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Now
"Opium production in Afghanistan,
which provides more than 90 percent of the world's heroin, broke
all records in 2006, reaching a historic high despite ongoing
US-sponsored eradication efforts, the Bush administration reported
yesterday . . . . White House drug policy chief John Walters
called the news "disappointing"."
Washington Post, December 2,
2006
"Today we mark the fulfillment
of the ambitious vision that we all set out together four years
ago in Bonn, Germany: A fully functioning, sovereign Afghan government."
Condoleezza Rice, January 31,
2006
Rice is a gifted intellectual with the
common sense of a traveling rabbit, and is exactly the sort of
person who is invaluable in the dysfunctional bunker in which
lurks the Fuhrer of the United States, fantasizing, as did Adolf
in the mad chaotic days before the fall of Berlin, that some
miracle will save his lunatic régime. Among so many matters
of pressing importance that the Bush ménage considers
a low priority is the débâcle in Afghanistan, and
especially the ineffectiveness of Afghanistan's totally non-functional
government concerning the heroin trade.
So far as the use of the word
"sovereign" by Rice is concerned, presumably she does
not know that the Afghan government has no powers over the 40,000
foreign troops in the country, or over the countless thousands
of "contractors" (as swaggering gun-toting foreign
mercenaries are now known in Iraq and Afghanistan). If any of
them imprisons or tortures or murders an Afghan civilian he is
not held accountable under Afghan law (such, of course, as exists).
This imperial arrogance is directly contrary to any idea of sovereignty.
But who cares? Not Rice, drifting ever skywards in her cloudy
little bubble of airy optimism.
The White House considers the
explosion in Afghanistan's drug production to be "disappointing",
which is a far cry from the verdict of grown-up observers who
say it is catastrophic. For example, Mr Doug Wankel, director
of the US Anti-narcotics Task Force in Afghanistan, says the
country could be "taken down by this whole drugs problem".
He is obviously a man who analyses evidence and is not on message
from the White House, so therefore can be listened to and trusted.
He is joined in his warning by Nato's Supreme Commander, US
General Jones, who has said that the drug disaster is Afghanistan's
"Achilles' heel", which is an understatement.
Heroin-producing poppies have
been grown in Afghanistan for centuries (remember the hippy trail
of the 1970s?), but the real boom time came after the US bombed
and invaded the country five years ago. The benefits of the global
economy have been brought to the criminal entrepreneurs of Afghanistan
in a very big way, because trade has followed the bombs.
The barbaric thugs who ran
private armies around the country and produced most of the drugs
were defeated by the equally barbaric Taliban in the late 90s,
and opium/heroin production eventually collapsed. It was tiny
in 2000-2001. But the fortunes of regional despots were to be
restored.
The US poured in spooks of
all shapes and sizes to buy the warlords before the bombing began
at the end of 2001. During the massive air war against the Afghan
government, the warlords' private armies, with direction and
encouragement from all sorts of weird Special Forces knuckle-draggers,
slaughtered ignorant Taliban tribals and their own personal enemies
by the thousands.
All the local warlords had
to do, when they got the trust of the spooks, which wasn't difficult,
was to finger a long-time tribal rival and, Bingo!, the B-52s
would be dropping 500 pounders on him before you could say "Fooled
You Twice".
An investigation by Associated
Press reporter Andrew Selsky showed that all 83 Afghan prisoners
in the Guantanamo Gulag who were sent back to Afghanistan were
entirely innocent, like so many hundreds of others from all round
the world. They had been freed because most had been reported
to US forces for "tribal or personal rivalries" for
which reports the warlords had collected millions of dollars
for cooperating with a bunch of naïve and stupid cowboys
whose irresponsible actions destroyed the lives of perfectly
innocent people. And did anything happen to the gallant CIA/Special
Forces' morons who did this? In a pig's ear. Decorations all
round, more like.
So exit the Taliban and then
came the drug boom on the re-entry of the warlords, laughing
at the Americans up their capacious sleeves and all the way to
their Swiss banks. Their lucrative enterprises were welcomed
by their soul-mates in the West, who now make billions of dollars
from selling high grade heroin, ironically in all the European
countries that have troops in Afghanistan. The street price in
Europe has fallen by two thirds in five years.
As the UN Office on Drugs and
Crime observed in September 2006 :
"Afghans profit from the
opium: so do foreigners [in] droves and by much greater amounts.
Around the world, in too many financial centers and offshore
tax havens, in too many banks and corporations, the income produced
by illicit drug trafficking is laundered. Afghanistan gets a
bad name [and] foreigners get a good income : $ 50 billion
[a year]."
Almost all the heroin goes
to Europe, although significant amounts are siphoned off (with
less profit but equal social devastation) in Pakistan, Iran,
and the Central Asian Republics en route. These countries now
have monster drug problems where none existed before. But only
a tiny amount of Afghan heroin finds its way to the US. Which
is probably why Washington has little interest in forging consensus
about how to deal with the disaster, or in committing US troops
and (most importantly) aid effort to eradicate production.
The egregious Senator McCain,
never at a loss to trim his sails to what he imagines to be the
prevailing wind, said on December 17 that it's "important
that our European friends and allies do more in the effort that
has to be made to counter narcotics" and "We are indeed
in danger of having Afghanistan becoming Europe's Colombia."
But what does the master fence-sitter propose in real terms?
What is "more"?
The Afghan drug shambles is
a world problem for which the US must bear responsibility, as
it is the prime international player in Afghanistan. If it wasn't
for American policy, there would be no other foreign troops in
the country.
According to US official figures,
over the past year there has been an increase of 26 percent in
drug production, up to a total of 5,644 metric tons. The land
area involved in poppy growing has "increased by 61 percent.
Cultivation in the two main production provinces, Helmand in
the southwest and Oruzgan in central Afghanistan, was up by 132
percent."
And Mr John Walters of the
White House calls this "disappointing". How one envies
his ability to describe a world catastrophe in such a trite and
emollient fashion.
It was unfortunate for the
White House, in its deep bunker denial mode, that the US drug
survey of Afghanistan complemented and confirmed that of the
UN. But as we know from its hostile reaction to the findings
of the Iraq Survey Group the only reason the White House welcomes
multiple reports is not in order to adopt the recommendations
of the wisest but to use friendly ones to rebut any findings
and recommendations that might be contrary to White House opinion.
The UN Office on Drugs and Crime was clear and uncompromising
in its stance concerning eradication of drug production in Afghanistan.
But it could not expect even a cursory hearing from Cheney and
Bush.
There is no point in tens of
thousands of foreign troops chasing round the country after so-called
Taliban when the biggest problem of all is that of drug production.
And the reference to "so-called Taliban" is apposite,
as NATO's commander, the US General Jones, has stated bluntly
that "There is a tendency to characterize all of the violence
in Afghanistan as the resurgence of the Taliban. This is inaccurate.
It doesn't capture the nature of the problem." He indicated
that the violence had other causes, including "the strong
presence of the drug cartels which have their own infrastructure,
their own export system, their own security system . . . "
Of course he is right; but the White House fixation is on Big
Pictures. The intricacies of Afghan society and the compulsions
of its insurgents are of no interest to Cheney, Bush and Rice.
According to US officialdom, Afghanistan has "a fully
functioning sovereign government". Ignorance is bliss,
indeed.
The insurgents in Afghanistan
are rapidly developing from fragmented and marginalised opposition
figures into nationalists with widening popular appeal (it takes
me back to Vietnam in 1970-71), and are making propaganda during
the winter while the fields are barren. Come the first days
of spring 2007 and the seeds will be sown : both poppy seeds
and those for an increasingly barbaric war again foreign troops.
Both will prosper, because the war in Afghanistan is being waged
in entirely the wrong way and with the wrong priorities.
There is no accord among foreign
nations with troops in Afghanistan as to how the drug menace
should be tackled. Differing military rules of engagement, combined
with opaque mission statements, have worked against establishment
of cooperative effort. The oft-repeated foreign mantra that
the Afghan government must take responsibility for poppy eradication
is patently insupportable, as the incompetent and corrupt government
of President Karzai, centrally and in the provinces, contains
powerful figures close to or actually involved in the drug trade.
He cannot act without massive, open and concerted support from
his foreign backers whose lack of agreement on major policy matters
has contributed significantly to instability.
Antonio Maria Costa, the head
of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, appealed in September 2006
for "NATO forces to destroy the heroin labs, disband the
open opium bazaars, attack the opium convoys and bring to justice
the big traders. I invite coalition countries to give NATO the
mandate and resources required."
As yet, nobody has accepted
his invitation. Because nobody has the guts. It's downhill all
the way from now on.
Brian Cloughley spent five weeks in October-December
in Pakistan, with a visit to Afghanistan. He can be reached through
his website at www.briancloughley.com.
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