Pubdate: Sun, 05 Feb 2012
Source: San Francisco Chronicle (CA)
Copyright: 2012 Hearst Communications Inc.
Contact: http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle/submissions/#1
Website: http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/388
Page: E-5
Author: Joel Brinkley
Note: Joel Brinkley, a professor of journalism at Stanford 
University, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning former foreign correspondent 
for the New York Times.
Copyright: 2012 Joel Brinkley

DRUGS TRUMP AFGHANISTAN MILITARY CONCERNS

France can't seem to decide how quickly it will withdraw its troops 
from Afghanistan after a rogue Afghan soldier opened fire on unarmed 
French soldiers, killing four and wounding 15.

Over the past week, French officials have offered conflicting reports 
of their intentions, but it doesn't really matter whether the French 
stay or they go. Despite the gung-ho statements we are hearing from 
the NATO training program, most Afghan soldiers are simply unfit for duty.

In every nation, the army is a reflection of its country. How could 
it be any other way? Recruits are drawn from a cross-section of 
society - though most come from poorly educated, less well-off 
families. Well, in Afghanistan, virtually everyone is poor; the 
average annual income is about $400, and NATO says 80 percent of army 
recruits are illiterate. Most don't know even how to drive a car.

In most areas of Afghanistan, the government has no presence 
whatsoever - but the Taliban do. So it's no wonder that so many army 
recruits are actually Taliban plants who open fire on their supposed 
allies - a problem that "may be unprecedented" in "modern military 
history," said a classified U.S. military report quoted in the New 
York Times last month.

What's more, the army's desertion rate remains staggering. All of 
that is generally known. But add a corollary, less-known quandary to 
the mix, and you just want to throw up your hands. Most Afghan 
soldiers are regular drug users, even addicts. Why not, if soldiers 
are products of their national culture? Visit Kabul, as I have, and 
you'll see scores of half-conscious heroin addicts.

Afghanistan is the world's largest producer of opium, the raw 
ingredient of heroin. And a new United Nations Office on Drugs and 
Crime report shows "a clear relationship between growing poppy and 
growing cannabis." Almost two-thirds of the state's opium-poppy 
farmers also grow marijuana.

As a result, a favored line in Afghan and Pakistani news reports of 
late is that, among Afghan soldiers, "opium and hashish are their 
favorite foods."

Random drug tests in army and police units have found that drug use 
is rampant, pervasive. A Government Accountability Office report in 
2010 found that up to 40 percent were users. The Special Investigator 
for Afghan Reconstruction said the number was "at least 50 percent," 
and an Afghan journalist told me of one drug test that 70 percent failed.

Uncounted times, military officers, or journalists traveling with 
them, have reported watching soldiers light up joints before or 
during operations. The Daily Times, a Pakistani newspaper, quoted a 
U.S. Army trainer: "If we instituted drug testing in the Afghan army, 
we would lose three-quarters to 85 percent" of the troops.

One incident captured by a Wall Street Journal reporter embedded with 
a joint U.S.-Afghan force capsulized the broad problem. Mid-mission, 
as usual, several Afghan soldiers ran off, deserting. When their 
replacements arrived, they sat down and lit up joints.

That classified U.S. military report quoted one soldier as saying: 
"They're stoned all the time, some even on patrol with us."

Since the war began, Western forces have vacillated over whether to 
get into the business of drug enforcement, even though the Taliban 
fund themselves by levying a 10 percent tax on poppy farmers. In the 
first years after the 2001 invasion, the United States was fixated on 
military goals and paid little attention to the burgeoning opium crop.

By the mid 2000s, Western forces began eradicating the opium and 
trying to persuade farmers to grow alternative crops, such as wheat. 
But when foreign troops succeeded in one area, cultivation would 
thrive in another. It quickly turned into a Whac-a-Mole exercise.

Now, NATO doesn't even try. As the offensive in southern Afghanistan 
began in 2010, U.S. officers repeatedly said they were not going to 
trample on the livelihoods of the people they were trying to bring to 
their side. Since then, news photos have shown soldiers tramping 
through poppy fields on their way to missions. U.N. officers, among 
others, despair.

"We cannot afford to ignore the record profits for non-farmers, such 
as traders and insurgents, which in turn fuel corruption, criminality 
and instability," wrote Jean-Luc Lemahieu, the U.N. drug office's 
representative in Afghanistan.

The opium and marijuana provide sustaining income for the enemy. They 
feed rampant corruption, and they turn most Afghan soldiers into drug 
addicts. How can anyone think there's even the smallest chance of 
succeeding in Afghanistan while turning a blind eye to this problem?
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MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart