End Drug Eradication in Afghanistan Now
By Daniel G. Jennings
The War on Drugs may deprive America and its allies of victory in one of the most important battlegrounds in the War on Terror: Afghanistan.
Al Qaeda’s mercenary army; the Taliban, is making a come back in Afghanistan because of American efforts to eradicate the opium poppy which is the raw ingredient in heroin. Opium poppies are about the only cash crop that Afghan farmers (some of the world’s poorest people) can grow and opium is about the only industry in Afghanistan. American and allied forces are trying to destroy the livelihood of average Afghans while the Taliban is protecting the poppy growers get the picture here.
The common sense thing for America to do would be to simply end the opium eradication program in Afghanistan and let the Afghans grow the poppies. Yes, this would be a setback in the war on drugs, but drugs including heroin are an evil we’ve lived with for generations. Modern terrorism, as Sept. 11 demonstrated, is a horror that could turn our cities into waste lands. Compared to Al Qaeda and the Taliban, the drug trade is certainly the lesser of two evils.
If we were to allow opium production we’d get most of the tribal leaders and local politicians in Afghanistan on our side. Make a deal with local Afghan leaders, oppose the Taliban and Al Qaeda and we won’t interfere in your opium farming.
Instead of supporting the Taliban the Afghan druglords and their private armies could be out hunting down Bin Laden, Al Qaeda and the Taliban. My guess is that these guys would jump at the chance to get arms and military training from US forces. That way American, Canadian and European troops wouldn’t have to risk their lives in the Afghan mountains and money could be saved. Equipping an Afghan tribesman and deploying him in the field would be far cheaper than deploying Western soldiers and potentially more effective.
The money brought in by the drug trade could also form an important economic resource that could be used to finance Afghanistan’s rebuilding. That way American tax money wouldn’t have to wasted on foreign aid projects that make bureaucrats feel good but do little to help average people.
If the idea of allowing the drug trade and doing business with drug lords is too unsettling there is another alternative. Instead of wasting our tax money on foreign aid schemes simply buy the opium directly from the Afghan farmers for cash. Once we buy the opium we can process it into pharmaceuticals or simply pile it up on the tarmac at the US Air base and burn it.
An opium purchase scheme would give average Afghans a reason to support US forces and to oppose the Taliban. It would also inject all important cash into the Afghan economy and put that cash into the hands of average Afghans instead of bureaucrats or warlords. The money could form the basis of a modern economy in Afghanistan which is the only thing that will defeat the Taliban in the long run.
Doing business with drug lords and opium purchase schemes are examples of the kind of out of the box thinking we’ll need to win this war on terror. Unfortunately such thinking involves difficult and potentially politically unpopular decisions so I doubt we’ll see such creativity in our national strategy until we’ve suffered a really humiliating defeat in Afghanistan.