Bush
Administration's
Afghan
Dilemma
Coming
to
a
Head:
Promote
Stability
and
Fight
Terror
--
or
Fight
Drugs?
1/7/05
The problem for the Bush administration is that if it seeks to pursue its drug war objective of eradicating the opium crop -- with a new planting season set to begin this month -- it is in danger of alienating the huge percentage of the Afghan population directly or indirectly dependent on the opium trade for an income. It also risks infuriating "good" warlords who hold posts in the Karzai government and are seen as allies, but who are reportedly making fortunes off the trade themselves. The Bush administration is seeking $780 million in anti-drug funding for Afghanistan this year -- a more than five-fold increase over last year's $140 million -- including $152 million earmarked for aerial eradication, but according to a Sunday report in the Los Angeles Times, high level administration officials are divided over how to proceed. Drug war hawks are calling for deeper US military involvement in the anti-drug effort, as well as aerial eradication of the opium crop, while other officials worry that aggressive anti-drug efforts will destabilize the country as it heads for critical parliamentary elections in April. The dividing lines are not only between different executive departments, but also within those departments. According to the Times, gung-ho Pentagon civilians want to charge forward, while US military commanders are hesitant. "Central Command would prefer not to be in the eradication business," Lieutenant General Lance Smith, Centcom's deputy commander, told the Times. "We have spent a lot of capital in trying to build relationships with the people in there and now this has the potential for us to do things that wouldn't be popular for some of the areas we're operating in." Other US military officials said they feared deeper military involvement would alienate warlords such as Rashid Dostum and Ustad Attas Mohammed, who, while supporting the Karzai government, are also reaping huge profits from the trade (https://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle-old/316/rumsfeld.shtml). "If you pull at the thread of counter-narcotics the wrong way, because of the sheer proportion of the gross domestic product wrapped up in this business, you should be careful of unintended consequences," said General James Jones, the American who serves as supreme commander of NATO, which has 9,000 troops in Afghanistan. But Pentagon and congressional hard-liners warn that if this year's crop is allowed to be harvested, an estimated $7 billion will flow into the hands of the warlords, perhaps allowing them to influence the election itself. Even worse, they claim, if the crop is harvested unimpeded, some of that money could find its way to the Taliban and perhaps even Al Qaeda, where it could pay for more attacks against the West. "We have a record opium production that needs to be lowered because so many of the profits are used to finance Bin Laden and his operation," claimed Rep. Steven Kirk (R-IL). "On the other hand, you have to conduct an anti-drug campaign first and foremost with political sensitivity." One unnamed official told the Times that the 2001 attacks on the US cost only $400,000 or $500,000. "Imagine what they could do with $10 billion. You can own a country with that much money," he argued. While the evidence that the Taliban or Al Qaeda is reaping opium profits is scanty, Assistant Secretary of State for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Robert Charles told Congress last year that "drug profits are almost definitely" funding the Taliban, and maybe Al Qaeda too. But other administration officials and independent observers are counseling a less aggressive approach. "You tell them, 'You're voting for a new democratic county,' while their government is allowing foreigners to come in and destroy their livelihoods?" scoffed Barnett Rubin, a United Nations advisor in Afghanistan in 2001. "And if you try to destroy it and have the economy decline by 10 percent, 20 percent, 40 percent in one year, what will the result be? The result will be armed revolt," he predicted. Mark Schneider, director at the International Crisis Group, a global relief agency, echoed Rubin's skepticism about aggressive eradication. Aerial spraying, he told the Times, would be tantamount to "providing the Taliban with a great recruiting slogan: Go with us or they'll spray you." The US decision-makers have not been helped by President Karzai. On the one hand, he recently declared a jihad, or holy war, against opium production, out of fear that opium profits will fill the coffers of his electoral foes and to try to silence rising criticism from Western Europe and particularly Great Britain that Afghan opium is being processed into heroin that is flooding Europe. On the other hand, he has rejected aerial spraying and has instead embraced limited manual eradication efforts. There are conflicting reports that aerial spraying has already commenced (https://stopthedrugwar.org/chronicle-old/365/afghanistan.shtml), but what is certain at this point is that manual eradication of the opium crop is already underway -- and that it is leading to a bitter harvest indeed. According to a report in the Pakistan Tribune datelined Jalalabad -- not Washington -- farmers in Nangahar whose crops have been destroyed have been reduced to selling their daughters to opium dealers who financed their crops. "I cannot pay you in any other way -- take my daughter," said Gul Miran, 42, to the dealer who had lent him $1,000 to start his plot. But the government had ploughed over his fields, leaving him with no way to repay the loan. "I accepted the girl in return for my loan," said dealer Haji Naqibullah. "We had an agreement. He would pay me back regardless of whether his crops were wiped out by the weather or the government. In a year or 18 months, I will marry her off to my youngest son," he said. "He is 19 years old and has been married to his first wife for two years, but has not had a child yet." Pavenda Gul was another farmer forced to sell his daughter after the government destroyed his crop. "When you have an agreement with an opium dealer," he said, "nothing but the opium can be paid, but they cannot refuse the daughters. It is a way in which a dealer can find a wife for himself or his son. The son may be disabled or growing older and not have a wife. It is easy to present him with a pretty girl." Meanwhile, in Washington, "We still don't have a policy," one unnamed Republican congressional staffer told the Times.
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