Though in the last days of their rule, there was evidence the Taleban was softening its strict policy against Afghanistan’s long-established cultivation of heroin poppies, it is ironic that since their ouster, poppy growing has made a tremendous comeback. According to some sources, last year Afghanistan produced 90 percent of the heroin consumed in Europe. At a conference in Kabul this week, the Afghan government asked for $300 million from the world community in order to fund a campaign aimed at cutting production by 70 percent in the next four years and stopping the drugs lords from laundering their profits.
On the face of it, given the parlous failure of donor nations to deliver more than a fraction of the aid they promised to help Afghanistan rebuild its infrastructure and modernize its economy, this substantial sum is a sizeable request. Yet it seems likely that President Karzai’s government will receive a good deal of what it has asked for. The reason is of course that Afghanistan’s illegal production of narcotics has a direct impact on Western societies in which addicts are sources of much petty crime and many social problems. The British alone have already committed $128 million to the campaign. In addition, there is vidence that a significant proportion of the proceeds from Afghan’s heroin production is being used to fund terrorism. This is no doubt why Washington has called for a no-holds barred campaign to stamp out cultivation. The pity of it is, however, that in attacking Afghanistan’s narcotics industry — which is reckoned to produce as much income for some as the world gives the country in aid — the authorities will be striking at a symptom rather than at the problem itself.
Most Afghans are still very poor. Much of the seven percent of the population which investigators estimate are involved in poppy cultivation and heroin production, have no other way to push their incomes above subsistence level. Farmers cultivate other crops of course but poppy production, for which they receive a meager enough reward from the narcotics barons, gives them that extra insurance. It also seems that the drugs lords force some farmers to cultivate the deadly crop.
Afghans involved in the primary level of the trade have to be offered something more, something better than the small rewards they receive from the drugs lords. Such a change cannot come about until Afghan society can embark upon fundamental economic change. But that change simply will not happen until the international community delivers on all its magnificent promises which were made subsequent to the historic December 2001 Bonn Agreement. To focus merely on the heroin trade because it damages Western societies and funds terrorism would be both cynical and wrong.
