Date: Mon, 25 Feb 2002
Subject: #236 Clueless In Afghanistan
DrugSense FOCUS Alert #236 Feb 25, 2002
CLUELESS IN AFGHANISTAN
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DrugSense FOCUS Alert #236 Feb 25, 2002
Much has been made of the link between terror and drugs by both drug
warriors and drug policy reform advocates. There is a crucial
difference between the interpretations: Drug warriors ignore
prohibition’s role in the link, while reformers understand prohibition
offers the central relationship between drugs and terror.
The drug warriors have spread their perspective with the assistance of
the mainstream press. A good example is this month’s Vanity Fair,
which contains an article by Maureen Orth about drug corruption in
Afghanistan. The word prohibition isn’t raised once in the article.
Instead, Orth follows the party line that the drug war should be
fought with even more resources. Please write a letter Vanity Fair to
remind Orth and editors that this simply isn’t logical. When the drug
war is causing corruption, an enhanced drug war can only lead to more
corruption.
Thanks for your effort and support.
WRITE A LETTER TODAY
It’s not what others do it’s what YOU do
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE Afghanistan’s Deadly Habit URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v02/n259/a04.html
AFGHANISTAN’S DEADLY HABIT
No Matter Who Controls Afghanistan, Its Opium Crop-More Than 70% Of The
World’s Supply-Is Creating Narco-Societies Throughout Central Asia, From
Russia To Pakistan. In Tajikistan, The Author Discovers The Extent Of The
Region’s Drug Corruption, Which May Prove More Destructive Than Any
Terrorist Threat.
The ex-K.G.B. colonel and I are bumping along on the ancient Silk Road
in Tajikistan, heading southeast from the capital city of Dushanbe
toward the Panj River, which separates Tajikistan from Afghanistan.
Arid mountains loom on either side, and random boulders are spewed on
the poorly paved road, which we share with a few peasant boys and
donkeys bearing bundles of kindling wood. Like most Americans, I had
barely heard of this country before September 11, but soon I began to
realize its crucial importance to a dangerous war that is sure to last
much longer than the one going on in Afghanistan. The enemy is heroin,
the most valuable export of Central Asia, and I have come 7,000 miles
to understand the symbiotic connection between drugs and terrorism.
Now I am about to visit the nexus of the world’s largest heroin supply
and the beginning of its extravagantly profitable transit between the
porous border between these two impoverished countries.
In the villages on both sides of the river, virtually the entire
population is engaged in smuggling the only cash crop that Afghanistan
grows, the opium poppy.
You have to smuggle or you die of starvation-it is the only means to
live, a Tajik Drug Control Agency commander told me. My guide, Colonel
Salomatsho Kbushvakhtov, once the K.G.B. agent in charge of the border
for the Soviets and now an officer of the elite new Tajik drug agency,
concurs, explaining that the war against the Taliban and al-Qaeda will
not stop heroin from flowing across the border.
In July 2000 the Taliban, to gain international recognition and
deplete their stockpiles, imposed a strict ban on poppy growing, which
was 91 percent effective by 2001. Nevertheless, Khushvakhtov assures
me, the warlords who still roam Central Asia need the money heroin
brings.
It is their main source of income, and they have to feed and pay
soldiers.
(SNIP) TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE, CLICK THE URL ABOVE
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To the Editor:
One has to question Maureen Orth’s capacity for rational thought. A
former Peace Corps volunteer who witnessed, first hand, the
destruction of the Colombian economy by a burgeoning criminal market
for cocaine a decade or so ago, Orth, as journalist, reported very
competently on the injury done by the criminal market for heroin, not
only to Afghanistan, but to all of Central Asia. She then ended with
one of the most puzzling conclusions in the annals of modern
journalism: “Rarely has there been a more auspicious moment to help
eliminate a worldwide scourge and bring corrupt officials to heel.”
Come again? The current “victor” in Afghanistan, the United States,
remains firmly committed to drug prohibition. As Orth stated in her
opening line, it doesn’t matter who controls Afghanistan; opium will
dominate its economy. It is impossible to see how removal of the
Taliban will change that fact, especially since the only rule now
possible is at the hands of the same opium growing warlords we once
recruited to eject the Russians.
One point Orth does make clearly: when a criminal enterprise becomes
the economic life-blood of an entire region, bad things happen. That
was the exact situation in Central Asia when we lost interest in it in
1992. The result was September 11th. How Orth– or the US State
Department and CIA– could possibly think our recent bombing of
Afghanistan has changed things for the better is a critical question.
It’s now clear they simply have no rational answer because the US
under Bush remains as deeply committed to drug prohibition as ever.
So long as heroin remains illegal, the conditions Orth described in
Central Asia will remain beyond any government’s capacity to change.
Tom O’Connell, MD
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least somewhat so that the paper does not receive numerous copies of
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Prepared by Stephen Young (maxharm@mail.addr.com) and Stephen Heath
(holy_cow_14@yahoo.com) DrugSense FOCUS Alert Specialists