DRUG PROHIBITION IS A TERRORIST'S BEST FRIEND

Under pressure from Washington, Afghan President Hamid Karzai is
urging his people to fight narcotics as ferociously as they fought the
Soviet occupation in the 1980s. Such a struggle seems destined to
undermine the campaign against al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Karzai and
his American patrons can prevail against the country's opium growers
or its terrorists, but not both.

Afghanistan has been one of the leading sources of opium poppies, and
therefore heroin, since the 1970s. Today, the country accounts for
more than 75% of the world's opium supply. It is clear that some of
the revenues from the drug trade -- at least 10% to 20% -- flow into
the coffers of al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

That is obviously a worrisome development. But it is hardly
unprecedented. For years, leftist insurgent groups in Colombia,
principally the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), and
right-wing paramilitaries have been financed largely by that country's
cocaine trade. Conservative estimates place the annual revenue stream
to the FARC alone at between US$515-million and US$600-million per
year. (In 2002, the U.S. ambassador to Colombia put the figure at
"several billion" dollars.)

The harsh reality is that terrorist groups around the world have been
enriched by prohibitionist drug policies that drive up drug costs, and
which deliver enormous profits to the outlaw organizations willing to
accept the risks that go with the trade.

Targeting the Afghanistan drug trade would create a variety of
problems. Most of the regional warlords who abandoned the Taliban and
currently support the U.S. anti-terror campaign (and in many cases
politically undergird the Karzai government) are deeply involved in
the drug trade, in part to pay the militias that give them political
clout. A crusade against drug trafficking could easily alienate those
regional power brokers and cause them to switch allegiances yet again.

Unfortunately, Washington is now increasing its pressure on the Karzai
government to crack down on opium cultivation, offering more than a
billion dollars in aid to fund anti-drug efforts. In addition,
Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld announced in August that U.S.
military forces in Afghanistan would make drug eradication a high
priority -- a mission that the military properly continues to resist.

U.S. officials need to keep their goals straight. Recognizing that
security considerations sometimes trump other objectives would not be
an unprecedented move by Washington. U.S. agencies quietly ignored the
drug-trafficking activities of anti-communist factions in Central
America during the 1980s when the primary goal was to keep those
countries out of the Soviet orbit. In the early 1990s, the United
States also eased its pressure on Peru's government to eradicate drugs
when President Alberto Fujimori concluded that a higher priority had
to be given to winning coca farmers away from Shining Path guerrillas.
U.S. leaders should refrain from trying to make U.S. soldiers into
anti-drug crusaders: Even those policymakers who support the war on
drugs as an overall policy ought to recognize that American troops in
Central Asia have a difficult enough job fighting terrorists.

There is little doubt that terrorist groups around the world profit
from the drug trade. What anti-drug crusaders refuse to acknowledge,
however, is that the connection between drug trafficking and terrorism
is the direct result of making drugs illegal. The prohibitionist
policy that the United States and other drug-consuming countries
continue to pursue guarantees a huge black market premium for all
illegal drugs. The retail value of drugs coming into the United States
(to say nothing of Europe and other markets) is estimated at
US$50-billion to US$100-billion a year. Fully 90% of that sum is
attributable to the prohibition premium.

Absent a world-wide prohibitionist policy, this fat profit margin
would evaporate, and terrorist organizations would be forced to seek
other sources of revenue.

Drug prohibition is terrorism's best friend. That symbiotic
relationship will continue until the United States and its allies have
the wisdom to dramatically change their drug policies.