POPPIES KEY TO TALIBAN DEFEAT

Disable Rebels With Opium Crackdown: Military Boss

Taliban forces are weakening, but the way to ultimately eradicate
insurgents in Afghanistan is by robbing them of their chief source of
income: drug money.

That's the opinion of Maj-Gen. Tim Grant, former leader of Canada's
military operations in the wartorn country.

Afghanistan is the world's largest heroin producing country, growing
at least 90 per cent of the world's opium poppy supply in 2006.

Permanently dismantling Afghanistan's opium industry requires more
than just destroying the poppies, Grant told the Herald on Thursday.

"I think there needs to be some form of eradication, but that can't
be the only thing we're doing. . . . We have to have something for
the farmers that is an acceptable alternative to growing poppies,"
said Grant, who was in Calgary to attend the Military Museums awards
banquet Thursday night.

Grant led the Canadian Forces operations in Afghanistan from November
of 2006 until last August.

The Taliban are seen by the Afghan people as a brutal regime that is
increasingly unable to recruit locals.

Instead, they are drawing on foreign mercenaries to continue
fighting. Cash -- mostly drug money -- is needed to fund these
pay-for-hire soldiers.

While most experts agree cutting the Taliban off of its cash crop
would go a long way to creating lasting security in the region, how
to do so is increasingly debated.

There is no magic bullet to solving Afghanistan's poppy dependency,
which represents between 80 and 90 per cent of their entire economy,
said George Melnyk, co-chair of the consortium for peace studies at
the University of Calgary.

American and British anti-drug armed forces remain committed to
destroying crops and debate the virtues of plowing through poppy
fields or spraying chemicals from the air.

"For the last five to six years, the per cent of opium being produced
(in Afghanistan) for the world market has been increasing. . . ," said Melnyk.

"They've had an eradication program for the last five years. It isn't working."

A report prepared for the Calgary-based Canadian Defence and Foreign
Affairs Institute in March calls for the formation of an
international marketing board to buy opium crops to produce popular
pharmaceuticals such as morphine, codeine and Oxycontin.

But there are no systems in place to allow for the mass purchase of
poppies, and Grant worries such a plan could increase the drug trade.

Any permanent solution must give local farmers alternatives to
poppies before planting season begins in January and address any
obstacles to marketing a new crop, Grant said.

At least then farmers have a choice. Those who decide to continue
producing poppies know they risk authorities coming in and destroying
their livelihood, he said.

While the battle against poppies has just begun, Canada is winning
the war in Afghanistan especially in the south, said the current
commander of Canada's military in Kandahar, Lt.-Gen. Michel Gauthier.

Because Afghan insurgents are losing ground, they likely will resort
to increasing the number of roadside bombs and suicide attacks in an
attempt to inflict more casualties on troops, he said.

The state of the security situation in Afghanistan has been a hotly
debated topic over the past several months. A recent United Nations
report warned that security in Afghanistan has deteriorated. In early
November, Taliban forces captured three districts in western Afghanistan.