Editorial:
Stop
Before
It's
Too
Late
1/7/05
David Borden, Executive Director, [email protected], 1/7/05
The problem is that Afghanistan's primary source of income is an illegal narcotic. Opium poppies are banned, yet more of it grows there than anything else, at least in cash terms, and Afghanistan grows more of it than any other country. It's accurate to say that to a significant degree in Afghanistan, opium rules. Without it, the nation's economy would quickly collapse. At the same time, the illicit economy has pathologies. We desire Afghanistan's future to be one of peace, democracy and rule of law. Yet many of the nation's powerful warlords profit heavily from the trade in opium -- it's one of the things that make them powerful, in fact. The poor who grow opium out of necessity are vulnerable to exploitation. And while the true extent of the links is unclear, claims that Al Qaeda derives some of its funding from the illegal drug trade are plausible if unproven. Having left the matter largely un-dealt with the last three years, the Bush administration is turning its attention now to the opium phenomenon in a more serious way. They may mean business this time -- the government has requested $780 million for Afghani anti-drug efforts, including $152 million earmarked for aerial eradication. But if we care about Afghanistan's political stability -- and that is one of the primary state goals of administration policy -- chopping down the poppy crop would be a supremely bad move, let alone burning it down with chemical poisons dropped from the air. What better way to push the vast numbers of Afghans who are economically dependent on opium into the arms of our enemies? What better way to foment social instability? That is the effect it has had, after all, in nations where it has been tried with coca. The difference in Afghanistan is that the number of people doing the growing is even larger. More importantly, they are hardened by decades of war, and they're not hesitant about accepting what they perceive as an invitation to a fight. As a reformer, I don't want to see Afghanistan's government pushed into a drug war policy that is in the worst interests of itself and its people. But I also wish against that as an American who wants my nation's policies to be the right ones; who wants my tax dollars to promote peace and prosperity, not conflict and poverty and suffering; who wants our government and our people perceived as the friend of other peoples, not the enemy; who wants safety from and an end to political violence, for myself, for my countrymen, and for all others. It is fine to specifically target cultivation or other economic activity that has been found to be tied to financing of organizations that have violent intentions. But it's not fine -- it's downright dangerous -- to go beyond that to rampage against the rest of the people of the country who are just trying to survive. We should leave them alone -- we need to leave them alone. Yet to leave the poppy farmers alone but not alter the framework within which they live and work is to address only half of the poisonous equation of the current system. It isn't enough, in the end, to not make things even worse. Only by ending prohibition itself can the dire problems of the underground drug trade be transformed into the manageable issues of a licit, aboveground economy. Dealing effectively with Afghanistan's needs is an urgent matter -- need anyone be reminded of the reasons why? There's no more time for drug war foolishness, not in Afghanistan and not here either. Let us not sacrifice security for a discredited drug war ideology, and let us end this sad chapter of human history -- the prohibitionist chapter -- once and for all.
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