TALIBAN DOES ONE THING RIGHT

The time has come to recommend to the world one, just one, of the Taliban's
practices.

Not the ban on Afghanistan widows working outside the home to support their
families or the closure of public schools to girls. Or the beating of women
for breaking the dress code or the stoning of women who stray from their
marital vows.

It's not surprising the recommended practice has nothing to do with women,
for whom the Taliban has had utter and shameless disregard since they came
to control the country.

The ingenuity we laud is for nearly wiping out the country's opium fields
in less than a year. Where once there were seas of poppies, destined to
enslave peoples around the world, are fields of crops.

It would behoove the United States to learn what it can from the Taliban's
admittedly strong-arm but not illegal tactics, as reported by the United
Nations' Drug Control Program. Our country is at serious risk of becoming
involved with Colombia's civil war through the instigation and bankrolling
of an effort to reduce its coca (cocaine) crop.

The secret to success in Afghanistan was old-fashioned religion. The
Taliban forbid poppy cultivation for followers of Islam, the country's only
permissible religion. If "do as we say" wasn't enough, officials jailed
farmers until they agreed to eradicate their crops and set fire to heroin
labs. Village elders were threatened with arrest if they condoned the
illegal crop.

Works for us. Growing the crop is illegal, and Afghanistan's traditional
export has caused many people misery.

Something similar might work in Colombia, which is being fumigated to the
hilt to destroy the coca crop. Besides pointing out to illiterate farmers
that coca is illegal, the U.S.-Colombian anti-drug squads should help them
plant different, a.k.a. legal, crops.

On the sad day the first public execution was carried out in Afghanistan
under Taliban rule, a high-ranking official proclaimed, "Let this be a
lesson for others." Virtually all Taliban lessons have been regressive;
this one is not.