America's opium dilemma in Afghanistan

WASHINGTON: With a bumper poppy harvest expected in Afghanistan in the new year, a debate has erupted within the Bush administration over whether the United States should push for its destruction over the objections of the Afghan government.

Some US officials say next spring's opium haul could earn Afghanistan's warlords $7 billion or more, up from a record $2.2 billion in 2004. If harvested, they warn, the crop could flood the West with heroin, fill the coffers of Taliban fighters still destabilizing the country and fund terrorist activity in Afghanistan and beyond.

As the January planting season approaches in the country that serves as the world's largest producer of opium, these policymakers have argued vigorously for aerial spraying to reduce the poppy crop.

The State Department is asking Congress to earmark nearly $780 million in Afghanistan aid for a counter- narcotics effort that would include $152 million for aerial eradication.

Although Afghan President Hamid Karzai has declared a "jihad" against the drug trade, he has vetoed aerial spraying. And his views are being championed by other US officials, who warn that attempts at mass crop eradication this spring, during the campaign season for parliamentary elections scheduled for April, will alienate rural voters.

Instead, they argue for a delay in crop eradication but a vigorous crackdown on drug traffickers. The dispute underscores a vexing dilemma for the United States.

Having gone to war in 2001 to oust the Taliban from power, the Bush administration now finds that its three main policy objectives in the strategically important country - counter terrorism, counter-narcotics and political stability - appear to be contradictory.

President Bush's cabinet has discussed the problem, sources said, and the US ambassador to Afghanistan met Bush earlier on. But the White House has reportedly not made a final decision.

"We still don't have a policy," a senior Republican congressional aide said on condition of anonymity. The debate has split policymakers within the State Department, National Security Council and Pentagon, according to administration and congressional sources.

The arguments over Afghan policy cut across the usual administration lines, dividing officials inside the State Department and the National Security Council, administration and congressional sources said.

Some diplomats as well as many outside experts argue that aerial spraying, in particular, would be folly. "You tell them, 'You're voting for a new democratic country,' while their government is allowing foreigners to come in and destroy their livelihood?" said Barnett Rubin, who was a UN adviser in Afghanistan in 2001.

"And if you try to destroy it and have the economy decline by 10 per cent, 20 per cent, 40 per cent in one year, what will the result be? The result will be armed revolt."

Instead of trying to eradicate this year's poppy crop, the United States and Afghan governments should focus on providing alternative livelihoods for farmers, improving law enforcement and drug interdiction, then consider eradication once the political climate is more stable, said Mark L. Schneider, a former Peace Corps director now at the International Crisis Group.

Aerial spraying, Schneider said, would be tantamount to "providing the Taliban with a great recruiting slogan: 'Go with us, or they'll spray you.'" Other administration officials and lawmakers warn that allowing the Afghan economy to become hooked on narco-profits could be even more dangerous.

Noting that the September 11 Commission estimated that the terrorist attacks on the United States cost the plotters only $400,000 to $500,000, one official fretted: "Imagine what they can do with $10 billion. You (can) own a country with that much money."

Advocates of a vigorous strategy worry that warlords could use drug profits to influence the coming election. And they argue for swift intervention before next year's crop fills the warlords' coffers even fuller.

Robert L. Charles, assistant secretary of State for international narcotics and law enforcement, has argued in testimony before Congress that drug profits are "almost definitely" funding the Taliban, which once banned opium farming, and possibly Al Qaeda as well.

According to Charles, the profits also are flowing to the Hizb-i-Islami Gulbuddin, a militant group with deep ties to Osama bin Laden that has staged attacks aimed at driving US forces out of Afghanistan.

The US government estimates that poppy cultivation exploded from 150,000 acres in 2003 to 510,000 acres in 2004 - much higher than an earlier UN estimate of 324,000 acres.

That works out to potential profits of $7 billion, according to Rep. Mark Kirk, R-Ind., who follows counter-narcotics efforts from the House Appropriations Committee.

Worse, opium is now cultivated in all 34 Afghan provinces, up from 18 provinces in 1999 and just eight provinces in 1994, according to the United Nations (Afghanistan added two provinces in 2004.)

The explosion in cultivation suggests that Afghan drug traffickers are offering agricultural advice, and possibly extending credit to support farmers who have never before planted poppies, officials said.

Within the Bush administration, one of the most contentious issues is the role of the military in the drug war. The Pentagon long has been opposed to involving itself in counter-narcotics efforts, viewing them as "mission creep" that distracts from the military's main job of battling insurgents.

Moreover, US commanders fear that support and tips about insurgent activity from friendly villagers will dry up if American soldiers begin interfering with the villagers' biggest cash crop. And many drug traffickers have been US allies in the continuing struggle against the Taliban. But the State Department and a number of lawmakers have been lobbying the military for over a year to help the anti-drug effort, arguing that squeezing drug profits is essential to strangling the insurgency.

While there is growing sympathy to that argument inside the Pentagon, sources said, the State Department and Drug Enforcement Administration want the military to do more: step up intelligence-gathering on drug traffickers, target and destroy drug laboratories, and participate in special anti-drug operations.

The senior administration official argued that "the single most effective way to have an impact in Afghanistan on the drug trade" would be for the Pentagon to order that opium processing laboratories and heroin storage facilities be treated like other "core military targets."

Immediately after his inauguration this month, Karzai held a conference with tribal leaders to discuss the drug problem. But Karzai is worried about spraying's health and environmental effects as well as the political fallout, another senior administration official said.

Some US officials believe Karzai must be persuaded to change his mind. They want him to speak with officials in Colombia about the threat drug traffickers can pose. -Dawn/The LAT-WP News Service (c) The Los Angeles Times