The Drug Czar Has Another Brilliant Idea

Afghanistan is in flames. The Taliban are resurgent. The opium economy provides livelihoods for millions of Afghans. And now, US drug czar John Walters announces over the weekend, that Afghanistan will begin spraying the poppy fields with glyphosate, the same stuff we've been using with such great success in Colombia against the coca crops. (After six years of Plan Colombia spraying, the coca crop in Colombia is about the same size it was when we started.) The government of President Hamid Karzai has resisted the resort to poisoning the crops, citing the risk of water contamination and the possible destruction of adjacent legal crops. What it doesn’t say out loud, but which must factor into its calculations, is the impact an aggressive poppy eradication campaign will have on the political loyalties of the millions who depend on the opium trade to feed their families. The Taliban are already scoring points and winning new recruits by offering to protect farmers from the government and the "infidels." I find it illuminating that it was Walters, the American drug proconsul—not Karzai, the nominal head of the Afghan government—who made the announcement. It demonstrates not only the Afghan government's hesitation to embrace the widely-feared herbicides, but also the extent to which Afghanistan remains an American fiefdom. In fact, the Afghan government has yet to announce that it has agreed to the use of herbicides. But that didn't stop Walters.

"I think the president has said yes, and I think some of the ministers have repeated yes," Walters said without specifying when spraying would start. "The particulars of the application have not been decided yet, but yes, the goal is to carry out ground spraying. We cannot fail in this mission," he said. "Proceeds from opium production feed the insurgency and burden Afghanistan's nascent political institutions with the scourge of corruption."

Funny, that. They grow opium in Australia and France and India and Turkey, but they don't have problems with black market proceeds fueling political violence or corrupting the authorities in those countries. Oh—that's because it's a legal, regulated market. Walters' planned herbicide war against the Afghan poppy will not do anything to address that dynamic. And to the degree that it is "successful," it will only increase the profits of the traffickers and increase the flow of money to the Taliban (and, apparently, half of the Afghan government). Mr. Walters, you can have your war on terror or you can have your war on drugs. You can't have both and hope to win either.