How the War on Drugs hurts the War on Terror, continued

Further to this post, Jacob Sullum has more on how the opium-eradication projects in Afghanistan are being skilfully exploited by the Taliban:

...since losing power after the U.S. invasion in 2001, the Taliban seem to have forgotten their religious objections to opium, production of which hit an all-time high of more than 6,000 tons this year, up about 50 percent from 2005. "We are seeing a very strong connection between the increase in the [Taliban] insurgency on the one hand and the increase in cultivation on the other hand," the UNODC's Costa told The New York Times.

What is the nature of this connection? Poppy farmers welcome the Taliban because the Taliban offer them "protection." Protection from whom? From their own government, which is trying to destroy their livelihood under pressure from the U.S. and the U.K.

Afghanistan is one of the world's poorest countries, and the UNODC estimates that opium accounted for more than 50 percent of its GDP in 2005. By his own account, then, Costa is demanding that the Afghan government wipe out half of the country's economy, with conspicuous assistance from U.S. and British forces. Does that sound like a recipe for peace and stability?

It's no mystery why barely subsisting Afghanis choose to grow opium poppies instead of legal crops, contrary to the wishes of foreign governments. According to the UNODC, a hectare of poppies earned farmers some $5,400 last year, about 10 times what they could get by growing wheat.

Western governments, the U.S. foremost among them, created this incentive by banning opium to begin with, thereby enabling criminals (including terrorists) to earn a risk premium. Having artificially boosted the price of opium, the U.S. now asks desperately poor Afghan peasants to resist this financial attraction for the sake of Westerners who fail to resist the pharmacological attraction of heroin.

The Taliban is often credited for "wiping out" the Afghan opium trade, but they actually encouraged opium cultivation after taking power in 1996, and Sullum wonders whether their subsequent opium ban was a backhanded way of making sure the market price went up. Read the whole thing.

Damian P.

Posted by damian at September 13, 2006 04:25 PM