ERADICATE
POPPY FIELDS, TERROR FUNDING
Just
as the administration's Iraqi mission has been damaged by the scandal of
prisoner abuse and other failures, the policy in Afghanistan has been undercut
by the rebirth of the Afghani poppy, the main ingredient in
heroin.
Deputy
Secretary of State Richard Armitage admitted during a hearing last month that
last year was the ''biggest year ever -- for poppy cultivation and growth in
Afghanistan. So you would be wrong if you don't hold us responsible.'' The
future looks even worse: A U.N. report says that two out of every three Afghan
farmers plan to increase their poppy crop in 2004.
Dirty
drug money
While
the administration has made inroads into eradicating Colombian coca fields and
is attacking Colombia's heroin as well, it has dangerously ignored Afghanistan's
poppy problem. Afghanistan, after a two-year lapse, is once again ''the world's
largest cultivator and producer'' of opium and heroin, according to the 2004
White House National Drug Control Strategy. Afghani crops in 2003 were more than
double the 2002 crop. As much as half of Afghanistan's GDP now comes from poppy
cultivation and heroin production.
How
could this happen with so many U.S. troops on the ground, especially since dirty
drug money pays for terrorism?
At an
April 29 hearing, U.S. Rep. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., questioned Deputy Secretary of
Defense Paul Wolfowitz on his department's ''reluctance to get into the
narco-terrorist game'' at a time when ``the three key terror groups in
Afghanistan -- the HIG, the Taliban and al Qaeda -- all are now largely
dependent on heroin sales to fund their
operations.''
Fighting
drugs in Afghanistan is not a priority -- we're giving it a pass. Some of the
worst culprits in this illicit trade have even been our closest allies, the
members of the Northern Alliance -- the opposition to the Taliban with whom we
worked to retake the nation. While they were helping U.S. forces weed out the
Taliban, it seems that they were doing some gardening of their
own.
The
White House has offered a manual eradication plan that State Department
Assistant Secretary for Narcotics Robert Charles admits may at best eliminate
''15 to 20 percent of the poppy crop,'' and that in fact is led by the British,
not us. Why so meager an Afghani anti-drug plan when the world's foremost coca
producer, Colombia, with U.S. assistance is approaching a 50 percent reduction
and neighbors Peru and Bolivia have gone down more than 60
percent?
The
White House policy has proposed $2.3 billion a year in development grants and
loans for Afghani economic alternatives. However, with warlords and farmers
making six to 100 times more on poppy than any other cash crop, the
administration's policy will not affect poppy farmers' habits without massive
eradication and enforcement.
Similar
economic programs had only minuscule effect in Colombia until Plan Colombia,
initiated by former drug czar Barry McCaffrey and continued by the Bush
administration, aggressively eradicated the drugs.
Massive
training
We need
a Plan Afghanistan to rid the heroin and make the world safer. Where are the
planes spraying and destroying the drug fields in Afghanistan as we spray in
Colombia? We need massive training to involve our thousands of troops, actively
and aggressively -- not just by the six to 10 anti-drug experts returning from
one-week Drug Enforcement Administration courses in Turkey and Uzbekistan as is
now done.
By
acting at a snail's pace, the administration is effectively working in consort
with Afghanistan's tribal drug lords and jeopardizing our own goals. Cut off the
drugs, and you take a major step to cutting off the
terrorists.