POPPIES AND PEACE

There is no shortage of opium poppies in Afghanistan, despite the
best efforts of ISAF forces to eradicate the controversial crop.
There is a world shortage of essential opium-based medicines such as
morphine and codeine.

If these two circumstances can be brought together the Taliban can be
undermined and the war shortened, Afghans can prosper as legitimate
farmers instead of the suppliers of more than 90 per cent of the
world's heroin. All of this could be done and an adequate supply of
painkillers ensured not just for Western hospitals but also for a
Third World where shortages are extreme and patients by the million
live and die in agony because of it. The Senlis Council, a European
think-tank, suggests that an opium licensing system could be used to
divert the illegal drug trade into regulated sales of the poppy
product for legitimate medicines.

Setting up such a system is beyond Afghanistan's capability today --
the nation does not have the bureaucratic, financial or
law-enforcement infrastructure to operate it. Even with the
international assistance it would need, such a system would be
complicated and there is no guarantee that it would be acceptable to
Afghan poppy farmers if it did not provide an income approximate to
what they earn by selling to drug traffickers and the Taliban.

The poppy problem is serious, however, and not only as a factor in
prolonging the war. If it is not solved, it will hang like a cloud
over an Afghan government that will almost certainly be too fragile
to destroy the opium trade itself.

There are many suggestions for dealing with the issue on a makeshift
basis, ranging from spraying the poppy fields with Agent Orange to
instructing allied troops to appease the farmers by simply ignoring
the opium trade. Those don't amount to much more than applying
plasters to a festering wound that could kill Afghanistan's democracy.

There is no quick fix. The only useful treatment lies in long-term
solutions such as that proposed by Senlis. The think-tank's answer
may not be the right one, but it recognizes the realities of the
Afghan opium trade and the urgent need to deal with them.