Afghan drug problem solved,
praise the laudanum By Ramtanu
Maitra
Reports indicate the West is now
working toward a "solution" to the opium explosion
in Afghanistan, namely the licensing of legal
opium production for medical purposes.
The
formal proposal was floated in September by the
Senlis Council, a French think tank on narcotics.
The council's study was conducted in partnership
with Kabul University as well as academic centers
in Europe and North America, such as Ghent
University, Lisbon University and the University
of Toronto.
The proposal comes in the wake
of a general admission by Washington, its adjunct
in Kabul and the United Nations that eradication
of drugs in Afghanistan cannot be accomplished by
the warriors against terror.
Touching a
sensitive chord, however, Afghanistan's Counter-
Narcotics Minister Habibullah
Qaderi questioned the timing of the Senlis report.
"We don't want to confuse the Afghan people,
because while the government on the one hand wants
to control and stop cultivation, we are talking
about licensing."
What Qaderi did not say
was that the West, being unable to eradicate
opium, is moving to repackage Afghanistan's
uncontrollable scourge as a legalized and
regulated industry, to be included along with
elections among the "democratic successes" in that
benighted land.
Scale of the
problem The massive annual growth in opium
production coincided with the "liberation" of
Afghanistan from the Taliban by US occupation
forces in the winter of 2001. Having registered
unprecedented growth in 2002, 2003 and 2004, the
2005 harvest showed a slight reduction. But if the
numbers made public are correct, the reduction
will not affect the drug users of Europe
significantly.
In its Afghanistan Opium
Survey 2005, the United Nations Office on Drugs
and Crime (UNODC) reported that the area of opium
cultivation in the country decreased by 21% from a
record high of 131,000 hectares to 104,000
hectares. In other words, one out of five opium
fields cultivated in 2004 was not replanted in
2005. This decline in cultivation was attributed
to several factors: the farmers' choice to refrain
from poppy cultivation, the government's
eradication program, the ban on opium and law
enforcement activities.
But according to
UNODC Executive Director Antonio Maria Costa,
despite the overall decline in cultivation,
Afghanistan remains far and away the world's
largest supplier of opium (87%). According to the
UN survey, opium production in Afghanistan in
2005, by comparison with the production figures in
2004, dropped by only 2.4%. Favorable weather
conditions resulted in a 22% higher yield.
Cultivation also increased in some provinces. In
2005, the drug economy accounted for 52% of the
country's gross domestic product.
If
you can't beat it ... At least a year
before the Senlis Council stuck its neck out on
behalf of the United States and NATO,
hand-wringing in Washington over the West's
inability to curb opium production in Afghanistan
had begun in earnest.
After the record
production of more than 4,200 tons of opium in
2004, not only officials serving the Bush
administration - the Pentagon, in particular - but
also behind-the-scenes policy directors lodged in
various think tanks, began putting forward
arguments against taking on the drug warlords.
For example, Doug Bandow, a senior fellow
at the Cato Institute (a non-profit public policy
research foundation headquartered in Washington)
and a former special assistant to Ronald Reagan,
writing soon after the presidential elections in
Afghanistan last fall, acknowledged that
"controlling opium trafficking has not been the
top US priority in Afghanistan".
Therefore, the opium explosion in
Afghanistan during the US occupation should not be
considered a US failure. Although the Defense
Department is careful to appear to be cooperative,
Bandow points out, US forces have largely ignored
drug trafficking unrelated to enemy action.
"Attempting to suppress the drug trade with more
than rhetoric will make it even harder to defeat
the Taliban and al-Qaeda," he said. "Yet
Washington's most important goal today remains
destroying transnational anti-US terrorist
networks, led by al-Qaeda."
Soon after the
Senlis Council came out with its study, a view
similar to Bandow's was expressed by another Cato
Institute academic and vice president for defense
and foreign policy studies, Ted Galen Carpenter.
In a recent article he argues that the US military
must not become an enemy of Afghan farmers whose
livelihood depends on growing opium poppy.
"If zealous American drug warriors
alienate hundreds of thousands of Afghan farmers,
the Karzai government's hold on power, which is
none too secure now, could become even more
precarious," he wrote. "Washington would then face
the unpalatable choice of letting radical
Islamists regain power or sending more US troops
to suppress the insurgency."
Throwing an
economic spin into his argument, Carpenter pointed
out that for many Afghans involvement in the
cultivation of opium poppy crops and other aspects
of drug commerce is "the difference between modest
prosperity and destitution. They will not look
kindly on efforts to destroy their livelihood."
According to Carpenter, US efforts to
eradicate Afghanistan's opium crop actually amount
to beating plowshares into swords: such efforts
drive Afghan farmers, who have so far helped in
the "war against terror", straight into the arms
and camps of anti-American terrorists.
Naivety or avoidance? If Bandow
and Carpenter could be considered apologists for
burgeoning opium production in Afghanistan under
the US and NATO's close watch, Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice's statements prior to her October
2005 visit to Kabul demonstrated that, indeed,
Washington has nary a thought about the opium
explosion in Afghanistan.
In her news
conference en route to Kabul from Kyrgyzstan, Rice
heaped praise on the US "success" in Afghanistan
and congratulated the Karzai administration for
bringing about "remarkable progress".
On
the narcotics issue, however, all she could come
up with was the following: "I'm going to have a
meeting with the members of the cabinet who are
responsible for the narcotics problem and to
discuss with them how we might accelerate those
efforts. We and the British - the British, of
course, have the lead on this - [want] to help the
Afghans to root out narcotics. If they can do that
then I think they really have made a major step
forward in stabilization - they will have made a
major step forward in stabilization."
Several hard realities raise questions
about Rice's words. To begin with, Rice was fully
aware that the US Department of Defense had made
it clear that they would not antagonize the
warlords and thus forsake their friendly alliance
by going after opium cultivation.
Secondly, Rice is fully aware of the lack
of strength of the Hamid Karzai presidency. It has
been observed again and again that the writ of the
US-backed Karzai does not extend beyond Kabul. It
is ridiculous to try to make others believe that a
president, who has to depend for his personal
security on a foreign country - the occupying
forces, really - would be able to go on a campaign
to eradicate opium, battling hundreds of powerful
warlords and about 30% of all Afghan families.
Finally, opium is not domestic garbage.
Unfortunately, it is valuable, indeed, almost as
expensive as gold, if not more so in some
countries of the West. Those who bring it into
western Europe, and carry it further west,
generate enough money to corrupt not only the
security infrastructure but the entire political
economy of Europe. To suggest that a weak
president, without any real help from US and NATO
forces, will be able to eradicate opium in
Afghanistan is simply a cruel joke.
Moreover, while Carpenter concludes that
terrorist and other anti-government forces are
hand in glove with the opium growers and
traffickers, and that the connection between drug
trafficking and terrorism is a direct result of
making drugs illegal and, therefore, extremely
profitable, Rice chose to remain mum. During her
talks with reporters, she did not bring up the
close nexus between drugs and terrorism.
And along comes the Senlis
Council As Washington and London came to
the conclusion that opium eradication in
Afghanistan is neither useful nor of immediate
importance, the Senlis Council conveniently
trotted out its proposal and supporting study.
Prior to the feasibility study, funded by
a dozen European social policy foundations, the
council held a series of seminars to hone its
arguments. Because the Blair government in the UK
has been the loudest voice heard on eradication of
opium poppy in Afghanistan, the council held one
seminar, "The Opium Policy Challenge in
Afghanistan: Current Responses and New
Strategies," at the British House of Commons on
July 20.
The seminar brought together
British policymakers and senior officials
responsible for UK reconstruction policies in
Afghanistan, with representatives from United
Kingdom-based policy centers and organizations,
and academics engaged in research work on
Afghanistan, according to news reports. At the
seminar, Senlis Council Executive Director
Emmanuel Reinert presented the "Feasibility Study
on Opium Licensing in Afghanistan for the
Production of Morphine and other Essential
Medicines", ostensibly a ground-breaking project
to consider the licensing of opium production in
Afghanistan for medical uses.
In his
opening remarks, Chris Mullin, a British MP who is
chairman of the council, made clear Afghanistan's
reconstruction has been threatened by the failure
of current counter-narcotics policies and that
there exists no simple solution to the drugs
problem. Mullins told the audience to take a good
look at the study.
In response to
questions raised, Reinert explained the benefits
the Afghan farmers would gain within the proposed
legal and controllable framework. He also
explained the importance of non-governmental
organization involvement in achieving a successful
and viable intervention, especially with regard to
economic development, farming and health
treatment.
Though Western countries have
begun pushing the Senlis Council's concept as a
viable proposition, it was greeted with opposition
by Afghanistan. Afghanistan's Counter-Narcotics
Minister Habibullah Qaderi stated plainly that the
country's security system was still too weak to
police the legal production of opium.
"Without an effective control mechanism, a
lot of opium will still be refined into heroin for
illicit markets in the West and elsewhere. We
could not accept this," Qaderi said in a
statement.
UNODC, careful not to
antagonize the Western countries, said the
proposal would offer little attraction to opium
farmers because they would earn less selling their
crop on the legal market than on the black market.
The fallacy To sell the concept,
Reinert points out that the plan is modeled on
programs in India and Turkey, which have helped
reduce illegal opium production through a strictly
supervised licensing scheme backed by the US
Congress. In addition, legal opium production
programs are already in place in several other
countries, including Australia, France and Japan.
With India and Turkey these nations provide the
bulk of the world's legal opium for medicine,
notably morphine and codeine.
The salesman
in Reinert allowed him to suppress the obvious.
Neither in India nor Turkey, nor any of the other
countries that produce legal opium, does opium
make up 52% of the gross domestic product. None of
these countries has ever produced 87% of world's
opium annually. The fact of the matter is that
apart from Turkey, which did have a problem
concerning illegal production of opium poppy, no
other country mentioned has had any opium-related
problems. And none were ever under the control of
drug warlords.
The fact of the matter is
that the political system that has evolved in
Afghanistan following the US invasion is extremely
fragile, and verges on being a joke. What really
has been strengthened in Afghanistan since 2001 is
opium production. Afghanistan now has
"pro-democracy" drug warlords who raise illegal
opium by the hundreds of tons every year. But
pro-democracy sentiments notwithstanding, they
have so far remained illegitimate in the eyes of
the world.
Now, along comes the Senlis
Council to give legitimacy to what is otherwise a
political embarrassment. In their study, the
council recommends the government fast-track the
establishment of a national authority to license
opium producers and research an amnesty that would
"integrate illegal actors into the opium licensing
system".
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