TURNING OFF THE DRUG TAPS WILL HELP DEFEAT TALIBAN

If success in Afghanistan depended only on defeating the Taliban on
the battlefield, it could be thought well on the way to done.

But, the struggle has an economic dimension. Victory in the
marketplace is as much the prerequisite for a new Afghanistan as
military control and perversely, it will take more troops to win that
battle, too. Its challenges are as formidable, in their way, as those
this country's young men and women have confronted with such elan in
Kandahar province.

Maj. General Tim Grant, until August commander of Canadian forces in
Afghanistan, told the Herald editorial board Thursday the Taliban
runs on drug money, and it is unrealistic to expect poor Afghan
farmers to resist the temptation of easy money, or the very real
threat of Taliban brutality, by declining to grow opium poppies.

Only with an alternative income, and a personal-safety guarantee for
people hitherto pressed by the Taliban into growing poppies, can the
West cut the Taliban's money supply.

There are no easy solutions. Simply blitzing the crops leaves
destitute a people who don't have much to begin with, (and would be
widely resented.)

Buying the poppy resin, an idea popular in the European Union, would
encourage production of something for which there is already a glut
on the legitimate market.

As usual, what's most likely to work, takes the most work. There are
other high-value crops Afghanistan's poppy-producing areas could
grow; Grant describes Afghan grapes as of superior quality, for
example, and speaks of a growing trade in pomegranate juice, which
commands a premium locally.

Even assuming security could be guaranteed, however, the growing
areas are far from markets, infrastructure has been damaged in the
fighting, and remaining dirt tracks are vulnerable to roadside bombs.

There's nothing here beyond fixing; paving roads, for example,
reduces the risk from improvised explosive devices, and repairing the
vast baked-mud grape-drying kilns often used as cover by the Taliban
needs labour, something Afghanistan has in abundance.

But it all takes money, and more troops to ride shotgun for ordinary Afghans.

This is not Canada's problem to solve alone. It has become, though,
the problem du jour.

In Grant's view, success in Afghanistan, while not around the corner,
is possible.

In time, the increasingly useful Afghan National Army must be part of
the security solution. But, how quickly the Taliban's drug trade can
be cut off turns out to have an aid-and-development component only
the rich nations of the West can supply.

Winning battles has created the conditions where aid can be of use.

It's time to make the investment.