Mutually Self-Defeating Policies In Afghanistan
Writing in the Asia Times Online Ann Jones, who has spent much of the past four years in-country working on education and women’s issues, describes how the West’s contradictory policies are greasing the path our interestes in Afghanistan are following down the tubes.
Undeniably, the poppy trade and the resurgence of the Taliban are intimately connected, for the Taliban, who briefly banned poppy cultivation in 2000 in an effort to gain US diplomatic recognition and aid, now both support and draw support from that profitable crop. Yet Western policies aimed at the Taliban and the poppy are quite separate and at odds with each other. While NATO troops scramble, between battles, to rebuild rural infrastructure, US advisers urge Afghan anti-narcotics police to eradicate the livelihood of 2 million poor farmers.
So far the poppy-eradication program, largely funded by the US, hasn’t made a dent. Last year, it claimed to have destroyed 15,380 hectares of poppies, up from 4,850 the year before; but during the same period overall poppy cultivation soared from 104,000 hectares to 165,000.
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Still, the counterproductive eradication program succeeds in one thing. It makes life miserable for hundreds of thousands of small farmers. What happens to them? The Senlis Council, an international drug-policy think-tank, reports that the drug-eradication program not only ruins small farmers but actually drives them into the arms of the Taliban, who offer them loans, protection and a chance to plant again. Big farmers, on the other hand, are undeterred by the poppy-eradication program; they simply pay off the police and associated officials, spreading corruption and dashing hopes of honest government.
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Like Musharraf in Pakistan, Karzai walks a tightrope between domestic politics and US demands for dramatic actions – such as ending the drug trade – clearly well beyond his powers. The trade penetrates even the elected parliament, which is full of the usual suspects. Among the 249 members of the wolesi jirga (lower house) are at least 17 known drug traffickers in addition to 40 commanders of armed militias, 24 members of criminal gangs, and 19 men facing serious allegations of war crimes and human-rights violations, any or all of whom may be affiliated with the poppy business. For years the Kabul rumor mill has traced the drug trade to the family of the president himself.
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So you see what I mean about the weird policies a government such as the United States’ can develop when it can’t talk about real facts. When it cozies up to people it professes to be against. When it attacks people whose hearts and minds it hopes to win. When it pays experts to report false conclusions it wants to hear. When it spends billions to tear down the lives of poor Afghans even as NATO allies pray for a break in battling the Taliban so that – with time running out – they can rebuild.
As in Iraq, it is increasingly obvious that whatever chances there might have been for a positive were thrown away soon after the venture began. In the case of Afghanistan it was the flittering attention span exemplified by the Iraq invasion itself.