Solving Afghanistan's poppy problem

The drug war yields the wrong kinds of casualties

DOUG SAUNDERS

From Saturday's Globe and Mail

May 3, 2008 at 12:05 AM EDT

LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan — The pilot of the British army helicopter was taking me on an exceedingly fast, wildly pitching, zigzag trajectory across the sun-baked fields of Afghanistan's southern Helmand province. Even at 20 metres above the ground, the pungent aroma was impossible to ignore, a cloying tang resembling a huge pot of badly wilted geraniums.

The smell was being generated by the hundreds and hundreds of people in the patchwork fields below me, a dozen or so in each tiny half-hectare field. They were leaning over the pink, white, yellow and red flowers of the endless poppy plants, painstakingly slashing their bulbs with knives, waiting an hour as the thick syrup dripped out, scraping the dried syrup off, and repeating the task, day after day.

I had found myself in the midst of the largest opium harvest in the history of Afghanistan, possibly the largest in the history of the world. Some of it would be exported directly through Iran and Pakistan to the globe's drug dealers, some of it processed into heroin in laboratories located right beside these fields. American officials told me that between 20 and 40 per cent of the Taliban's financing comes from these opiate exports.

Last year, Afghanistan produced more than 92 per cent of the world's opium and heroin, a record crop. This year, experts say it will produce 40 per cent more than the world demand — which means that huge quantities will be stockpiled somewhere. As we passed over the harvest, the helicopter's side gunner pointed out the various drug-processing activities below me. But he didn't fire a shot or do anything to disrupt the harvest.

Enlarge Image

In central Helmand Pronvince,
Afghanistan, a British Army
helicopter gunner surveys the
2008 poppy harvest. In the fields
blow him, thousands of Afghans
are hard at work this week
extracting the largest harvest in
the country’s history, estimated
to account for 140 per cent of the
worldwide heroin and opium
demand in the world each year.
(Doug Saunders/The Globe and Mail)

There are many people who wish he would. Presidential candidate John McCain has made a campaign promise to order aerial-herbicide spraying of the entire poppy crop. General Dan McNeill, the American who heads the North Atlantic Treaty Organization coalition fighting in Afghanistan, told me that he personally wants this to happen, too, but he respects the Afghan government's refusal to allow it. Instead, he pushes U.S.-controlled provinces to practise aggressive eradication, taking out the fields one by one with Western or Afghan soldiers.

Later in the week, I visited Nangarhar, one of the U.S.-controlled provinces that has all but eliminated its poppy crop. It's being held up as a model province, and Canadian commanders are being pressured by their American counterparts to adopt their tough poppy-ending strategy.

I attended a press briefing by Colonel Abdullah Talwar of the Afghan National Police, whom the Americans have placed in charge of stopping the poppy harvest. Midway through, he offered a little anecdote: "Last week, I saw a man sitting next to his poppy crop and crying," he said. "He told me that he'd been paid in advance for his poppy, and how can he possibly pay it back now that it's been eradicated? He told me, 'I have no choice, but I have a 14-year-old daughter who I have to give to a smuggler as payment.' "

Mr. Talwar then continued talking of quotas and goals. Finally, someone stopped him and asked what had happened to the poor farmer and his daughter. He shrugged: No idea. Like countless other failed farmers, the guy presumably had given up his daughter for chattel slavery or prostitution.

"I did my job, I fulfilled my duties and responsibilities," the big, bearded cop explained. Those duties involved only eliminating the poppy crop. "There's no place for growing poppy in our province," he said. "It is my job to stop it."

But killing a poor farmer's crop can have nasty consequences. In Nangarhar, insurgent attacks have increased sharply despite a doubling in the number of U.S. soldiers. Some people blame the drug strategy, noting that it seems to be driving desperate people into the hands of the enemy.

The problem with simply killing the poppy crop is that the farmers themselves want nothing more than to be growing something else. But it's virtually impossible.

"Farmers made more money growing improved wheat and onions last year than they did growing opium," said a senior official with intimate knowledge of the poppy economy. Like crack dealers who are forced to live with their mothers, poppy farmers soon discover that this supposedly lucrative crop doesn't leave them with much money.

First, they must buy poppy seeds, usually from a trafficker. Then they have to promise 10 per cent to the village landlord (this is, at best, a feudal system), and 5 per cent to the arbab, a local tribal official who provides irrigation, and then a 10-per-cent tax known as an usha, paid to whoever holds power in the region — a government-appointed warlord, or, more frequently these days, the Taliban. Then they must pay for the lancing of the flowers and gathering of the opium, typically at a princely $20 a day. Not much is left.

Most of these costs apply only to poppy crops. So why don't farmers grow wheat and onions? First, because their fields are unsustainably tiny, and subsistence-level farming doesn't leave any money for moving into new crops. You're stuck with what you're given, and if the Taliban are doing the giving, then it's opium.

But more important is the lack of any market for non-opium crops. Farmers need to get their crops to market. If the roads are impassable and dangerous — or if warlords or Taliban are charging you $50 to drive down them without being killed — then suddenly the cost of transporting your grain to market is unaffordably high. Poppy may not pay, but it does have a buyer.

Neither the American spray-it-now approach nor the idealist switch-to-wheat-and-watermelons approach will work now — nor will the Senlis Council's idea of switching to a pharmaceutical opium crop. The farmers first need to be connected to new buyers, without heavy guys with guns in between.

That's why these British soldiers are ignoring the poppy harvest beneath them this month. It makes sense to wipe out some fields — those belonging to warlords and corrupt government officials.

But if a spiral of violence and misery is to be avoided, it's better to trust the economics: Get the warlords out of power and open the roads, and poppy fields will disappear on their own.

Opium isn't a root problem; it's a tragic side effect.

Corruption eats away at Afghan government

DOUG SAUNDERS

From Saturday's Globe and Mail

May 3, 2008 at 11:24 PM EDT

KABUL — Among the soldiers, diplomats and aid workers who live in Afghanistan, it is the problem that nobody dares mention.

Among ordinary Afghans, it's a daily presence, the corruption that is rooted deeply in the Western-backed Afghan government and its appointed officials.

When Afghans are forced by uniformed men to pay large sums of cash in order to travel safely on provincial roads, as they are daily, when their colleagues are arrested and beaten in exchange for ransom payments, when they learn that people pay $150,000 for the job of district police chief in parts of Kandahar province, when entire aid shipments or thousands of police salaries are seized for private use, when world-record heroin exports take place under police watch, everyone in Afghanistan knows where to look.

On heavily guarded streets on the edge of every Afghan city and in the centre of Kabul are the large, wedding-cake houses, surrounded by walls and guards and filled with luxury goods, built in a style popularly known as “narcotecture.”

Canadian officials are said to
have pressed Afghan President
Hamid Karzai hard during the
past two years to reduce the
power of his brother, Ahmed
Wali Karzai. (Associated Press)

Inside live the senior officials with top roles in Afghanistan's government, some of whom have amassed fortunes of hundreds of millions of dollars. Some are governors of provinces, like Kandahar governor Asadullah Khalid, reported by Canadian diplomats to have committed torture. Some are top cabinet ministers.

Others wield power through family ties to the President. The man considered by many observers to be the most powerful and feared figure in the Afghan south is not the Kandahar governor but rather Ahmed Wali Karzai, appointed by his brother, President Hamid Karzai, to represent Kandahar province in Kabul.

A U.S. government document leaked to ABC News two years ago accused him of being the central figure in the region's vast opium-export market, which produces the majority of the world's opium and heroin. This week, senior U.S. and British officials said in interviews that they believe he enables, and likely profits from, opium shipments across southern Afghanistan to Iran, and prevents opium crops of those who support him from being eradicated. He has repeatedly denied such accusations.

Huge fortunes are being earned by many of these officials, Western sources said. It is customary to charge a 20-per-cent commission on imports or exports brought through their provinces, including opium exports valued at more than $800-million. That means hundreds of millions can be earned each year in a country where many families live on less than a dollar a day.

And there are other avenues for corruption. Last fall, U.S. military officials discovered that in one region of eastern Afghanistan only a third of the 3,300 police officers supposedly serving in the region actually existed; the salaries from the 2,100 “ghost officers” were going straight into the pockets of politicians and senior police figures. This practice is thought to be commonplace across Afghanistan, with as many as 60 to 80 per cent of officers in some districts being “ghosts.”

Indeed, Western-funded programs designed to end corruption can have the opposite effect. British officials said that the governor of Kandahar has used poppy-eradication funds, designed to eliminate the opium-poppy crops of wealthy traffickers at the top of the drug economy, to target his political enemies, usually people who are not on the list for eradication.

“There's a lot of belief among Afghans that when [the West] turns off the taps, it's going to go back to 1989, so these warlords are building war chests, big piles of money for guns, tanks, whatever,” a British official said.

Getting to the bottom of the corruption in Afghanistan is nearly impossible. The country does not have conspiracy or racketeering laws, which would allow prosecutors to investigate them. Nor does it have more than a rudimentary banking system, so that ill-gotten funds are difficult to find. U.S. officials said, however, that some moves are being made in this direction, and some senior officials may soon be placed on no-fly lists.

Western officials are becoming increasingly frustrated with the power of such well-connected strongmen as larger areas of Afghanistan fall under Taliban control and the millions in Western spending produces few signs of a sustainable economy.

When Canadian Foreign Minister Maxime Bernier made the mistake of telling reporters in Kandahar city last month that Canada had been pressuring President Karzai to have Mr. Khalid, the Kandahar governor, removed from office, it represented the tip of an iceberg of diplomatic and political pressure being put on Mr. Karzai by Western governments.

“It's our biggest single problem, bigger than the Taliban, bigger than poverty,” a senior British official said.

Mr. Karzai's close relationship with some warlords and distrusted leaders, possibly including members of his own family, has been a well-known problem since he became President in 2004. But now, as jockeying begins toward a 2009 presidential election and Western officials are increasingly anxious to bring stability to Afghanistan, Mr. Karzai's acquiescence to violent and deeply corrupt men is increasingly considered unsustainable.

“I think there is an issue of corruption in this government, accepted by everybody, to include President Karzai,” General Dan McNeill, the U.S. commander of the NATO coalition fighting in Afghanistan, said in an interview. “Corruption, in my view, is the symptom, the disease is greed, and that works against what we're trying to do here.”

But in the run-up to the election, President Karzai appears increasingly unwilling to take action.

“Unfortunately, the corruption now has reached even the highest-ranking elected officials, and that is becoming a constant problem. … What I see in Afghanistan is a weak and corrupt government, and the Afghan people have to deal with this, not the international community,” said Yunus Quanooni, the Speaker of Afghanistan's parliament and a potential presidential challenger. “The President sees them as an instrument for re-election himself, so he doesn't dare touch them.”

And when he does touch them, it can be in unhelpful ways.

Last summer, Haji Zahir, the commander of the Nangarhar province border police, was caught shipping 123.5-kilograms of heroin across the Pakistani border. He was removed from his post, but never charged.

In March, after years of international pressure, Mr. Karzai ousted Asadullah Wafa from his job as governor of Helmand province amid allegations that he had profited from that province's enormous opium exports and enabled large-scale organized crime. Mr. Wafa had expelled two British officials from the province after they had launched a program to get Taliban leaders to surrender. After being fired, Mr. Wafa was promptly appointed last month to a new position: head of the complaints department in the national-security branch of Mr. Karzai's office.

Indeed, the current pressure by Canadian and other officials to remove the Kandahar governor from office seems almost identical to a similar campaign, begun five years ago, to get his predecessor, the former mujahedeen fighter Gul Agha Sherzai, removed from the same office.

Mr. Sherzai had admitted to receiving $1-million a week from his share of import duties and from the opium trade, and was considered violent and dangerous.

He was immediately made governor of U.S.-led Nangarhar province in the east, where U.S. officials say he has been a useful ally in ending opium-poppy production and establishing law and order. U.S. officials said that they believe he has a net worth of $300-million from his time running Kandahar, but that his level of corruption is fairly minor now. Nevertheless, they hope to see him gone some day.

“I think you're going to see less and less of the Sherzai-type figure; he's a transitional type,” said Alison Blosser, an official with the U.S. State Department involved with provincial reconstruction in Nangarhar.

Indeed, many of the current corruption problems date back to the early months of the Afghan war, in 2001, when U.S. Army Special Forces and CIA agents gave millions of dollars to regional fighters such as Mr. Sherzai to battle the Taliban, and then, after the Taliban had been ousted, allowed them to become the de facto government.

They displaced both the traditional system of tribal elders and the emerging national government. Mr. Karzai relied on them to extend his influence beyond his family's own tribe.

Despite their alarm at some of these developments, officials from the United States, Britain and Canada all say they are maintaining their support for Mr. Karzai. This is partly because they see no viable alternative. None of the dozen-odd prospective presidential challengers seem strong enough to hold the country together.

And it is also because, certainly in the case of Canadian officials, they believe that some progress is being made toward installing non-criminal leadership in key branches of the government, even if it's happening slowly.

Much of the Canadians' faith is in the newly created Independent Directorate of Local Governance, or the IDLG, which was created by Mr. Karzai to oversee the appointment of regional and state leaders.

Since it was created last August, the IDLG has fired the governors of eight of Afghanistan's 34 provinces. And in an interview at his Kabul office, IDLG head Barna Karim, who is widely respected by Western and Afghan leaders, said that he hopes to see at least six more governors replaced in the near future.

But his office only has the authority to recommend changes to Mr. Karzai, and the President has lately seemed less interested in ousting officials, perhaps because of the looming election.

“We just have to curb them as much as we can, slowly and surely,” Mr. Karim said. “In those provinces where we changed governors, it wasn't easy.”

And some officials are still considered untouchable. Ahmed Wali Karzai, the President's brother in Kandahar, is said to be beyond the reach of any government body.

Zarar Ahmad Moqbel, the Interior Minister, said in an interview that he does not consider the Karzais to be appropriate subjects of investigation. “The President of Afghanistan has sent an official decree to all the offices of the Afghan government, stating that we should not spare any members of his family from investigation,” he said, adding that he therefore did not consider it necessary to look into any such allegations.

Canadian officials are said to have pressed President Karzai hard during the past two years to reduce the power of his brother and of Mr. Khalid.

But they have backed off recently, in the wake of Mr. Bernier's unguarded remarks and because they are said to believe that such efforts could be counterproductive.

Many observers believe that President Karzai will try to keep loyalists in office, regardless of their problems or ties to criminal activity, until next year's presidential race is settled. He has not yet declared himself a candidate for re-election.

Gen. McNeill, the U.S. commander of the NATO coalition, likened Mr. Karzai's position to that of a second-tier soccer club with a weak bench.

He noted that the vast majority of Afghans are illiterate, after enduring almost 30 years without functioning schools. The country has just produced its first batch of university graduates this year. In the view of officials such as Gen. McNeill, the hard men may have to remain in office for a while.

“If a government [such as Canada's], which has a vested interest in a particular province, goes to President Karzai, and says, ‘This particular governor does not seem to be the person who has the skills to take this thing forward,' and President Karzai turns to his bench, and what do you think he sees? It's a tough business. … I think it's in that line of effort that we have our slowest rate of progress. We think we're helping, but it's just a tough business.”

War Crimes in Occupied Afghanistan

Anti-China Tibet Hypocrisy

By Dr Gideon Polya

15/04/08 "ICH" -- - Everyone wants to see more democratization and human rights accountability in China as urged recently in the Amnesty International statement on Tibet to the UN Human Rights Council. However there is an anti-China geo-political agenda behind the hypocritical US-, UK-, EU- and Australian criticisms of China over Tibet. Thus without minimizing either tragedy, 34 died in the Watts, Los Angeles riots in 1965 as compared to Tibetan exile estimates of 150 deaths in the recent Tibet riots.

The most fundamental human right is the right to life. According to data from the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP) and the UN Population Division, China has made huge advances in dramatically reducing mortality rate and infant mortality rate in both the Tibetan Autonomous Region and in China as a whole and to similar levels.

Thus the "annual under-5 year old infant death rate" is about the same (about 0.6%) in Tibet and China as a whole as compared to 6.2% for US- and Australia-occupied Afghanistan, 0.12% for Occupier Australia and 0.16% for Occupier United States.

The annual infant death rate in Occupied Afghanistan (6.2%) is 51 times that in Occupier Australia, 38 times that in Occupier US and similar to the “annual death rate” of 10.2% for Australian prisoners of war of the Japanese in World War 2 – a war crime for which key Japanese leaders were tried and hanged (for details and documentation see: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/21671/42/ ).

The truth and time-worn Persian Hegemony

Blatant carve up of the truth and time-worn Persian Hegemony

Zrawar Afghan UK

Afghan wire-media in and outside Afghanistan almost two months ago reported the detention of

Afghan Parliament Speaker Mr. Qanoni and Vice President Ahmad Zia Massoud trying to smuggle millions of US $ cash at the Dubai International Airport . Sources close to the Afghan Parliament speaker and Vice president reportedly confirmed the detention at the Dubai airport but it was quickly denied by Mr. Qanoni on his arrival to Kabul Airport. It was immediately followed by the interview of Mr. Zia Massoud to Aryana Television in Kabul on 19th Dec 2007, via telephone from Dubai in which he did not mention his brief detention but rather praised the efforts of international community in reconstruction of Afghanistan. In view of its timing the interview raised more question than answers. The news regarding the detention was never substantiated. If it was true, then authorities in Afghanistan must have turned blind eye, yet, to another serious illegal abuse of official position.

Meanwhile, there is recently an unreported but timely disclosed news that Mr. Qanoni did distributed thousands of pound in the UK to his followers with the ultimate intention to further divide, influence and incite hate amongst the Afghan Diaspora in Europe in his recent visit to UK.

on Friday Feb 15, 2008, almost a hundred supporters of United front made a big hue and cry by staging a noisy rally in front of the Afghan Embassy in London, apparently protesting over the news report that Abdul Karim Khurram Afghan Culture Minister reportedly sacked a TV reporter for breaching the constitution by excessive use of Iranian Persian words in his reports instead of Afghan Dari contrary to the national & official Afghan terminology and also the decision of Minister for rewriting the French word of Culture used for decades in Afghanistan as a substitute of Persian equivalent of Culture in the sign board of the Afghan Culture Ministry brought about by the Rabbani regime years before Taliban. The news report was rejected by the Ministry of Culture. However the protesters asked the government to sack the Culture Minister and even went to the extent of calling him Adolph – Khurram, a fascist called his decision an act of anti culture and Persian-phobia. In the past few weeks, a number of headlines-grabbing stories have been the question of whether so called United Front is receiving financial support from foreign countries. What is surprising is that no one seems to point out at the correlation between these events. United National Front or a few opposition parties mainly from former Northern Alliance and former communists, with a campaign of covert and overt disruptive activities inside and outside of Afghanistan, with specific insistence on sharing larger portion of the government to them only, with the display of such hate filled hue and cry virtually for nothing, exhibited an intolerance masquerading as self righteousness, painfully obvious to anyone observing the situation objectively. The United Front and their vocal supporters opposing the government of president Karzai, what they call tribal fascism of the Culture Minister a highly respected figure of the cabinet exhibited the most fascist behavior imaginable and in the name of freedom of expression and political activities. This behavior shown in the rally and the subsequent remarks of Haji Mohammad Mohaqeq, head of the Cultural Committee of the Parliamnet exhibited a form of thought and behavior which is repugnant to any reasonable individual, with or without religion. The psychological explanation in such cases is identical. These groups in United Front have identified a situation where they feel free to express the worst aspect of their own characters while ostensibly working for the ideals.

Surely, many Afghans are shaking their heads at this blatant carve-up of the truths

Paemane -Meli website linked to the Ahmad Wali Massoud former Ambassador of president Rabbani (leader of the warlord led government opposition who leveled Kabul to ground in a highly devastating fighting with other rival Mujaheedin groups) to the UK was behind the rally in front of the Afghan Embassy in London which after years of monopoly and nepotism seems to be still in their grip. Paemane Meli is considered to be the No.1 threat to the ethnic harmony among Afghan Diaspora in UK. It is supported and paid to fuel a surge in cyber spread smear campaign against the government and Afghan intellectuals whom they believe are from the opposite or wrong ethnic group. This website is not only used for propagating distorted news, slanderous rumors and hatred amongst Afghans but is actively promoting Persian ambition and hegemony in the UK.

Is that kind of activities acceptable? Not to the Afghan public and Afghan Diaspora it’s not, that’s for sure. It’s an absolute shambles. I am sure the –officials in Kabul – as fat cats are busy slapping each other on the back and not paying a thought to those people who have to continue to use their official positions against government in a vicious campaign to topple it from within as the Taliban and other terrorist are doing in the battle field but the United front is particularly focusing to further divide the Afghans in Europe and Afghanistan along ethnic and political lines with the support and financial support they receive.

Mr. Ahmad Wali Massoud brother of the Vice president Zia Massoud and Qanoni as speaker of the Parliament- thinks it is OK for – Northern Alliance- to use time-worn grubby tricks and support to demonize the government and incite hate on ethnic grounds in the UK and EU countries, particularly, amongst Afghan Diaspora. For instance: Paemane-Meli managing director (who is considered by some as mouthpiece of Iranian Media) writers and staffs in London and its backers inside the government and parliament, do not mind hate messages propagated by its website and clearly echoed in recent demonstration in front of the Afghan Embassy, but when some body is also put up in an institution like Parliament, support and financing such actions, it’s incumbent upon Afghan Diaspora to draw attention to it. It is a shame for people like Mr. Younis Qanoni who as speaker of the Afghan parliament, pressurizing the government and dividing the Afghan Diaspora. It is intolerance from any point of view. UK based Afghan Diaspora loath and despises and condemns people who further divide Afghans for political ends. Since, Paemane Meli dose not enjoy support from the Afghan community across London and elsewhere in UK. Afghan Diaspora based in UK and other EU countries not only objecting to the recent hate filled politically motivated demonstration, but to its other slanders against the government and national unity of Afghan ethnic groups.

Inciting messages of hate by Paemane-Meli against the Government and unity amongst the Afghan ethnic groups through staging hateful demonstration coupled with terrible accusations is not clever, but representing a new form of Persian hegemony in the Afghan politics. It is time for the Afghan Diaspora in the UK to get together and avoid disruptive activities carried out by the United National Front that wrongly incites hatred on behalf of Afghan ethnic groups towards each other. The thought of time-worn Persian hegemony and its so called superior culture in war and poverty stricken Afghanistan makes every sensible Afghan sick to the stomach. Let’s hope more Afghan Diaspora in the UK take a united stance and size the window of opportunity for the reconstruction of their country. This will surely, turn off the hate music of the Paeman-e-Meli in the UK and its demagogic supporters inside the government and the parliament in Kabul.

Zrawar Afghan From UK