WAR EFFORT HURT BY DRUG STRATEGY

Record Poppy Crops Show Eradication Effort Has Failed While
Increasing Taliban Support

Canadian support for the Afghanistan mission relies in part on
confidence that it is being managed competently. A United Nations
report showing a 34-per-cent jump in poppy production raises renewed
doubts about the strategies being pursued by NATO.

Afghanistan growers and labs supply 93 per cent of illegal opium in
the world. The profits help fund the Taliban, while opium-related
corruption in the police, military and governments undermines efforts
to stabilize the country. It is a problem that must be addressed.

But NATO's response -- driven largely by the U.S. commitment to a
drug war based on attacking supplies -- has been a destructive
failure. Western attempts to eradicate crops have been totally
unsuccessful, as this year's record output demonstrates.

In the process, the NATO forces have fuelled corruption and driven
thousands of Afghans to support the Taliban.

These results are not surprising. Afghanistan is desperately, almost
incomprehensibly poor. The average income is under $30 per month.

And the opium industry is central to the economy. About one in 10
Afghans earns income producing or processing the crops; it represents
more than 10 per cent of all economic activity. There is no alternate
crop or source of income for many rural communities.

Expecting Afghans to voluntarily stop growing opium, when they have
no other way of surviving, is foolish.

And the eradication efforts -- even when they are not subverted by
corrupt local officials and police -- simply create new recruits for
the Taliban, which promises protection to farmers, and alienate
ordinary Afghans.

Destroying families' crops in the days before harvest means a winter
of suffering.

There are alternate approaches. The Senlis Council, an international
research agency with a focus on Afghanistan, has proposed a Poppy for
Medicine program. Afghan villages would be supported in growing
poppies and producing morphine. The pain-management drug is in
desperately short supply for medical use in much of the developing world.

Western nations could also subsidize farmers to grow other crops or
simply buy and destroy the poppy harvest.

Expensive, certainly. But the U.S. spent $600 million last year on
its failed effort to reduce poppy cultivation. Canada spent $55
million, while production increased 32 per cent in Kandahar. Simply
redirecting existing funding would allow a start on a new approach.

The eradication efforts have not only failed: Destroying farmers'
crops has driven Afghans into the arms of the Taliban. In a battle
that relies on winning the hearts and minds of ordinary people, a
program that brings them hunger and greater poverty is a disaster.

Our troops deserve a real chance to succeed. That means an entirely
new approach to poppy production in Afghanistan.