A logical suggestion that could help in the WOT:
Marketing board pushed for Afghan poppies
Andrew Thomson
CanWest News Service
Friday, March 02, 2007
canada.com
OTTAWA - An international marketing board for opium, similar to Canada's wheat board, would better fight terrorism and the booming drug trade in Afghanistan instead of current poppy-eradication programs, a former NATO ambassador says.
Destroying poppy crops, a major plank of American and British anti-drug policy, only drives farmers closer towards the Taliban, said Gordon Smith, Canada's NATO ambassador between 1985 and 1990. He's the lead author of a report released Thursday that urges the continuation of Canada's military presence beyond the current 2009 deadline, but also says current NATO policies need a shake-up.
His study, prepared for the Calgary-based Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute, urged the creation of an international clearing house to purchase opium crops and prevent money from entering the hands of Taliban insurgents or traffickers.
Afghanistan remains the largest heroin producing and trafficking country, producing more than 90 per cent of the world's opium poppy supply in 2006. That's 172,000 hectares according to recent American estimates - a 61 per cent jump from the previous year. Opium exports account for one-third of the country's combined licit and illicit GDP, according to th United Nations.
"In a perfect world nobody would be allowed to grow poppies and all would be well," Smith said Thursday. "It would never be leak-proof. It's not a frightfully good option, but it's better than any others that anyone else has come forward with."
Fair opium prices and central regulation by the Afghan government and foreign states would also help alleviate international morphine shortages, said Smith, a former deputy minister of foreign affairs and now the executive director of the University of Victoria's Centre for Global Studies.
Poppy cultivation remains the only lucrative career choice for many impoverished Afghans, living under the burden of three continuous decades of civil war.
But strong links exist between Afghanistan's burgeoning narco-economy and the Taliban insurgence against NATO and Afghan forces, according to a U.S. State Department report also released Thursday.
"Traffickers provide weapons, funding, and personnel to the Taliban in exchange for the production of drug trade routes, poppy fields, and members of their organizations," the report said.
Barnett Rubin, a former UN adviser on Afghanistan, argued in 2003 that the marketing board concept would represent disaster for small Afghan farmers, keeping prices low along the lines of African coffee, tea, and, cocoa boards. An auction house in Kabul, with sales taxed by the central government, represented a better idea, said Rubin, a New York University professor.
Smith said Thursday his group has no specific plan to implement an opium marketing board. He's not the first to suggest the idea.
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf told a British magazine recently that western governments should buy the Afghan poppy crop. John Ralston Saul, the Canadian author and philosopher, also raised the marketing board idea last summer, based on visits to Afghanistan with his wife, former governor general Adrienne Clarkson. And the Senlis Council, a British think-tank, proposed a poppy licensing system for Afghanistan last year, pointing to U.S. agreements with Turkey aimed at reducing that country's massive heroin output during the early-1970s.
Smith said the CDFAI report aimed to find a common ground between opponents of the Afghan mission who want withdrawal, and those who believe Canada's policies should remain unchanged.
Among their recommendations are more discretionary development spending for Canadian military units moving through dangerous regions, cajoling Pakistan to encourage moderate Taliban elements to participate in the political process, and battling corruption within the Afghan national army and police force.
A political solution within Afghanistan is the only effective exit strategy, he said. This could potentially include back channel negotiations with the Taliban, designed at encouraging Pashtun tribes to take part in the country's governance. Or inviting India, Pakistan's central geopolitical rival, to take a greater role in rebuilding efforts.
"These are issues that should be discussed at a strategic level," Smith said.
The report also criticized Canada's allies in continental Europe for failing to appreciate the gravity of Afghanistan's teetering status within their own national interests.
"(They) have to take this as something in their own interest and be prepared to contribute troops on the ground in the difficult areas," Smith said. "If NATO can't get it's own act together, NATO will fail."
Ottawa Citizen
© CanWest News Service 2007 |
