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.