Pubdate: Thu, 08 Jun 2006
Source: Times, The (UK)
Copyright: 2006 Times Newspapers Ltd
Contact:  http://www.the-times.co.uk/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/454
Author: Camilla Cavendish
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/heroin.htm (Heroin)

THE WAR ON DRUGS IS NOT THE WAR ON TERROR: SAVE THE AFGHAN POPPY FIELDS

What A Deadly Harvest.

As British troops move in to replace Americans in some of the most 
volatile parts of southern Afghanistan, their valiant battle for 
democracy is being undermined by their own Government's confused war on opium.

Yesterday the Senlis Council, an international security and 
development policy think-tank, cautioned that the southern states are 
slipping into a "state of war". Afghans, faced with overwhelming 
poverty caused by the West's obliteration of their poppy crops, are 
switching allegiance to the Taleban and other insurgents. You cannot 
attack poppies and insurgents at the same time. Attacks on one breed the other.

By insisting on destroying the country's main source of income, the 
Western coalition is pursuing a counter-productive policy.

True, Afghan poppies provide four fifths of the world's heroin, 
exporting untold misery. But it is Westerners who buy it. True, opium 
profits help to finance insurgents and to entrench warlords.

But they also provide a basic living for more than two million 
Afghans. Opium is by far the most reliable and resilient crop in arid 
areas where almost nothing else will grow. Plans to grow roses -- 
almost as valuable as opium when used for perfume -- haven't got very 
far. Roses need water.

The war in Afghanistan is not a sideshow.

It is of fundamental importance in striking at the root of Islamist terror.

British forces are there to destroy the Taleban strongholds, to 
obliterate the training camps of al-Qaeda. The last thing that 
British forces need is a wrong-headed drugs policy that should, 
frankly, be left until later. With the people increasingly 
disillusioned with both their Government and with foreign aid, with 
peace and prosperity elusive, stamping out this source of money is madness.

Farmers earn a pittance for wheat, the principal alternative crop, 
and even less since the West started dumping wheat on their market.

In Colombia, the destruction of coca and opium plantations with 
chemical sprays has left almost three million people near-destitute, 
with a virulent loathing of the American Government that insisted on 
the destruction as the price of its aid. And it hasn't even worked: 
the price of cocaine is still falling, the market awash with it.

In Afghanistan, eradication is being carried out mostly by local 
police who cannot believe their luck at being handed a perfect 
opportunity for bribery. Around Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand 
province where a quarter of the country's opium is grown, rows of 
tall poppies apparently wave in the breeze next to empty fields -- 
the ones owned by farmers too poor to afford the protection money of 
3,000 to 4,000 rupees per jerib (field). Poverty was desperate under 
the Taleban. But the poorest farmers are incensed that their crops 
are being obliterated to enrich others.

When the Taleban plant mines and destroy the vehicles used for 
eradication, farmers feel that they are the only ones on their side. 
Coalition forces reported that last month 420 Taleban fighters were 
killed in southern Afghanistan. They keep coming, in numbers that 
have clearly surprised the allies.

To make matters worse, hundreds of Helmand farmers are still claiming 
that they have not been paid for voluntarily destroying their crops 
in 2002. The British Government says that it handed over UKP 21 
million in compensation payments to the transitional authority.

But farmers are still furiously brandishing IOUs of UKP 350 per field 
that were never paid. They make no distinction between the different 
authorities: they just blame the West. "We trusted the foreigners, 
and they cheated us," is a typical comment from those interviewed in 
the Senlis report.

No matter what the truth is, British involvement in such a 
counterproductive and poorly executed strategy could hardly have been 
better designed to sabotage the mission of our troops.

There is, thankfully, another way. This would be to channel 
Afghanistan's opium into legitimate use as the basis for painkillers 
such as morphine and codeine.

The global shortage of these is a scandal. The richest six countries 
consume about 80 per cent and many patients in poor countries simply 
go without.

Estimates suggest that the shortage is about 10,000 tonnes of opium a 
year. Afghanistan produces about 4,400 tonnes.

Now there's a simple demand-supply equation.

Instead of trying to dictate Afghanistan's economic policy, why not, 
in this era of trade liberalisation, turn illegal opium into 
Fairtrade Opium? At one stroke, a policy of legitimate medicinal 
export could reduce the amount of opium cash flowing into the pockets 
of insurgents, and reintegrate farmers into a legal economic system, 
without rendering them destitute.

The illegal trade would not disappear entirely, but under the policy 
of the past four years, for which British and American taxpayers have 
been shelling out about $500 million a year, there have been bumper 
harvests and the trade has actually grown.

As with so many good ideas hotly resisted, there is a precedent.

Turkey has had a licence to grow opium for medicinal purposes since 
1974. This was agreed after President Nixon had tried strenuously to 
convince the Turks to destroy the crops.

He failed: the Turkish Government said that such a policy would 
simply be too destabilising. Around 600,000 Turkish farmers now 
happily earn their living from controlled poppy cultivation.

In Afghanistan, proposals for pilot schemes along these lines are 
meeting a stonewall from the allies.

Someone somewhere seems to believe that the "war on drugs" is 
equivalent to the "War on Terror". It is not. The two are linked, but 
not inextricably. Let us not fail our troops by pursuing a 
fashionable war at the expense of a vital one.
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MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman