Pubdate: Sun, 30 Jan 2011
Source: San Francisco Chronicle (CA)
Page: F - 9
Copyright: 2011 Hearst Communications Inc.
Contact: http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle/submissions/#1
Website: http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/388
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.
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topic/Afghanistan

U.S. ANTI-DRUG MONEY WASTED IN AFGHANISTAN

As Afghan President Hamid Karzai works to overturn a parliamentary 
election that did not turn out the way he wanted, the United States 
continues to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on "good 
governance" initiatives.

This $760 million program, to strengthen government agencies, was 
America's single largest nonmilitary expense in Afghanistan over the 
past year. All of it was money thrown away.

The mind dulls when confronted with large numbers like that. But $760 
million spent another way would allow Washington to give every single 
public school in the nation's 25 largest cities almost $200,000 extra 
this year.

Afghanistan is the world's prototype for feckless, venal governments, 
and Karzai plays the part of the uncaring, self-interested leader 
better than almost anyone else. So why is the United States throwing 
money at him - pushing Western, liberal-minded programs on a 
government that can't, and won't, accept them?

Last year, the U.S. Agency for International Development began 
promoting what it calls "Afghanization of aid." That's the new, 
in-vogue approach donors are trying in numerous needy nations - to 
"increase the administrative capabilities of the Afghan government," 
the agency says, and allow the nation's leaders to decide how the 
money is used.

Well, in Afghanistan, government leaders have only one use for 
foreign aid. They stuff the cash into suitcases and fly it to secret 
bank accounts in Dubai.

Nothing better demonstrates the government's heedless, self-indulgent 
attitude than its approach to the country's considerable drug 
problem. Afghanistan remains the world's largest grower of opium 
poppies. It supplies 90 percent of the world's heroin. Many thousands 
of its citizens are addicts.

Earlier this month, the United Nations put out its annual 
"Afghanistan Opium Survey" and found that, even after the United 
States has spent more than $2 billion on drug enforcement there, "the 
total area under cultivation" during 2010 "and the number of families 
growing opium poppy, remained the same as in 2009" - but for one 
thing. The U.N. found "an alarming increase of 97 percent" in 
opium-poppy cultivation among northeastern provinces that are not 
traditional poppy-growing areas.

One reason nothing seems to change: When Western narcotics 
investigators locate major traffickers and arrange to have them 
arrested, they find as often as not that Karzai quickly pardons them, 
allowing the traffickers to return to "work."

Last fall, WikiLeaks made public several State Department cables 
showing that Karzai's serial pardons infuriated U.S. officials. One 
cable, signed by Ambassador Karl Eikenberry, discussed five 
border-patrol officers who were caught with 273 pounds of heroin in 
their patrol car. As soon as they were sentenced to prison, Karzai 
pardoned them.

Reducing the opium crop is not merely a moral or health issue. The 
Taliban sell the farmers their seeds and taxes the crop. And from 
that, the United Nations estimates, the militants net $125 million a 
year. Think of all the weapons, roadside bombs, sniper rifles and 
other lethal equipment they can buy. If they want, they can purchase 
attack helicopters and armored personnel carriers.

But the Taliban are not the only ones profiting from the crop. Afghan 
officials also levy taxes and take bribes, American officials say, 
enriching everyone in government. No wonder Karzai is so eager to let 
the traffickers go.

Neighboring states are equally upset. Last fall, a Russian 
counter-narcotics team crossed the Afghan border and seized 2,050 
pounds of heroin and 340 pounds of crude opium. Iran is building a 
fence along its border to keep out heroin traffickers. This month, 
Uzbekistan captured an Afghan crossing the border carrying 59 pounds 
of raw opium.

The only seemingly good news in the U.N. report was that an 
agricultural blight reduced crop yields last year. But that also 
raised opium prices. For years, Western forces have been promoting 
"crop substitution" - growing legal crops in place of the poppies. 
But now the price of opium is seven times higher than the price of 
wheat, prompting thousands of people to jump back into the business, 
confident that both the government and the Taliban will protect them.

Washington is locked in acrimonious debate about closing the budget 
deficit. Republicans want to cut $200 billion out of the budget 
(exactly the cost of Afghan war), but no one seems interested in 
scrutinizing the pointless, runaway expenditures in Afghanistan.

Spending vast sums on drug enforcement - $450 million this year - in 
a country that protects and promotes its drug traffickers makes about 
as much sense as devoting hundreds of millions of dollars on "good 
governance" initiatives for one of the most rapacious and uncaring 
governments on earth.
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake