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[tvoivozhd <tvoivozd AT infionline.net>]

Thanks to White House planners, 87% of world opium supply comes from 
Afghanistan, up from six or seven percent when equally good planning let 
a wounded Osama Bin Laden escape unimpeded from Tora Bora.

What is the White House going to do? Unless Bush outsources planning to 
India or Pakistan and borrows more from Saudi Arabia, Japan and China, 
not a damned thing.




Crop spraying draws controversy in Afghan drug fight
The US may scrap or divert $152 million earmarked for aerial poppy 
eradication in Afghanistan this year.
By Halima Kazem | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
KABUL, AFGHANISTAN – Shortly after becoming Afghanistan's first 
democratically elected president, Hamid Karzai declared war on one of 
his country's most lucrative exports: opium. Three months on, the 
president has won an early skirmish over tactics by prevailing upon the 
US to shelve plans for aerial spraying of Afghan poppy crops.

Crop spraying is a major part of Washington's war on drugs in Latin 
America. But in Afghanistan, where income from the crop is crucial to 
many farmers, spraying has proved controversial.


Related stories
02/18/04
War on terror is also a war on drug traffic
09/04/03
Afghan military tied to drug trade
07/24/03
Bumper year for Afghan poppies








Last November, the Karzai government protested when, without its 
knowledge, fields in two Afghan provinces were sprayed with a 
"mysterious substance." Both the US and British governments denied any 
involvement, but Afghan government officials say the US military 
controls that airspace.

The US had earmarked $780 million this year for Afghanistan's drug 
fight, including $300 million for eradication and $152 million for 
aerial spraying due to start in March. Now, the US State Department is 
reportedly reworking the budget proposal, possibly removing funds for 
spraying.

"We don't know the side effects of spraying. Also, Afghans are not used 
to seeing this kind of thing [spraying], it could be seen as an attack 
on the people not just the poppy crops. That is a dangerous road to 
take," says Gen. Mohammed Daud, Head of the Anti-Narcotics Department at 
the Ministry of Interior.

By ruling out crop spraying, the government has removed one of the few 
quick methods of combating the opium trade. But many analysts say that 
development efforts, such as finding alternatives for farmers, are more 
likely to succeed in the long run.

"[Spraying] is a ridiculous and shameful misallocation of resources, 
reflecting the political agenda of a few people in Washington," says 
Barnett Rubin, a professor at New York University and former adviser to 
the UN in Afghanistan. "Fortunately, faced with the united opposition of 
the Afghan government and the severe doubts of much of the US government 
and all US allies, they are now backing off and may reprogram funding 
for aerial eradication to alternative livelihoods."

According to a recent UN report, Afghanistan pumps out 87 percent of the 
world's opium and its heroin derivatives. The drug is planted in all 34 
provinces of the country and can bring in 10 times the income of other 
crops. The trade in 2004 reaped $2.8 billion, up more than 20 percent 
from the previous year, and now makes up an estimated 60 percent of 
Afghanistan's legal economy.

Drug trafficking has also become a major source of income for Al Qaeda 
and the Taliban, a fact that has deepened US concerns.

"Virtually anything in Afghanistan that is funded by something other 
than foreign aid is funded by drug profits. According to reports, drug 
income in the south is sometimes split among various tribes, with a 
portion going to local Taliban," says Mr. Rubin.

The US military has so far shied away from playing a more active role in 
combating drugs in Afghanistan. Analysts say that US military 
involvement could overly tax its forces, and prove more expensive and 
time-consuming than mobilizing the Afghan government to tackle the problem.

Afghanistan currently has 1,000 trained and active counternarcotics 
personnel, about 600 of whom are in the provinces, burning and 
destroying poppy fields on the ground.

But officials say at least 4,000 officers are needed to actively monitor 
and destroy poppy farms, and another 5,000 to control the country's 
porous borders.

While ruling out crop spraying, Karzai is advocating another 
controversial tactic. In a recent press conference Karzai told reporters 
that he was considering offering amnesty to former drug traffickers with 
the hopes that they will lead the Afghan government to the bigger drug 
lords.

"We are discussing the amnesty issue. We need to make sure that the plan 
doesn't backfire on us and the big drug lords slip out of our hands," 
says General Daud.

However, in a country without any kind of formal national identification 
system, verifying drug traffickers and the identities of drug lords will 
be a major challenge. And with some 2.3 million Afghans involved in the 
drug trade the task becomes harder.

Some members of Karzai's Cabinet suggest a "bottom up" approach to the 
poppy dilemma. Afghanistan's newly appointed counternarcotics minister, 
Habibullah Qaderi, believes that subsidies and cash incentives should be 
given to encourage farmers to drop poppies and plant other cash crops.

Qaderi has suggested that the Afghan government pay the farmers involved 
in cultivating opium at least double the market price for crops such as 
rice, wheat, and cotton. But subsidies could cost upward of $1 billion 
for one year, more than has been promised by the US government for the 
entire antinarcotics effort over three years.

"We can't really beat a $2 to $3 billion-a-year industry with this type 
of money," said Omar Zakhilwal, chief policy adviser at the Ministry of 
Rural Rehabilitation and Development.

Afghanistan's long drought compounds the difficulty of finding 
alternative crops. Poppies require very little water to thrive.

Rubin also warns against eradicating poppy farms too quickly or before 
taking out the traffickers and the drug lords, as many farmers are still 
financially indebted to their "bosses" and could revolt against the 
Karzai government.

"You cannot eliminate 40 percent of the total economy [60 percent of the 
legal economy] in one of the poorest countries in the world through law 
enforcement," Rubin says. "And you also cannot do it in one year, or in 
five years. Economic shrinkage is one of the surest predictors of 
instability and conflict."

The Afghan government is especially concerned about maintaining security 
going into parliamentary elections that are scheduled for this spring.