Man, over two weeks. Time to get back in the game I guess.
American Footprints notes the creation of a US “drug czar” for Afghanistan to deal with the opium problem there. They say:
“You know I prefer the military option of using herbicides and napalm in liberal quantities, so spare me the options of legalizing the opium trade, offering economic alternatives to the farmers, prosecuting corrupt Afghan officials, yadda yadda. All I know is that the metric of success – reducing the number one opium-producing nation’s ability to export opium – isn’t going in a positive direction.” (Emphasis added)
That’s not the metric I’d measure by. Though heroin is a dangerous drug that ruins lives worldwide, I believe that seeing the stabilization of Afghanistan, and the repulsion of the Taliban and other terrorist groups is the focus of our efforts there. If, as suggested, we destroyed poppy farms en masse, not only would we be contributing to the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan by destroying the livelihood of many Afghanis, we would radicalize the entire population. It does not take an analytical genius to realize poppy destruction creates support for the Taliban and hatred of NATO. To simply destroy the entire crop would be foolish on a grand scale.
The options that “Armchair Generalist” dismisses so easily – legalizing the trade, government intervention to assist in crop diversification, a crackdown on corruption – are in fact the only viable options. First, NATO needs to be in the business of buying as much poppy as possible. This takes opium out of the hands of heroin producers while allowing farmers to live. From there, a program of crop diversification by offering crop exchange, new agricultural technology, and targeted government assistance would be the intelligent step. This is much more expensive than carpeting the country with napalm, but simple destruction of poppy in Afghanistan will not end the opium trade, or the production of heroin. All it will achieve is the further impoverishment of millions of Afghanis.
