Pubdate: Sun, 19 Nov 2000
Source: New York Times (NY)
Copyright: 2000 The New York Times Company
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Author: Barbara Crossette

ITALIAN SOCIOLOGIST'S GOAL: MAKE OPIUM FARMING FADE INTO HISTORY

TASHKENT, Uzbekistan--Like the other former Soviet republics on the 
drug route dubbed the New Silk Road, Tajikistan lacks the resources 
to combat the flow of narcotics from neighboring Afghanistan en route 
to Russia and Western Europe.

Afghanistan is now the world's largest producer of opium, the base of 
a multibillion-dollar international heroin trade that feeds European 
addiction.

If Pino Arlacchi has anything to do with it, however, opium should 
become as much part of history in Afghanistan as it now is in 
Thailand, which is getting ready to open a museum of opium.

Mr. Arlacchi, a 49-year-old Italian sociologist and expert on 
organized crime, became the United Nations' top antinarcotics 
official three years ago. Years of studying and writing about the 
Italian Mafia, he said, convinced him that the war on narcotics does 
not have to be fought with armies and tens of millions of dollars.

As he spoke, Mr. Arlacchi (pronounced are-LOCK-key), was flying over 
the snow-covered peaks that separate Uzbekistan from Tajikistan, on 
his way to open a new, experimental drug-control agency established 
with United Nations help in the Tajik capital, Dushanbe.

Over the last year, the fledging Tajik agency and a force of 11,000 
Russian border guards have reported seizing about 1.3 tons of heroin 
from Afghanistan and Pakistan. This is equivalent to amounts 
intercepted in Europe or the United States, Mr. Arlacchi said.

Opium poppy cultivation on a significant scale is now found in only 
three countries: Afghanistan, Myanmar and Laos. With the help of a 
$60 million international fund, Laos promises to be free of opium in 
five years, Mr. Arlacchi said. Myanmar, formerly Burma, is down to 60 
percent of recent production because of pressure from neighboring 
Southeast Asian nations. Vietnam and China have also slashed opium 
growing.

Law enforcement is not the only, or even the most important, part of 
trying to convince poor farmers to stop producing narcotics, Mr. 
Arlacchi said. "First of all, we have to convince people that 
organized crime is not invincible," he said, recalling similar 
experiences in Sicily. "We are not fighting enemies that are bigger 
than us."

Now he is saying to skeptical governments that most narcotics 
production can be eliminated more cheaply than most people think. 
"The farmers do not get rich with opium production. In Afghanistan, 
at $30 a kilo of opium, you are poor even if you produce 10 kilos. 
The farmers get a minimal amount, so it's easy to provide them an 
alternative. Even with the traffickers, who are supposed to make most 
of the profit at origin, we're speaking about quite modest profits at 
the source."

"So when I told people that for $25 million a year for 10 years we 
can eliminate opium poppy production in Afghanistan, nobody believed 
that," he said. "Even now, when I tell people that $3.5 million 
invested in technical assistance to the agency in Tajikistan and the 
Russian border troops there, we can block the northern heroin route, 
people don't believe because they are used to inflated figures."

By Tajik standards, for instance, the 300 members of Tajikistan's new 
antidrug squad--chosen, trained and equipped by European experts--are 
very well paid at $100 a month in hard currency.

The money, contributed by several European nations, goes directly to 
the squad members, not to the government, to minimize opportunities 
for corruption.

Mr. Arlacchi argues that in an age of mass communication "every 
peasant in the most remote areas of Myanmar or Afghanistan knows 
perfectly that what he is doing is harmful for other people," and is 
receptive to alternatives. But, he said, alternative crops sometimes 
take too long to show a return, meaning that aid is needed--to people 
and governments.

In Afghanistan, however, few foreign governments want to deal with 
the Taliban, preferring a "ring of security" around Afghanistan to 
contain the problem. Mr. Arlacchi said he is consistently refused 
money to work inside Afghanistan.

It is also not clear how sincere the Taliban is in its pledges to 
halt opium production. Their militias, who now control an estimated 
95 percent of Afghanistan, face hunger on a national scale and 
political disaster if they end opium production without offering 
people alternative incomes.

When the Taliban order poppy production cuts, Mr. Arlacchi said he 
sees the edicts as "more a way to test the cost of a measure like 
this than a real, serious attempt to implement it."

In Tajikistan, the United Nations drug-control program cultivated 
ties with the pro-Russian president, Emomali Rahmonov--a task that 
Mr. Arlacchi said was easier than getting the backing of the United 
States for a program that has so far spent $2.6 million.

Mr. Arlacchi, a tenured professor of sociology at the University of 
Florence who left a safe seat in the Italian Senate to join the 
United Nations in 1997, is one of several outsiders hired by 
Secretary General Kofi Annan for their real-world expertise.

The Italian newcomer ruffled feathers at the United Nations' drug 
program headquarters in Vienna, removing several top bureaucrats and 
dispatching others into the field, away from their desks.

A few weeks ago, Mr. Arlacchi visited Bolivia, which is within months 
of declaring itself free of coca cultivation, and found the backlash 
against a coca ban there reminiscent of his Sicilian experience. 
"There was a moment," he said, "when the economy in Sicily got bad 
and there were demonstrations of thousands of workers against 
us--construction workers with billboards saying: `We want the Mafia 
back because the Mafia gave us jobs.' "

"In Bolivia, there are very harsh times, and you get demonstrations 
of coca producers, cocaleros, who have exactly the same platform: `We 
want to go back to cultivating coca because it gives us an income,' " 
he said. "I told the Bolivian government that they have to be firm 
not giving in, but at the same time they have to listen to them and 
go ahead and give more resources."

In Thailand, Mr. Arlacchi recalled, the king told him about a village 
where there was resistance to changing a water course to irrigate 
fields. The farmers finally admitted that redirecting the water 
channel was impossible because there was a ghost in the way. They 
asked the king, who is considered superhuman by many Thais, to deal 
with the ghost. He said he would, and the water soon flowed to the 
needy new crops--at no cost at all to the United Nations program.
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