From Bogota to Kabul

Did you know that in Afghanistan the US government is pushing a poppy-spraying plan that just so happens to be opposed by such trivial figures as Hamid Karzai and "American military and intelligence officials and European diplomats in Afghanistan." Mark Kleiman, a drug policy specialists, notes that not only is this daft national security policymaking, but it's not useful as drug control policy either.

Meanwhile, take note of the broader context. Our first post-war chargé d'affairs in Afghanistan was Ryan Crocker, a diplomat with previous experience in Iran, Qatar, Iraq, Lebanon, and Middle East policy in DC. Next we got Robert Finn who has a PhD. in Near Eastern studies and had worked in Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, Pakistan, and Turkey. Then came Zalmay Khalilzad, also a specialist in the region and, indeed, someone who was born in Afghanistan. Then Ronald Neumann, also a near east specialist with experience all throughout the Muslim world.

Now, though, our man in Kabul is William Wood someone who, though certainly qualified to be an ambassador, has no experience or expertise in the region. Instead, our top political official in the key battleground against al-Qaeda's main qualification seems to be that his previous post was as ambassador to Colombia. Implicitly, then, the decision is being made to view Afghanistan primarily as a drug control problem rather than as a Taliban-and-al-Qaeda problem. That's just crazy.

Of course it would be one thing if our key allies in Afghanistan were telling us that drug eradication is the number one thing they need help with and could we please send them a specialist in the field. Obviously, though, that's not what's happening. The number one thing they need help with is securing the loyalty of southern Afghanistan's population, and they feel that spraying the country with chemicals that kill poppies and other agricultural products alike is going to alienate people and make their problems worse.

Photo by Flickr user ny156uk used under a Creative Commons license

Comments

As far as the rest of us in the NATO coalition are concerned, the Americans are public enemy number 1 in Afghanistan.

One of your ham-fisted raids in southern afghanistan by Special forces had the locals chanting: "Death to Canada", if you can believe that (we had nothing to do with the raid)

http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2007/09/26/afghan-protest.html?ref=rss

The drug madness doesn't help either

Posted by graeme | October 8, 2007 11:13 AM

Nice post. Its convenient for the American punditry to think that Iraq is America's only problem but Afghanistan is just as bad.

Forgive me for being very slightly off topic (the article does deal with Afghanistan as well), but i have to post this link.

http://www.himalmag.com/2007/october_november/between_imperialism_and_Islamism.html

Its one of the best pieces of writing I've read in a long time and gives a brilliant analysis of the problems with american foreign policy and conservative islam, along with a prescription for trying to make things better.

Posted by shariq | October 8, 2007 11:18 AM

I've read recently several things about a major drug problem among American troops in Afghanistan, including with institutionalized dealing and possible related corruption in the military's financial services there. Two soldiers who worked in financial services at the Bagram base have apparently been found mysteriously shot to death right on the base, after having hinted to family that something wasn't right where they'd been working.

Maybe this is all just vile rumor, but it doesn't sound that implausible. Is it conceivable that's why the U.S. is so intent on destroying the poppy crops?

Posted by Swift Loris | October 8, 2007 11:28 AM

I have no idea if this spraying program has any merit, but you are wrong in completely divorcing the drug problem from the Taliban problem.

Obviously the drug traffic is a or the main funding source for the Taliban and other anti-government forces.

Also, the US must be getting a lot of flack from allies for letting the drug trade reach record proportions and maintaining good relations with allies is a key component to our effectiveness.

Posted by GPS | October 8, 2007 11:30 AM

"Obviously the drug traffic is a or the main funding source for the Taliban and other anti-government forces."

But it's also a major source of income for those not under Taliban control. Spray the poppies, and we're giving the population a big incentive to switch sides. At least the Taliban will let these folks make a living.

Posted by Kurzleg | October 8, 2007 11:40 AM

Obviously the drug traffic is a or the main funding source for the Taliban and other anti-government forces.

Except, of course, that it's a source of revenue for the Taliban precisely because we won't let the actual state have anything to do with it.

Posted by Scott Lemieux | October 8, 2007 11:59 AM

the drug traffic is a or the main funding source for the Taliban and other anti-government forces.

The Taliban, of course, had a very strong anti-drug record. The people who wanted to be free to make money producing drugs were our allies when we first invaded the country . . .

Posted by rea | October 8, 2007 12:01 PM

Though there's much to your post that's important, let me defend the appointment of Bill Wood, whom I know personally to be a very smart and dedicated Foreign Service Officer, with lots of experience outside Latin America, including in NATO and International Organization Affairs (UN, etc.), which are obviously important in Kabul. Moreover, it's sometimes a good thing to drop someone in from outside the pool of regionally experienced officers, to bring in critical new thinking. None of this means that the Bush administration isn't screwing up in Afghanistan, thanks largely to Iraq, but Bill Wood's appointment isn't germane to that problem.

Posted by Traven | October 8, 2007 12:10 PM

Apropos of nothing, the War on Drugs in Columbia is largely about protecting oil flow. No relevance to Afghanistan, just something interesting.

Posted by aleks | October 8, 2007 12:16 PM

I'd add that (for better or for worse) in Colombia he presumably became familiar with the problem of armed rebels controlling a swath of the country. I'm not defending his appointment, but I don't think his experience in Colombia justifies the assumption that Afghanistan's problems are seen as purely drug-related.

Posted by Steve | October 8, 2007 12:24 PM

Destroying peoples crops is a brilliant hearts and minds strategy (NOT). We should buy their crops and pay them a bit more to grow something else. The Taliban will still extort money from them, but then it will be the Taliban losing friends.

Posted by Jim | October 8, 2007 12:59 PM

I dont know about Columbia but keep in mind that virtually all the people in central Helmand, the focus of the coming aerial spraying, virtually all the people and farm animals get their drinking water from the open ditches and drains of the irrigation system. Aerial spraying will contaminate this water source. When the Dept of State assigns someone like Amb.Wood to a situation like drug producing Afghanistan, the decision has already been made to use the techniques the man and his staff already have experience with...aerial spraying with herbicides.

Posted by Richard B. Scott | October 8, 2007 1:00 PM

I've recently spent some time in Colombia investigating the effects of fumigation. Witness for Peace is the group I went down with and it was quite an experience. There are many problems with fumigation in Colombia which makes me doubt its chances for success in Afghanistan (I've written a few research papers on the opium situation in Afghanistan as well). The biggest of these problems is that glyphosate does not, in any way, discriminate between licit and illicit plants. We spoke with farmers (many indigenous) who had their entire food crop destroyed because they or sometimes their neighbors had a _very small_ (if any) number of coca plants on their property. The planes simply come in and dust the entire zone and all the banana/corn/potato/heart of palm dies as well.. never going to win the "hearts and minds" that way.

The second major concern (even more so to the international community) is that fumigations have effectively become a price subsidy for coca: artificially reducing the supply while not lowering demand increases the profits for growers/traffickers, making the decision to not grow that much harder to make.

Final note: the US judges the effectiveness of its coca-eradication program by the US street price, purity, and availability of cocaine. Since Plan Colombia began in 2000, the price of coke has lowered, while (not coincidentally) purity and availability have increased. Now why in the world would you export this broken system to Afghanistan?

Posted by Dave | October 8, 2007 1:10 PM

Glad we learned so much from our history.

Prohibition works regarding drugs.

Abstinence works regarding Aids.

Closet sexuality works.

Denying human nature works.

Denying nature works.

The only reason we are bombing poppy fields in Afghanistan is because some GOPs want New Yorkers to pay more for their sinful fun..

It is like raising taxes. Very anti-conservatism practiced by conservatives and without any positive externalities for tax revenue or Americans?

We might as well bomb ourselves?

Posted by Hugo Pottisch | October 8, 2007 1:45 PM

The US and the West needs to end the prohibition on drugs and de-criminalize drugs, including opium and heroin, and take “illegal” factor out of the price of drugs. The wholesale price in Tajikistan is about $1,250 per kg. The wholesale price in the U.K. is about $30,000. The Afghan drug trade takes in between $25 to $100 Billion a year.

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/wideangle/shows/centralasia/imap3.html

Taking the huge profits from the illegal factor would also greatly reduce the incentive for drug dealers to pro-actively addict people (primarily by giving them free samples) to create a market.

By ending the prohibition on drugs, the West would greatly reduce the amount of money flowing to the people who produce and market drugs. The money we presently spend on the “War on Drugs” could be spent on research related to drug usage and treatment for drug addicts. Some estimates are that the US alone spends $50 Billion a year on the War on Drugs.

About half of the people in US prisons are in on drug related charges. Billions of dollars would be saved from closing down prisons. Also, it appears that more people who go prison come out worse and more of a threat to society than those who have improved themselves while in prison.

By decriminalizing drugs, the price of drugs would drop dramatically and would go far to eliminate the (now) criminal and terrorist elements from the business. We frequently read that the bad guys in Afghanistan, Columbia and other places do bad things not from ideology or religion, etc., but for the money. We need to take away the money as part of the war against the bad guys.

The current programs to assist the poppy growers to grow alternative crops such as wheat, etc. will never work because the market price of any other crop will never match or even come close to the market price of illegal drugs. We cannot eradicate drugs by paying people not to grow or produce them. Someone else will then grow or produce them. Worse yet, the people we pay will take our money and still grow them.

The approach of destroying drug crops will never work either because in doing so we make the drug crop farmers into enemies and supporters of the bad guys (who are presently paying them big bucks for their drug crops) and because any success in destroying drug crops decreases supply which drive the price up and encourages others to enter the supply side by growing more drug crops.

(The “bad guys” may be common criminals, organized crime, terrorists, radical Islamists, etc. - that’s a whole other discussion.)

We would be farther ahead if we spent 10% of the money saved on drug research, education and learning about addiction and the treatment of addiction.

Decriminalization would also keep billions of dollars from flowing out of the US and help our balance of trade.

The prohibition on liquor did not work and the prohibition on drugs has not worked in the last 50 years and never, never , never will.

Decriminalize drugs (control like liquor), let people grow them here in US, destroy the market for drug production outside US, spend 10% of the money wasted on the “War On Drugs” on drug research and education and bury those too stupid not to kill themselves taking drugs before they kill us, directly or indirectly. No other approach will ever, ever, ever work.

Posted by DCM | October 8, 2007 1:46 PM

The DEA is a deeply entrenched bureaucracy that sees their eternal "War on Drugs" as job security, not ever to be "solved".
The Bushies, and many other ideologues in both parties, love showing they are "tough on drugs" by funding foreign country spraying programs that magically...do nothing about the cost and abundance of drugs (price of cocaine is down 8-fold and quantity quintupled since DEA was created)....but seem to create mass popular support for narco-funded insurgencies.

The farmers are the ones making 1-2% of the profits off illegal drugs, yet are the ones that suffer the most from "enemies from above" spraying their crops.

Like most of the Bushie war tactics, the Afghan heroin campaign is clueless. We know that illegal drugs fund Taliban and Al Qaeda....but our solution is to flood in DEA agents to do "heroic actions" on farmers, destroying their livelihood - with bribed Central Gov't officials and Afghan soldiers the US helo's in from far away. In 2002, our "vision" was to tell the Afghans to grow something other than poppies, and we sent people in with all sorts of Agribiz goodies. Then the Afghans found no buyers for their substitute crops, no willingness of the US to create a market for it.

So Afghans went back to poppies for only 500 bucks for a whole year of effort on 8 hectacres for the farmer, and 20,000 or so for the Taliban selling it to refiners.

America pays 29 billion to it's ag-land owners NOT to grow crops. We spend 20 billion a year in Afghanistan on high-tech "evildoer-whacking", and more billions to keep peace with our NATO allies disgruntled with our agressive drug eradication program, while Taliban and AQ continue to get hundreds of millions in opiate revenue and a sea of angry rural Pashtuns to recruit from.
Why not wipe out a good part of the AQ/Taliban revenue and recruiting base by starting a 10-year program to pay Afghan farmers for their crops, starting with us buying up all the opium and creating a larger strategic stockpile in the US of that vital drug, then using funds to transition Afghans off poppies to crops that will bring in as good a revenue for farmers, as long as we follow through with market creation and ability to transport to those markets?

And best, get Afghan farmers to see moderate government in Afghanistan and the world outside Afghanistan as their friends who want their crops, not Afghans allied with takfiris and mayhem..

That, vs. militaristic drug eradication by DEA thugs and bribed local officials - according to some drug policy experts, would cost the US 2 billion a year.

Posted by Chris Ford | October 8, 2007 1:56 PM

I knew it - the liberals are supporting and funding the terrorists... not the prohibition per se. Like in the 1930s - it was not the prohibition per se that created Al Capone but those Americans who had a beer!

Listen - if Bill Clinton didn't inhale then I say that some religious fanatics have never exhaled? Time to breath... out!

PS: It is funny that the SAME people who are fighting the war on drugs are supporting this:

http://consumerfreedom.com/

Why does all this feel so wrong?

Posted by Hugo Pottisch | October 8, 2007 2:14 PM

I wonder which Bush or Cheney crony has the contract to do the spraying.

Meanwhile, apparently a CIA plane used to do renditions crashed somewhere south of the US border loaded with a couple tons of cocaine. They're trying to find out who supposedly "owns" it at this point. These planes apparently change hands from one front company to another constantly because there are people who spend a lot of time tracking these aircraft.

There were two things Bush wanted from Afghanistan - bin Laden wasn't one of them, and removing the Taliban was only an adjunct to the other. The two things were: an oil pipeline, and the resurgence of the opium crop.

The Taliban had seized all the opium and stockpiled it, waiting for the price to go up, whereupon they would unload it for a killing. The US didn't like that, so they overthrew the Taliban, using bin Laden as a convenient excuse.

If you want to know what the CIA's connection was to 9/11, there it is. They may not have planned it - but just like Bush and Cheney, they took advantage of it to get back into the drug game big time. Supposedly a relative of Porter Goss in Switzerland is running part of the drug smuggling operation.

Now we have the largest opium crop on record, and bin Laden's crowd is in full swing.

"Mission accomplished."

Still don't have the pipeline, though, I think.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | October 9, 2007 12:18 AM

Remember that the Bushies sent millions of dollars to the Taliban before 9/11 due to their efforts to eradicate opium. We could easily buy Afghan poppies like we do from Turkey and India and make them into pharmaceuticals. There is a global undersupply of such drugs with demand growing in Africa.

Posted by Reality Man | October 9, 2007 12:52 AM

"Though there's much to your post that's important, let me defend the appointment of Bill Wood, whom I know personally to be a very smart and dedicated Foreign Service Officer, with lots of experience outside Latin America, including in NATO and International Organization Affairs (UN, etc.), which are obviously important in Kabul. Moreover, it's sometimes a good thing to drop someone in from outside the pool of regionally experienced officers, to bring in critical new thinking. None of this means that the Bush administration isn't screwing up in Afghanistan, thanks largely to Iraq, but Bill Wood's appointment isn't germane to that problem.

Posted by Traven | October 8, 2007 12:10 PM"

Is he unique in these respects among career State Department hands? I'm guessing not. Then why was he in particular chosen to be our ambassador to one of the countries where our troops are actively engaged in combat?

Posted by Reality Man | October 9, 2007 1:57 AM

Foreign policy wars are a continuation of the culture war by other means. At least that's what Republicans seem to think. How else can you explain the insanity of selecting staffers for the recovery effort in Iraq based on their views about Roe v. Wade?

Posted by jonp72 | October 9, 2007 10:17 AM

Reality Man, I still can't figure out why legal production of opium doesn't seem to even be on the table in these discussions. Clearly the Afghan people are good at it! I wonder if the countries that do have a monopoly on poppy growing hold on to their power with an iron fist...

Anyway, it's amazing how we manage to look at the failures of our past and decide that future success is inevitable if we just keep doing the same thing with even more fervor. It worked so well in Colombia and Vietnam, after all....

Posted by Persia | October 9, 2007 10:28 AM

I don't think his key qualification comes from fighting drugs in Colombia, but from being an ambassador in a country (Colombia) that has suffered through years of civil war and an insurgency (the FARC) that controls large parts of the country in a similar way that the Taleban controls large sections of Afghanistan.

While I don't know much about William Wood, the parallels between Colombia and Afghanistan are clear and it is not because of the prevalence of drug cultivation and production.

Posted by Alex | October 10, 2007 12:16 PM

I am from Colombia and the U.S. Policies towards Colombia and Latin America have been those of a bully, always threatening with one or another type of sanctions if things are not done as they wish. I am also very dissapointed with Americans in general as how they treat the world with a double morale. I guess I should not expect a lot from the people who saw corruption in front of their face during the first Bush election and were unable to do anything; then blinded by their own low quality but powerful media, they decided to elect the very same group of Republicans that stole the first election in front of their noses.
In the meantime the average joe keeps on partying away (in the U.S. to party often mens to do drugs) and watching the world as seeing by Hollywood, CNN or the scarier FOX news.
:-(
Viva Colombia!!!

Posted by Rodrigo Mayorga | October 10, 2007 6:04 PM

If we're so obsessed with drying up a valuable source of funding for the Taliban we could just defund the DEA, get sloppy about keeping viable papaver somniferum seeds out of the country and then good ol' Americans could produce all the opium the country wants. It would close the trade gap, and buh bye Taliban drug money, no need to spend a fortune spoiling a country's agriculture. American junkies could shoot up secure in the knowledge that they're being patriotic if they buy American heroin.

Of course, that would make too much sense. We're not going to do that when we can poison some poor bastard on the other side of the world trying to feed his family by growing opium poppies that Europeans and Americans want refined into heroin. Totally the way to win the War on Terror, poison a dirt poor Muslim's crops and maybe him, his family, and his livestock as well. Absolutely a course of action that will show the Muslim world we Americans are an honorable people who are not out to get them; we just have to make them starve because we're too lazy to round up our junkies and put 'em in rehab.

Posted by King Kong | October 21, 2007 10:00 AM