Editorial:
Going
the
Wrong
Way
in
Afghanistan
11/19/04
This week the news contained a development that was not surprising but which should be distressing to anyone concerned with peace and security. After giving mere lip service to the idea of acting to suppress Afghanistan's opium trade, flourishing since the US-led overthrow of the Taliban, US officials are now, at least they say, preparing to ramp up the effort to a serious one. Breaking the back of Afghanistan's opium trade is probably an implausible goal. Afghanistan is a large country, and opium accounts for perhaps half of its economy -- the UN has estimated 264,000 Afghan families are involved in it. Viable alternatives to opium cultivation are few. The nation's fragile, fledgling democracy depends on the buy-in of chieftains and warlords, not to mention ordinary Afghans, for survival. If the central government can live off international dollars for its paychecks, ordinary Afghans cannot, nor perhaps some of their leaders and local institutions. Afghan society is not going to simply say no its primary source of livelihood because Uncle Sam says to, and that is how it will (correctly) be perceived by Afghans. We at DRCNet are not blind to the harms wrought by the illicit drug trade, nor are we hostile to legitimate security objectives for the US or legitimate humanitarian objectives for the Afghans. On the latter count our record is more consistent than the establishment's -- we condemned the Taliban in 1997, in this newsletter, when the administration and UN anti-drug bureaucrats wanted to fund them. We are also Americans, and most of us live or work in Washington, DC, a target of the September 11, 2001 attacks and a potential future target. As an American I am troubled by the apparent coming escalation of a drug war in Afghanistan that risks alienating countless Afghans whom we need as allies while diverting resources from our most pressing and important objectives. It is true that some drug profits help sustain and fuel political violence. John Thompson, a terrorism and organized crime expert at Toronto's Mackenzie Institute, stated in an interview for this newsletter three years ago that he estimates Islamic radical groups derive perhaps 25-30% of their funding from the drug trade. But the way to address this, Thompson continued, is legalization. As Thompson pointed out, the Mafia has never regained the level of influence it attained during alcohol prohibition. Drug legalization would likewise damage the operational ability of today's illicit groups -- of whatever variety -- to the apparently significant extent to which they now benefit from drug monies. Estimates of the size of the global illicit drug trade range from $150 billion (by the RAND Corporation) to $400 billion per year (by the UN). This is a staggering amount of money, and the range and depth of the social pathologies this underground stream produces is probably beyond the fathomable. So why aren't security and crime experts speaking out in greater numbers as Thompson has? In my opinion, the silence about drug prohibition on the part of most scholars and analysts reflects a shortfall of vision, courage, or both. As an American, I strongly urge them to find such vision and courage, and to do so sooner rather than later. Visit https://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle-old/363/afghanistan.shtml to learn more about the administration's Afghan opium plans. Visit https://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle-old/205/johnthompson.shtml to read our October 2001 interview with John Thompson.
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