Afghanistan opium farmers are being forced to sell their daughters

Newsweek has a heartbreaking article on opium farmers in Afghanistan being forced to sell their young daughters to pay loans to local drug traffickers after their crops are destroyed by American/Karzai eradication programs. Of course, these poppies are pretty much the only reliable cash crop these people have, and as we've detailed before, removing their sole source of income leads to neither a victory in the war on terror or the war on drugs. This story only serves to question more the wisdom of our policy.

Afghanistan Drug Policy

In case you didn't realize, Afghanistan is the central front in the War on Terror and the War on Drugs. Afghanistan is now a major producer of opium and the Bush administration, with the help of the Karzai government, has been trying for four years to reduce opium production in the country. They have largely failed:

[U.S. Ambassador] Schweich acknowledged that US programs had only achieved mixed results in curbing the narcotics trade in Afghanistan. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, total annual poppy production in Afghanistan increased by 49 percent in 2006, from 4,500 to 6,700 metric tons of opium. US government experts estimate that opium production currently amounts to almost a third of Afghanistan’s total Gross Domestic Product, or slightly over $3 billion.

This after we've stepped up efforts to stop poppy production. For these reasons, the Bush administration has announced a change in the program:

The administration still considers the main elements of its five-point Afghan counternarcotics strategy fundamentally correct for advancing toward that deadline. These elements include (1) waging an effective public information campaign; (2) providing opium farmers with alternative and legal opportunities for earning their livelihood; (3) enhancing the capacity of Afghan law enforcement agencies to prosecute major narco-traffickers through their imprisonment or extradition; (4) eradicating opium crops; and (5) interdicting the flow of narcotics within and beyond Afghanistan.

Since no alternative crop can match the income earned from opium production, it was essential to increase the potential costs of participating in narcotics trafficking by increasing the financial and legal costs for potential traffickers. To help achieve this goal, the United States will enhance its training and equipping programs and fund an increase in the size of Afghanistan’s counternarcotics police force so that the authorities can step up the arrest, prosecution, and incarceration of leading drug traffickers.

In Schweich’s assessment, some coercion is essential because many Afghan opium cultivators will only abandon their illegal activities when faced with more effective Afghan law enforcement institutions. He also maintained that a tough policy would assist the counterinsurgency campaign by countering Taliban efforts to portray the government of President Hamid Karzai as weak.

In other words, they're aiming to crack down even more on the farmers who grow the poppy. The problem of course is that although the people who engage in the drug trade are notorious warlords and drug traffickers, the people who actually grow the drug are ordinary Afghan farmers. This policy, at least as far as I read it, intends to punish them even more harshly for growing the drug, which is the most profitable crop in Afghanistan and a rational choice for any farmer struggling to feed a family in a poor and war-torn country. What this policy does not do is provide those farmers an effective alternative to growing opium. Without such an incentive, farmers are highly unlikely to give up opium no matter how tough the Karzai government is. As for propaganda uses, well yes an effective drug enforcement program would certainly counter the image of Karzai as weak. Unfortunately, it will also allow the Taliban to portray Karzai as even more of a tool of the coalition (after all, there's no mistaking who wants these drugs destroyed) and both Karzai and us as completely uninterested in the welfare of the Afghan farmer. So, propaganda victory? No. Victory in the War on Drugs? Well...no.

Will Blair reverse policy toward Afghan opium?

From The Independent:

The US wants to step up eradication programmes, crop-spraying from the air. But, desperate to win "hearts and minds" in Afghanistan and protect British troops, Tony Blair is on the brink of a U-turn that will set him on a collision course with President George Bush.

The Prime Minister has ordered a review of his counter-narcotics strategy - including the possibility of legalising some poppy production - after an extraordinary meeting with a Tory MP on Wednesday...

Supporters of the measure say it would not only curb an illegal drugs trade which supplies 80 per cent of the heroin on Britain's streets, but would hit the Taliban insurgency and help save the lives of British troops. Much of the legally produced drug could be used to alleviate a shortage of opiates for medicinal use in Britain and beyond, they say.

The "pilot project" under consideration would allow some farmers to produce and sell their crops legally to drugs companies. Though currently illegal, opium production is already central to the Afghan economy, and the money is going to the Taliban insurgents and others we are currently fighting:

...links between drug warlords, terrorism and the Taliban are clear. Traffickers hold poor farmers in a form of bondage through the supply of credit, paid back in opium. Many of those fighting British troops during the winter months will return to their villages to harvest poppy crops in the spring and summer. The traffickers' huge profits help to fund the fight against Nato troops.

It's the main source of income for many Afghans, so of course they must turn to them instead of coalition forces who are destroying their poppy crops. And what's more important? Continuing to do so in the name of the "war on drugs" (which has never succeeded in the U.S. or anywhere) or not allowing the Taliban to retake control of Afghanistan? According to the article, Britain has wisely resisted US pressure to spray poppies from the air, since more widespread destruction of impoverished farmers' livelihoods would simply drive more of them into the hands of the Taliban.

The British and others in the international community are apparently beginning to see the light, but the Bush administration and its supporters will stubbornly never approve of legalization of any form.

Unfortunately, this "victory" for the drug war may cost us big in the fight against terrorism.

Five Years in Afghanistan

It was five years ago this weekend that we first initiated the assault on the Taliban. Where do we stand now?

Five years on, the Taliban have rebounded and retaken large swaths of land along Afghanistan’s southern periphery with Pakistan. Buoyed by profits from opium, these insurgents also allegedly enjoy support from Pakistani intelligence, something Islamabad denies. Insurgents have already killed more coalition forces this year—163—than they did in all of 2005. “Afghanistan has become Iraq on a slow burn,” writes Jonathan S. Landay of McClatchy Newspapers.

Need I explain why this has happened?

I didn't think so.