WAR AGAINST POPPIES IS FUTILE

As the U.S. is pressuring NATO to have its troops eradicate
Afghanistan's poppy fields, maybe it's time we put the idea to bed.
It's impossible to do any such thing.

Having spent more than 12 months in that country over two years, I
can assure you this is a country with no infrastructure. Countless
wars have destroyed most of Afghanistan's working structures.

The one paved highway -- recently completed by the Americans -- runs
from north to south. The rest of the country's roads are mostly
trails and paths.

There is no infrastructure to handle sewage. In Kandahar and Kabul,
open trenches between the buildings handle sewage. Clean running
water is non-existent.

In the middle of this, the Americans want NATO to wipe out the poppy
fields and replace them with wheat or barley.

The numbers show how impossible this goal is.

Afghan farms are typically two or three acres -- 15 acres is considered huge.

A bushel of barley weighs roughly 22 kg and is worth roughly $2.80.
An Afghan farmer would be happy to realize a crop of 40 bushels per
acre. On a 10-acre farm, 400 bushels would yield a gross income of $1,120.

But this farmer lives in the mountains -- 50 kilometres from the
nearest market. He would have to make about 96 trips with 22-kg bags
tied to each of his two donkeys to get his crop to market.

If everyone is growing the same crop, who is going to buy his grain?
How would he get it to a shipping port, and who would pay for this?

Growing poppies, on the other hand, keeps his family and most of the
women and children in the village working. Growing poppies is very
labour-intensive.

The children walk from poppy bulb to poppy bulb -- thousands of them
- -- and with a razor strapped to their hand, they slit each bulb. They
go back days later and scrape and collect the sap-like substance that
has oozed out of the cut. This is pure opium.

A bag the farmer can carry in his hands is worth $12,000 to $15,000.
Customers usually come directly to his farm to buy. The choice for
the farmer is obvious.

Afghanistan is a place where centuries-old family feuds are common.
In 2004, I saw one nomad chief say to a Canadian liaison officer:
"Now we have a constitution. People can now buy and sell land. What's
the first thing people do when they buy land? They build fences. What
does that say to my nomads?"

If NATO buys into this U.S. initiative, the death rate for Canadian
soldiers will surely climb.

Canadians who have been there travelled daily through miles and miles
of marijuana. It looks like a Canadian reforestation project where
thousands of spruce trees have been planted roughly six to eight
years ago. The marijuana is one to three metres high and routinely
planted in huge plots all over the lowlands. What does the United
States want NATO to do here?

Trying to eradicate the drug problem in Afghanistan is impossible,
and it would come at an extremely high cost in body bags. Farmers
will not stand by and watch NATO soldiers eradicate their families' futures.

I stood in Camp Julien (Kabul) and listened to a retired Russian
officer. He pointed to a ridge running alongside the Canadian camp.
It was there he and his soldiers landed for the first time in
Afghanistan, and he explained how he and his soldiers held all of
Kabul in a few days.

Yet, in the ensuing years, the Soviet Union's death toll rose, "And
in the end we lost."

He warned, "Do not get into a fight with the Afghan tribesmen -- in
particular in the mountains."

The vast majority of the poppy crops lie in the mountains of Afghanistan.

Afghans say if you want to stop the opium and marijuana problem, then
destroy the market in North America and Europe.

Most of Afghanistan's drugs go to Europe, while South America
supplies most of the United States and Canada.

The educated elite have proposed buying the opium products to supply
the needs of the pharmaceutical industry. They, too, are dreamers.

We can only hope Canada does not buy into the U.S. solution of
eradicating the poppy fields.

It will cost us dearly. The cost must be placed on the shoulders of
the new Afghan government.