobody would be allowed to grow poppies and all 
would be well," Smith said Thursday. "It would never be leak-proof. 
It's not a frightfully good option, but it's better than any others 
that anyone else has come forward with."

Fair opium prices and central regulation by the Afghan government and 
foreign states would also help alleviate international morphine 
shortages, said Smith, a former deputy minister of foreign affairs 
and now the executive director of the University of Victoria's Centre 
for Global Studies.

Poppy cultivation remains the only lucrative career choice for many 
impoverished Afghans.

But strong links exist between Afghanistan's burgeoning narco-economy 
and the Taliban insurgence against NATO and Afghan forces, according 
to a U.S. State Department report also released Thursday.

"Traffickers provide weapons, funding, and personnel to the Taliban 
in exchange for the production of drug trade routes, poppy fields, 
and members of their organizations," the report said.

Barnett Rubin, a former UN adviser on Afghanistan, argued in 2003 
that the marketing board concept would represent disaster for small 
Afghan farmers, keeping prices low along the lines of African coffee, 
tea, and, cocoa boards. An auction house in Kabul, with sales taxed 
by the central government, represented a better idea, said Rubin, a 
New York University professor.

Smith said Thursday his group has no specific plan to implement an 
opium marketing board. He's not the first to suggest the idea.

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf told a British magazine recently 
that western governments should buy the Afghan poppy crop. John 
Ralston Saul, the Canadian author and philosopher, also raised the 
marketing board idea last summer, based on visits to Afghanistan with 
his wife, former governor general Adrienne Clarkson. And the Senlis 
Council, a British think-tank, proposed a poppy licensing system for 
Afghanistan last year, pointing to U.S. agreements with Turkey aimed 
at reducing that country's massive heroin output during the early-1970s.

Smith said the CDFAI report aimed to find a common ground between 
opponents of the Afghan mission who want withdrawal, and those who 
believe Canada's policies should remain unchanged.

The report also criticized Canada's allies in continental Europe for 
failing to appreciate the gravity of Afghanistan's teetering status 
within their own national interests.
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MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman