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October 08, 2007

Bush administration lobbying to use pesticides to eradicate Afghan opium poppies - what are they smoking?

Reported in today's NYT:

After the biggest opium harvest in Afghanistan’s history, American officials have renewed efforts to persuade the government here to begin spraying herbicide on opium poppies, and they have found some supporters within President Hamid Karzai’s administration, officials of both countries said. ... The issue has created sharp divisions within the Afghan government, among its Western allies and even American officials of different agencies...officials said the skeptics — who include American military and intelligence officials and European diplomats in Afghanistan — fear that any spraying of American-made chemicals over Afghan farms would be a boon to Taliban propagandists. Some of those officials say that the political cost could be especially high if the herbicide destroys food crops that farmers often plant alongside their poppies.

It's hard to know how to respond to this, aside from with a big 'doh'. It's difficult to earn a 'legitimate' income in Afghanistan - e.g. unemployment is c. 40% - and because of the weapons that have been poured into the country for decades, arms are relatively easily available. Depending which estimate you take, the opiate industry's turnover makes up 30-60% of Afghanistan's GDP. If international and Afghan government forces are able to effectively destroy much or most of this major part of the economy, as well as damaging 'legitimate' crops into the bargain, what do they expect to happen? If you take away a major source of income when there is a shortage of alternatives, and destroy peoples' crops, one would expect that a number of people will find alternative income sources through serving with and for the Taliban and other armed groups.

Not to mention that it seems likely that poppy farmers would - in time - find alternative means of producing their crops. After all, pesticides have been used in Columbia for some time and, as everyone knows, no illegal drugs are produced in Columbia any more...

As the NYT notes

diplomats worry particularly that aerial spraying would kill food crops that some farmers plant with their poppies. European officials add that any form of spraying could be cast by the Taliban as American chemical warfare against the Afghan peasantry.

The British have been so concerned that on the eve of Mr. Karzai’s trip to Camp David in August, Prime Minister Gordon Brown called President Bush and asked him not to pressure the Afghan premier to use herbicides, according to several diplomats here.

It's good to hear that the UK government have been opposing this policy - many of the troops who will have to deal with the fallout from this are British. And, yes, this 'chemical warfare' would hand an easy propaganda victory to the Taliban. As Lt Gen David Richards noted last year, "we are deeply cautious that if we get it [poppy eradication] wrong and create the wrong environment, we will tip otherwise perfectly law-abiding and cooperative people into the opposition’s camp." But now it looks like the Bush administration is pushing for this to be got badly, badly wrong.

The major problem with the NYT article is its claim that "there is no debate that Afghanistan’s drug problem is out of control". There is debate about how this 'problem' is - and should be - conceptualised. I should know: I've argued for the need to rethink these things in my PhD thesis (admittedly, no-one will have read that, but it's certainly not an original point for me to make).

The Afghan Opiate industry is actually working strikingly 'well': a great example of the efficacy with which a globalised industry can freely ship goods over national borders, meet and create international demand, etc. The 'problem' is not in Afghanistan - or, at least, is not just in Afghanistan. The criminalisation of most of the world's opiate trade - and the ways in which international markets are functioning - plays a key part in the distorted (and growing) nature of the opiate trade. There have got to be better ways to manage and regulate these markets and this international industry - it should be possible to find alternatives that allow both harm reduction at home and a more beneficial (or, at least, less damaging) opiate industry in states such as Afghanistan.

Posted by jon_mendel at October 8, 2007 03:48 PM

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