Afghanistan’s drug problem is out of control — since we invaded and then got distracted in Iraq and subsequently failed our mission in practically every way, there has been a significant rise in poppy cultivation and opium production. Afghanistan produces almost all of the world’s opiates, and the Taliban makes a significant profit off of opiate sales. And now American officials are pressuring the Karzai government to spray poppy fields with herbicide to destroy them. Which all sounds good and fine if you’re a single-minded War on Drugs type who doesn’t bother to consider the wider implications of destroying a crop which is the lifeblood for a whole lot of Afghan people.
When poppy fields are destroyed, families go in to debt. They starve. Poppies are the crop of choice for a lot of Afghan people specifically because they’re guaranteed to make a profit. And they don’t trust the United States government for all kinds of reasons. After all, we did promise them aid and a stable income if they grew wheat instead of poppies and, whoops, that didn’t happen. What incentive do they have for stopping poppy production?
The decisions of which poppy crops should be destroyed are also deeply corrupt, with local officials accepting bribes from larger and wealthier land-owners — and so it’s the smaller, poorer people whose crops are taken out. And a widespread destruction of poppies means widespread poverty and famine, which we aren’t doing a whole lot to mitigate.
Crop destruction is also a boon for the Taliban and could lead to bigger problems:
But among European diplomats here, a far greater concern than any environmental or health dangers of chemical eradication is the potential for political fallout that could lead to more violence and instability.
Those 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.
In something of a reversal of traditional roles, officials at the Pentagon and Central Intelligence Agency have also challenged the White House and State Department support for spraying, raising concerns about its potential to destabilize the Karzai government, current and former American officials said.
Our government’s solution?
American officials who support herbicide use do not dismiss such concerns. They say an extensive public-information campaign would have to be carried out in conjunction with any spraying effort to dispel fears about the chemical’s impacts.
Right. I’m sure that the Afghan people will respond well to PSAs which essentially say, “We’re destroying your ability to survive and provide for your families, and we’re doing it by spraying plant-poisoning chemicals all over your community, but they aren’t dangerous we promise.” It doesn’t take a genius to see how that’s going to breed more than “distrust” in Americans, and how it will make the Taliban seem all the more authentic and caring about the country.
And then there’s the fact that the eradication process hasn’t ever really worked, but that isn’t stopping us from trying.
Opium production in Afghanistan is a huge problem. Our failure to bring the promised political stability, democracy and freedom are also huge problems. But taking out poppy crops with herbicide is going to lead to some incredibly scary consequences, unless we have a comprehensive policy to support all of the people (particularly those in the Taliban-controlled south) who will be direly affected by our War on Drugs. They’ll not only need food and some alternate way to make money, but they’ll need money to pay back debtors (as I understand it, many farmers purchase poppy seeds and cultivation tools and then pay for them after the crop has been harvested — so if the crop is destroyed and the farmer has no income, he’s in some trouble. Daughter-selling is apparently a popular solution). Color me skeptical, but I don’t trust our government to make sure that Afghanis get the aid they need.
I do, however, think that we’ll be able to brow-beat Karzai into accepting our proposal. I think we will be made very, very sorry for it. And I think that the Afghan people will be the ones who will bear the brunt of our mistake for decades to come.