A War on Poppies That Works

It’s not as if the world forgot Afghanistan, at one point ground zero in the war on terrorism, but the distraction of Iraq has meant that half-baked ideas like aerial spraying to poison Afghan poppies have gotten further than they should.

When the Bush administration raised the possibility of attacking the poppies, the raw material for opium, Afghan President Hamid Karzai objected. Last month, Washington listened to Karzai and backed off.

The State Department has asked Congress to authorize $750 million in aid to Afghanistan for counter-narcotics programs, a request that should be granted. But of the $750 million, $152 million was proposed for aerial eradication; that money would be better spent on encouraging farmers to plant other crops and on building roads so those crops could get to market.

There’s no sense pretending that getting rid of the opium problem will be easy. Crop substitution programs have a poor record because drug crops like poppies and coca are much more lucrative than wheat or barley. The best estimates suggest that if opium were legal, it would boost Afghanistan’s legitimate economy by 60%. Even were it possible to eliminate the entire crop immediately, what would happen to poverty- stricken tenant farmers who depend on the little money they receive from it to fend off starvation? The farm owners take a good cut of the profits from the finished product, as do the traffickers who move it to warehouses and processing plants. So do the warlords, who take a cut of everything.

But a coordinated program could reduce Afghanistan’s poppy harvest. One good tactic is increasing efforts to find and destroy the warehouses and laboratories. That would show a willingness to attack the opium trade from the top end. Also needed are aid to farmers in growing alternative crops and job training for such needed work as building roads. The United States plans to pay tens of thousands of Afghans to help rebuild the shattered infrastructure.

The election of Karzai last year correctly was hailed as a step toward a democratic Afghanistan. The United States and allies like Britain that are trying to help the country rebuild its institutions, security forces and agriculture could help democracy flourish by talking to officials and the rural population before drawing up plans, not after.