Guns and Poppies

In the morass that is Afghanistan, not just the Taliban are flourishing. So too is opium production, which increasingly finances the group’s activities. There is no easy way to end this narcotics threat, a symptom of wider instability. Even a wise and coordinated plan of attack would take years to bear real results. But the United States and the rest of the international community are failing to develop one. They must work harder, smarter and more cooperatively to rescue this narco-state.

The scope of the problem is mind-numbing. Opium production mushroomed in 2006 and 2007, and Afghanistan now supplies 93 percent of the world’s heroin, with the bulk going to users in Europe and Russia. According to official figures, the narcotics trade rakes in about $4 billion a year, which is about half of Afghanistan’s gross domestic product. It strengthens the extremist forces that American and NATO troops are fighting and dying to defeat; it undermines the Afghan state they are trying to build; and it poisons drug users across Europe, where many people do not see Afghanistan as their problem and leaders are shamefully ignoring the connection.

Last week, the United Nations reported an alarming new development: Afghan drug lords are recruiting foreign chemists, mostly from Turkey, Pakistan and Iran, to help turn raw opium into highly refined heroin. Doing so adds value and lethality to the product they export.

American, European, Afghan and United Nations officials have sabotaged their mission by continuing to bicker over why poppy cultivation has skyrocketed, what to do about it and who should act. In a particularly damning indictment in The Times Magazine, Thomas Schweich, a former State Department official, blamed corrupt Afghan officials, internal policy divisions and the reluctance of American and NATO military to take on counternarcotics roles, as much as the Taliban.

Mr. Schweich should have pointed a finger at President Bush for the fundamental failure in Afghanistan. Mr. Bush put too few resources into the country after 9/11, then left the aftermath to NATO and various warlords while America shifted focus to the disastrous war of choice in Iraq. The results: a Taliban and Al Qaeda resurgence coupled with historic poppy crops.

It is very good news that 20 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces may soon be free of poppy cultivation, but that means production is overwhelmingly concentrated in the south, largely in Helmand Province, where the Taliban are strongest and the government is weakest.

Mr. Schweich’s main recommendation — to aggressively eradicate poppy crops by aerial spraying — is politically untenable and of questionable value. Other things can be done, or done better, including building a criminal justice system that can prosecute major drug traffickers and having American and NATO forces play a more robust role in interdiction. The Afghan and American governments have broken ground on a new airport and agricultural center in Helmand — an encouraging attempt to help farmers shift from poppies to food crops.

Allegations that President Hamid Karzai protects officials and warlords in the trade are troubling. Washington and its allies must press him to address this problem. They also should seize assets and ban visas for major traffickers who have homes outside Afghanistan.

Longer term, the answer lies in a consistent, integrated and well-financed plan to establish security throughout Afghanistan, put kingpins in jail, develop a market economy and a functioning government in Kabul, and rapidly expand incentives for smaller farmers to stop growing poppies. It is all one more daunting Bush administration legacy that will be left for the next president to fix.
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source: The New York Times