Afghanistan

How bad is it currently looking in the perpetually war-torn country? From the anti-drug war, Senlis Council report:

"The insurgency now controls vast swaths of unchallenged territory including rural areas, some district centres, and important road arteries.

"The Taliban are the de facto governing authority in significant portions of territory in the south and east, and are starting to control parts of the local economy and key infrastructure such as roads and energy supply." [...]

"The depressing conclusion is that, despite the vast injections of international capital flowing into the country, and a universal desire to 'succeed' in Afghanistan, the state is once again in serious danger of falling into the hands of the Taliban.

"It is a sad indictment of the current state of Afghanistan that the question now appears to be not if the Taliban will return to Kabul, but when this will happen and in what form."

It may be a futile effort to keep Afghanistan out of the hands of Muslim fanatics; but that doesn't mean we should help the process along with our current poppy strategy that is both alienating the local population, and funding the terrorist enemies.

Hell, This Has To Be One Of The Worst Op-Eds Ever Written

This one by Colonel David Hunt, via FoxNews.com, I mean... In case you plan on reading the entire article, take an aspirin and a few quick shots of whiskey first.

For the sake of discussion, I'll breeze quickly past the poor writing style - such as calling President Karzai a "cute little guy who wears a cape and a hat" and starting 10% of his sentences with "Hell,..."

The first three paragraphs are reasonably accurate, minus the oddly placed immigration reference at the end (and maybe the claim that the US has "owned Afghanistan for five years"). In fact, the article starts much like most pro-drug war articles start: with facts that support ending the drug war.

And then, the paragraph:

The United States of America is sadly the largest user of raw opium — you may
know it as heroin. My friends, you cannot make this up … you see, truth is stranger and always more shocking than fiction. What else is stranger than fiction is how easy it would be to destroy the stuff. These fields are miles and miles long and wide. We should bomb them, blow them up, set up an artillery and motor training range and blow the opium off the planet. It is true that it’s the only product Afghanistan farmers export. Between us and Europe, we surely can come up with another product that this poor country can export. We can also pay them for their opium that we will destroy for a few years, and, of course, while we are getting them to use another product that does not kill people. [How about marijuana, then??]

All emphasis and bracketed comments mine.

Wow... WOW... In this one paragraph, Hunt advocates not only spraying but bombing opium fields. He claims that the US and Europe should be able to dictate what crops poor Afghan farmers can grow. And finally, he advocates extending the oh-so-successful "pay to not produce shit" farm subsidies to a foreign country.

I could quote some more from the final paragraphs of the article, but there's really no need. It doesn't make any fucking sense. To summarize, Hunt goes on to scold you for not caring enough about bin Laden's most recent video and then the grand finale (ok, I just have to give in and quote one more time):

...with the sheer amount of opium present, the massive size of the problem will get your attention and maybe, just maybe, you might put down the beer, or even better, take the half full one and throw it at the TV and then write your congressman, senator or even the president and say, “Enough is enough, this is the greatest damn country in the world, how about we act like it?

My head hurts.

Afghanistan -- The Columbia of the Middle East

Jacob Sullum on Afghanistan:

Since their efforts have had precisely the opposite of the result they intended, U.S. drug warriors, predictably enough, plan to try harder, calling for more eradication, possibly including aerial spraying of herbicide, and more interdiction. Over the long term, if history is any guide, these supply reduction measures will have little or no impact on heroin consumption. Over the short term, they will continue to strengthen the Taliban insurgency.

Read the whole thing.

Talk About Missing the Point

Case study: What happens when you allow a philosophy professor from an art institute write about domestic and international drug policy. From Counterpunch:

[...]Baltimore- and Newark, Detroit, Philadelphia, New Orleans, Washington D.C., and so many other impoverished urban centers- is the front line of a very real, very bloody Drug War, with cocaine and heroin taking center stage.

[...]

[...]For almost two decades, however, and continuing through today, the Taliban has been at the root of very real blood spilt on American streets.

There is no mystery or confusion surrounding the Taliban's link to our urban drug war, and the American lives it costs. The Taliban encourages heroin production, offers the industry government protection, and arranges the export of this elicit substance. The Taliban is in cahoots with global drug traders, sending the stuff on its way to Baltimore's dealers and addicts. In short, the Taliban is clearly a drug regime, responsible for sowing social mayhem worldwide.

[...]

On American shores, the murders of the drug trade are only its most obvious mark of destruction. In truth, the social devastation it has inflicted runs deep: lives ruined by heroin addiction, both physically and psychologically; families ripped apart by resident addicts; entire neighborhoods rendered unlivable by drug violence.

Read the whole piece -- correct me if I'm wrong -- but this is clearly way off mark in every way possible. First, the Taliban has not been responsible for a narcostate for decades. It's common knowledge that poppy production was controlled quite effectively when they were in charge of the shit-hole dust bowl known as Afghanistan. Her misstated facts aside; I take real offense with the suggestion that heroin and cocaine are the trouble makers for our urban centers -- or that farmers in Afghanistan or Columbia are to blame for the downward spiral that American cities like Baltimore are experiencing. It's not just the drugs, it's the illicit nature of the drugs. Let's put the blame where the blame is deserved. Why is this such a hard point to understand?

What about the lives ruined by criminalizing an entire section of our society? What about the families split up by prison stays and drug trade murders? What about the legitimate jobs that might give some in our inner-cities a chance that are unattainable because of criminal records?

My larger point --and boy do I bore everyone to sleep with it -- is that this is a problem of our own making. We might be victims, but only victims of a failed policy of prohibition. It's not that we are a 'nation of addicts' as this d-bag claims, or that we need to seal our borders to stop the flow of drugs from coming in...No, its the destructive policy of pushing an entire commercial network underground and out of legitimacy. Sure problems come from drug abuse, no one ever claims otherwise. But to claim that violence is a superficial injury from the Drug War, or just shrugging off the millions of people that we send to prison as nothing is foolish and missing the broader point in regards to the failure of the War on Drugs.

A much better Drug War op-ed from the Seattle Times, here.

The Other War in Afghanistan: An Expensive Failure in Drug Policy

Poppies are covering the fields of Afghanistan as that country's opium production hit a record high this year, growing by 17%, following another record year in 2006, according to the UN and as reported by the NY Times today.

Despite a $600 million American counternarcotics effort and an increase in the number of poppy-free provinces from 6 to 13, the report found that Afghanistan still produces more narcotics than Colombia, Peru and Bolivia combined.

It now accounts for 93 percent of the world’s opium, up from 92 percent last year, the report said.

Antonio Maria Costa, the executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crimes Policy, which issued the report, called the new figures “terrifying.” “Afghanistan today is cultivating megacrops of opium,” he said at a news conference. “Leaving aside China in the 19th century, no other country has produced so much narcotics in the past 100 years.” [Emphasis mine]

To translate: Afghanistan is producing much more opium than it did before there were tens of thousands of US and NATO troops there (with much of their time spent eradicating poppy fields)and US taxpayers were funding a $600 million DEA enforcement operation.

The Islamist Campaign Against Women and Girls

I have been away from posting for many weeks as I have been out of town since early June. I know that Baylen now hates me for being so remiss, but I am back at home and ready to make TtP mischief.

There are tons of topics to address, but this one strikes a libertarian chord in me so here will I start: the hatred and oppression of women in Islamist culture. Recently, Islamist thugs on motorbikes opened fire on Afghani school girls, killing two girls and injuring four others, including their teacher.

How anyone could kill girls for going to school is beyond me. Afghani fathers also trade their daughters to settle debts."He gave me nine sheep," Ahmad said, describing his family's woes since taking the loan.

"Because of nine sheep, I gave away my daughter."

Seated beside him in the cramped compound, his daughter Malia's eyes filled with tears. She used a black scarf to wipe them away.

And this is the government that we are backing?

Hitchens wrote a great article on this subject.

In Britain, in the 21st century, there are now honor killings, forced marriages, clerically mandated wife-beatings, incest in all but name, and the adoption of apparel for females that one cannot be sure is chosen by them but which is claimed as an issue of (of all things) free expression. This would be bad enough on its own and if it were confined to the Muslim "community" alone. But, of course, such a toxin cannot be confined, and the votaries of theocracy now claim the God-given right to slaughter females at random for nothing more than their perceived immodesty.

Tony Blair as Stupid as Rudy Giuliani

I guess like Giuliani, Blair doesn't read intelligence reports, history books or newspapers either.

[Blair's] muscular internationalism might best be described as half globalization theory and half Gladstone -- the Victorian-era, Liberal prime minister who symbolizes high-minded, humanitarian intervention. Blair speaks a neon language of right and wrong and sees Britain as a global force for good. And he has little patience for a trendy moral equivalence:

"The reason why the stance of a lot of public opinion is quite defeatist in my view is because we are still saying, 'Well, they've got a point, we understand their grievance, maybe it is our fault.' . . We get rid of two of the most brutal and terrible dictatorships, who've killed hundreds of thousands of their people, we then say you can have a United Nations-backed process of democracy -- and you say that provoked them to terrorism. I mean, explain that one for me."

Yeah, the idea that carpet-bombing Muslim countries, overthrowing their leaders, and killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people through economic sanctions and war is going to lead to retaliation of some sort really needs explaining. I can't imagine why a father who loses his wife and children in a bombing raid isn't satisfied knowing that it was a cost of bringing him democracy. Nope, can't imagine why at all.

More on Blair's killing-people-is-humanitarianism-at-its-best philosophy in today's Washington Post.

Good News for Afghanistan

It feels good to do an up-beat Afghanistan post. Who even knew it was possible?
From the Independent:

A Downing Street spokesman confirmed last night that Mr Blair is now considering whether to back a pilot project that would allow some farmers to produce and sell their crops legally to drugs companies. His change of heart has surprised the Foreign Office, which recently denied that licit poppy production was being considered. A freedom of information request has revealed that the Government looked carefully at proposals to buy up Afghanistan's poppy crop as early as 2000, under the Taliban. The removal of that regime - justified to both US and British voters partly in terms of a victory in the "war on drugs" - has made it politically difficult to financially reward poppy farmers.

But the 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.

Whether this plan goes anywhere or not is anyone's best guess. What's important, is that a major NATO ally is discussing the possibility of a change of course in Afghanistan. Count that alone as a victory against the global War on Drugs.

Related links here, here, and here. Knock yourself out with the "Afghanistan" tag to see a few of my previous posts. Full article here.

When in Doubt Blame Everyone Else

Washington Times article from yesterday's paper.

The United States said today that top anti-terror allies Afghanistan, Pakistan and Colombia had fallen short in the war on drugs despite enhanced counter-narcotics efforts, and it criticized perennial foes Iran, North Korea and Venezuela for not cooperating.

Yeah guys, its your fault we can't control the demand for these drugs in our own country.

In its annual global survey of the drug war, the department said massive opium poppy production in Afghanistan, long the world's top producer of the main ingredient for heroin, continued to pose a major threat due to its links with groups such as the Taliban.
"Afghanistan's huge drug trade undercuts efforts to rebuild the economy and develop a strong democratic government based on the rule of law," the department said in the 2007 International Narcotic Control Strategy Report.
"There is strong evidence that narcotics trafficking is linked to the Taliban insurgency. These links between drug traffickers and anti-government forces threaten regional stability."

Humm. So we should continue our current strategy of eradication which pumps up the price of opium, therefore giving the terrorist even higher profits? What am I missing in this equation, because nowhere have I seen a coherent argument for why we don't just buy the crops of the Afghan farmers. We spend billions doing the same for staple type crops in the U.S., why not do the same for them if this is such a massive global problem? Ideally the purchased crops could be used to help reduce the shortage of pharmaseutical opiates, but if that's too much to handle just destroy them. All I'm asking is we destroy the poppies after we give the poor guy trying to make a living a fair value for his crop. Too much to ask for?

The problems in Afgahnistan have been steadily getting more play in the media; so maybe someone has/will make a honest argument for why we can't export our horriable subsidies to that mess of a nation. Hardly the perfect solution, but it seems to me(and many other folks) like a realistic and viable one given how misareably the West has been failing in the past few years in that region of the world.

Full article here.

Trouble Winning the Hearts, Minds, Feet, Hands...

More of the same out of Afghanistan. From the Times

The tractor roared through the field, the plough tearing through the valuable poppy crop as the farmer looked on. A helicopter searched for insurgents and armed police stood watch, their uniforms replaced by robes and turbans to make them less conspicuous.

“The people are unhappy with this eradication campaign; if it goes on they will all join the Taleban,” Dilbar, a poppy farmer in Helmand province, told The Times.

The prospect of such a surge in Taleban numbers is bad news for the 5,000 British troops based in Helmand and 1,400 more heading there after the announcement by Des Browne, the Defence Secretary. The fiercest fighting since the Taleban were overthrown in 2001 came last year, with more than 4,000 people killed, and intelligence reports predict a new offensive this spring.

[ellipsis]

Farmers take huge risks to grow poppy as the market price is 20 times that of wheat. But without aid they have little choice and when the crop is destroyed they are crippled by debt, often having borrowed heavily from landlords to plant the crop. Landlords make no concessions for eradicated crops and the farmers are still expected to pay off their loans.

Smugglers who take the drug out of Afghanistan are also rewarded handsomely for their trade. Very few, if any, smugglers or landlords have been punished, and in southern Afghanistan operate virtually beyond the law. “It will be impossible for us to eradicate the entire poppy. We will need months and months and the poppy will be ready for harvest in only three,” Aminullah said.

Full article here.

Afghanistan+US Drug Policy=Disaster

Maybe Bush and the world community is paying too much attention to Afghanistan. It's the only possible answer to the question of, "How can you fuck up Afghanistan this much, this fast?" Then again, maybe I'm not giving US policy makers and their United Nations counterparts enough credit. It's always possible they could step up the "progress" and make it even worse in the future. Scary thought to ponder.

This month's installment of Afghanistan poppy eradication policies gone mad comes from the Telegraph. They report that the Karzai government in Afghanistan will--in all probability--cave to American pressure and begin ground based spraying of farms in the country. The real reason we want them to use this extreme technique? This way, when it fails and the remaining 3 farmers in Afghanistan that haven't already switched their allegiance to the resurgent Taliban do, we can force the Karzai government to use an even more extreme method. Air based spraying. The craziest thing isn't that our people want to use aerial spraying, a horrible idea no doubt, but I suppose a position you can take. No, the craziest part of this is they think aerial spraying in Columbia has worked. That's right, they think what the US has been doing in Columbia has been working.

"Reducing poppy cultivation can only be done over the long term, but some in the US want quick, unsustainable results," said one Western official.

"There are many in the US administration who think that aerial spraying proved effective in Colombia. But they have a hell of a fight on their hands to convince the international community that it would be a good idea in Afghanistan.

Dizzy yet? If news like this, which gives us a window into the brains of the people who make and defend drug policy, both here at home and abroad, doesn't make you utterly depressed about the future......Well...then I need better bud. Plain and simple.

Full article here. Related Washington Post article here. Via Andrew Studdaford at The Corner.

Which Has Better Odds?

Mark Greer from DrugSense has posted a list of 10 specific steps that need to be taken to "end prohibition as we know it." It an interesting list, (some of the usual stuff mixed with some newer ideas that need more attention from everyone) and worthy of a read. You can read the whole post for yourself here, but I've pulled a few for here--edited for space

1. Grant agronomist Lyle Craker a license to grow medicinal-grade
cannabis at the University of Massachusetts.
http://www.mapinc.org/people/Lyle+Craker

Effect: End the federal government's monopoly on growing marijuana to meet the FDA's requirement for an independent, high quality cannabis supply for approved cannabis-based research and product development.

4. Make Afghani opium available to pharmaceutical companies.
http://www.mapinc.org/areas/Afghanistan

Effect: Develop a licensing system so that opium grown in Afghanistan can be legally sold to make narcotic pain relievers, there by alleviating a worldwide shortage of these medications.

5. Defund the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign.
http://www.mapinc.org/campaign.htm

9. Develop citizen oversight boards for SWAT squads.

Warning: It can be a roller coaster of emotions when one reaches the end of the list and reflects; coming to the opinion that the odds of checking off the greatest fantasy of any list (having Scarlett Johannson drop a gigantic log on my chest after 4 hours of the most disgusting and dirty sex imaginable) might just have a better chance of becoming reality than any of the useful ideas that Mark Greer has presented. Via Drug WarRant

A Trip To Afghanistan?

If it wasn't for the lack of civilization accompanied with a good chance of having your head lopped off, Afghanistan might make a enjoyable holiday destination. My buddy Ben sent me this CNN article that reveals the secret potential that grows in Afghanistan.

Canadian troops fighting Taliban militants in Afghanistan have stumbled across an unexpected and potent enemy -- almost impenetrable forests of marijuana plants 10 feet tall.

[snip]

"A couple of brown plants on the edges of some of those [forests] did catch on fire. But a section of soldiers that was downwind from that had some ill effects and decided that was probably not the right course of action," Hiller said dryly.
One soldier told him later: "Sir, three years ago before I joined the army, I never thought I'd say 'That damn marijuana'."

Finally, some good news out of Afghanistan.

At Least This War is Going Smoothly

There has been some smart commentary and news of late chronicling the correlation between the steadily declining situation in Afghanistan and our exportation of the War on Drugs to their region. This may come as a shock to some, but Afghanistan is a nation with very little natural wealth. Lots of mountains and dirt, but relatively little in the way of resources or goods that people actually want. However, one good that people do want and that Afghans can supply in massive quantities is opium. And supplying it in massive quantities is exactly what they are doing; some 6 tons expected this year. Full scale poppy cultivation resumed after the Taliban was removed from power to meet the demands of the global heroin market. This of course has drawn the ire of the US and UK and has led to a massive eradication effort, focused mainly in southern Afghanistan.

The obvious solution to the problem is to eradicate the black market for opium, rather than eradicating the crops themselves. But that would require legalization on a domestic level for nations feeding the global demand for heroin like the US and UK. Since most would rate the chances of worldwide legalization of heroin somewhere in the range of non-existent to improbable, another more realistic option would be to allow Afghans to sell their opium on the legal worldwide market to help fill a void in the global supply of opium for pharmaceutical purposes. This at least makes more sense than going around and destroying the only source of income that many of these farmers have.

Check out Andrew Studdaford over at NRO here as well as an article by Johann Hari here. And on the flip side, some examples of what we shouldn’t do in Afghanistan, here and here

I Guess the Taliban is Too Busy Making Snow bin Ladens in the Winter

Oh, Rummy. You make us love that we love to hate you so.

Asked about the [deteriorating situation in Afghanistan today], Rumsfeld admitted there was a resurgence of the Taliban, admitted Taliban fighters were “occupying safe havens” in Pakistan and other places, and admitted that violence has increased recently. Then he blamed it all on the weather:

Does the violence tend to be up during the summer, in the spring, Summer and fall months? Yes it does. And it tends to decline during the winter period. Does that represent failed policy? I don’t know. I would say not.

Up next, violence decreasing in Baghdad except on Mondays, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursdays, Saturdays, and Sundays. And Iraq is relatively safe, except for recent years.

[Via Think Progress]

Military's Trash = Insurgents' Treasure

To figure out what's really going on in Afghanistan, you could spend years trying to get a straight answer out of Donald Rumsfeld or Scott McClellan. To really know what's going on, though, head to the markets just outside Bagram Air Base, where you can buy looted and discarded American military computers, hard drives, disks, flash drives and other assorted hardware and software.

Shop owners at the bazaar say Afghan cleaners, garbage collectors and other workers from the base arrive each day offering purloined goods, including knives, watches, refrigerators, packets of Viagra and flash memory drives taken from military laptops. The drives, smaller than a pack of chewing gum, are sold as used equipment.

[Ellipsis]

A reporter recently obtained several drives at the bazaar that contained documents marked "Secret." The contents included documents that were potentially embarrassing to Pakistan, a U.S. ally, presentations that named suspected militants targeted for "kill or capture" and discussions of U.S. efforts to "remove" or "marginalize" Afghan government officials whom the military considered "problem makers."

The drives also included deployment rosters and other documents that identified nearly 700 U.S. service members and their Social Security numbers, information that identity thieves could use to open credit card accounts in soldiers' names.

More here.

Taliban to Telecom

Tuesday's Christian Science Monitor has an interesting piece on telecom privatization in Afghanistan. Seems free-market reforms are apparently "quietly making Afghanistan a decent place to make a buck."