Pubdate: Sun, 14 Apr 2002 Source: Inquirer (PA) Copyright: 2002 Philadelphia Newspapers Inc Contact: http://inq.philly.com/content/inquirer/home/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/340 Author: Mark Bowden Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/area/Afghanistan (Afghanistan) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/heroin.htm (Heroin) WAR ON TERRORISM MUST COME BEFORE WAR ON DRUGS By all accounts, there's going to be a bumper poppy crop in Afghanistan this year. Fields of the pink, violet and white flowers are blossoming in the provinces of Nangarhar and Helmand, traditionally the source for about 70 percent of the opium and heroin in the world. The gray paste made from these colorful flowers is a bounty for the farmers and illiterate laborers who work these fields, a fortune for the drug traffickers who process and ship it - and a plague for the countries throughout the world that battle drug addiction. So the interim government of Afghanistan finds itself caught between local interests and its international obligations. Hamid Karzai, the Western-backed leader who stepped in after the Taliban was ousted last year, is committed to eradicating the crop - and meeting serious resistance from the growers. The challenge comes while he is also struggling to manage the traditionally warring factions of his country long enough to hold elections and establish a democracy. He still faces a strong threat from remnants of the Taliban and al-Qaeda, elements of which have been caught plotting assassinations of the new government's leaders. It is no time for the United States and Europe to be making his task more difficult. It is vital to the U.S. war on terrorism that the emerging Afghan government be independent, authentic and successful. Forcing Karzai to crack down on his country's largest cash crop puts him in the position of acting like a puppet for Western interests and encourages his (and our) enemies. Drug addiction remains a serious social problem in the West, but this it is not the top priority. The truth is that poppy cultivation works for Afghanistan. Addicts in Europe, the United States, India, Pakistan and elsewhere pay wealthy drug traffickers, who pay farmers to grow poppies. Antidrug efforts keep the supply low, which artificially inflates the price, which means the impoverished farmers are paid more for poppies than anything else they could grow. The system works as an engine for local economies in impoverished nations all over the world, and the forces waging the drug war have yet to find a way to fight it. Drug trafficking has delivered more money to the Colombian and Afghan hinterlands than any government program in history. There have been intensive efforts to encourage the poppy growers in Afghanistan and the coca growers in Colombia to cultivate alternative crops. Programs offer economic incentives to regions that crack down effectively on poppy production and provide subsidies for growing alternative crops. But these efforts have been too poorly funded and too narrowly applied to be effective. At most, the success they achieve in one region just pushes the growing elsewhere. So long as there are customers willing to pay exorbitant rates for drugs, somebody, somewhere, will grow the crops, process the drugs, and deliver them. In short, it's a terribly complicated problem that will not be worsened or solved in the long run by cracking down on Afghanistan this year. The growers borrow money from traffickers to tide them over during winter, then repay them when their crops are harvested in spring. Karzai's government didn't announce its ban on poppy growing until January, after the crop had been planted, which means growers were already committed to harvesting their crops. The government program is offering them about $500 per half-acre, but they can earn about $2,000 by selling the poppies. Resistance to the government plan has already erupted into violence in Helmand. What makes the most sense right now is a one-time-only buy-back program, which would keep the world's largest poppy crop off the market and buy time until the Afghan government is on its feet. The United Nations and United States have promised billions of dollars toward rebuilding the country. Expecting too much too soon could undermine the larger goal. ----- The Rev. John Langan, a Georgetown University philosophy professor whom I quoted in last week's column about torture, asked if I would further explain his views. While he acknowledges that torture might be morally justifiable "in very rare cases," he does not believe that the case of al-Qaeda senior leader Abu Zubaydah, who was arrested earlier this month, meets those conditions. "My point was that if one sets up the supposedly ideal case for using torture - proximate danger to large numbers of people, strong evidence that the person to be tortured has the relevant information - - the conditions will be satisfied only in very rare cases," he said. "I did say that in the proposed case and in cases very like it we would not blame the agents, but that is different (importantly different for a moral philosopher) from endorsing the action. Torture, as I said to you, yields information of poor quality, puts our own people at greater risk if and when they become prisoners, damages the character of the torturers and the reputation of the United States. I also believe that using torture against al-Qaeda prisoners does not meet the relevant conditions and is likely to be little more than an act of vengeance." - --- MAP posted-by: Ariel