AFGHANISTAN'S OPIUM WAR

Lawyer Norine Macdonald Argues That the Campaign to Eradicate Illegal
Crops Is Devastating Farmers, Disillusioning Families and Playing
Afghans into the Hands of the Taliban

Saskatchewan-born lawyer Norine MacDonald has been in Afghanistan
since January 2005 to conduct research for the Senlis Council, a
security and development policy group. MacDonald, who founded the
international think-tank in 2002, is now its president and lead field
researcher.

Based in Kandahar, MacDonald returns to Canada this week to take part
in a Senlis Council symposium on Canada's involvement in Afghanistan.
The symposium will discuss the steps that need to be taken to address
both security and poverty in Afghanistan. It begins Tuesday in Ottawa
at the Marriott Hotel.

MacDonald spoke Friday from the council's Paris headquarters with
Citizen reporter Andrew Duffy. Here is an edited version of that
conversation.

How did you come to found the Senlis Council?

I was thinking about the lack of debate on drug policy and
counter-narcotics. I had met a lot of academics, experts and former
policy makers who all believed there should be more debate and
discussion, but there was no vehicle for them to do that. So this
seemed like a good idea to me: to have a think-tank to look at those
issues.

It has expanded to look at foreign affairs, security issues,
counter-narcotics and development issues. Because I found that you
can't just talk about counter-narcotics, especially in Afghanistan.
All of these things are completely and absolutely interrelated.

What drew you into that work?

I was working on justice and law reform issues in B.C., then I started
working on issues of trade and environment internationally. Part of it
is simple curiosity about the world. I've always been interested in
economic and social justice issues. I was concerned about how "western
policies" were playing out in the developing world. I was concerned
about the gap between developed countries and undeveloped countries.

What are working conditions like in southern Afghanistan for you and
your colleagues?

My staff and our organization in Afghanistan is primarily Afghan.
There are about 50 people in the group and only three of us who are
permanently there are non-Afghan, non-Muslim. We travel as locals,
dress as locals and work with locals. That's a big strategic advantage
for us. At the moment, there's very few non-military international
people working in southern Afghanistan. Most of the international
development agencies and the UN people have had to close their offices
in the last six months to a year. We're able to stay there and work in
the current security situation, I think, because we've found a way to
integrate ourselves in the local community.

Have you encountered violence?

Violence is a daily fact of life for everybody in southern
Afghanistan. There's bombing every night. You go to sleep to the
sounds of the Americans bombing in Panjwaii. There's fighting on that
road all the time. We've been with people who have been through
Taliban ambushes. A lot of Afghans are having to leave their villages
and move to other areas, and then move again and again, to avoid the
fighting and bombing.

A recent Senlis Council report has described a growing food shortage
and refugee crisis in Southern Afghanistan. Can you tell me about that?

There's been a very, very dramatic decline in the economic situation
in Kandahar in the last six months to a year. It was already an area
of Afghanistan that was poverty stricken. The unemployment rate is 80
or 90 per cent. There has been drought there for years. And of course,
they've been trying to rebuild from about 20 years of war. It's
historically an agricultural area with a mixed-crop economy and a
traditional irrigation system. The irrigation system was ruined in the
war, but anyhow, there's been drought. It's really a dustbowl now.
Between the drought, and the (opium) crop eradication, and the bombing
and fighting in the villages, they're in a desperate situation now.

I have visited villages to do research following crop eradications.
I've got out of the vehicles and men in the village immediately have
come up to me and said, 'Do you have any food? There are children
starving here.' It's breathtakingly bad and it has deteriorated very
rapidly.

What we've started doing is taking food with us. We want to talk to
those people. And you're not going to get out of your vehicle and ask
them to explain their situation when their children are starving.

It's very difficult to describe in words the desperate situation, the
day-to-day life of Afghans in Kandahar. The Taliban are paying people
to fight, so in those circumstances, you can imagine why some of these
men are going off to fight for the Taliban.

How then would you describe the security situation in southern
Afghanistan?

It's a war zone. It's dramatically deteriorated in the last year.
Certainly, crop eradication played into the hands of the Taliban.
Whatever local support we, the international community might have had
in southern Afghanistan, was substantially affected by that forced
eradication scheme. The Taliban saw a political opportunity there and
they took it.

They're very clever about their relationships with the local people.
Unfortunately, we have not been very clever at all in the hearts and
minds campaign. In end, what's happening is that the Canadian military
is suffering significant losses because of that.

What is the state of the opium crop eradication policy?

We're approaching the planting season again in a month or two. There's
been no discussion about not eradicating next season.

But the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, their policy is that there
should be no forced eradication without an alternative livelihood in
place. There's no alternative in place in Afghanistan.

Have Canadians played an active role in trying to control opium
production?

Canadians as part of the NATO forces are not supposed to have anything
to do with counter-narcotics. The counter narcotics strategy is a
U.S.-led, British administered policy in Afghanistan. So the crop
eradication teams are Afghans with American military contractors. But
the Afghans, when you interview them, don't know the difference
between Americans, American private military, Canadian soldiers,
British soldiers.

We're all the same to them: we're foreigners. So when the crop
eradication happened, they blamed the foreigners because they
correctly thought it was our idea. As a result, the Canadians paid the
price in the hearts and minds campaign for the U.S.-led
eradication.

So you see a direct connection between the increased level of violence
in southern Afghanistan and that eradication policy?

Yes, a direct connection. And when you ask people in southern
Afghanistan, what do they think about the foreigners being here,
they'll say, 'When they first came, we welcomed them. And now we can
see they're not interested in our situation, in helping us feed our
families.'

The Taliban are the ones providing them with a way to feed their
families, a response to their needs. This is raw grassroots politics.

What is the role of the Taliban in the opium trade?

There are at least two distinct kinds of Taliban. The al-Qaeda linked
Taliban are the Arabs, Chechens and Pakistanis involved in the global
jihad. The "local Taliban" are the young guys in the villages and the
farms. They're local guys who don't have a job, who have seen the crop
eradication, they've seen the presence of the foreigners and they
perceive us as being immensely wealthy. They're angry for local
political reasons. They don't know about global jihad. They all know
how to use guns, because that's part of the culture. And the Taliban
come to them and say, 'We'll pay you money to fight. You shouldn't let
the foreigners be here. They're not looking after our best interests.'

That type of economic incentive, plus a very basic political pitch,
has worked. But we can win back those hearts and minds. Because those
young men don't want to be fighting. They want to be feeding their
families. They'd like to be growing some legal crop.

Should the eradication policy be suspended?

Yes, until there's an alternative livelihood in place, just like UN
policy says.

How do you provide an alternative? What would that look
like?

Because you're faced with a dramatic situation, what we've proposed is
three things all at the same time. One, we need immediate food aid.
Canada has taken responsibility for Kandahar. There are starving
children there. We should do something about it.

You have to do that so that these people can get on their feet while
the proper economic mix is developed for Afghanistan. We need to
rebuild the irrigation system, we need to introduce and explain
alternate crops, we need to find ones that are going to grow in an
environment with not a lot of water.

The key thing we've said is that the farmers in southern Afghanistan
should be allowed to grow opium for medicine: morphine and codeine.
They know how to grow opium and it doesn't take much water.

The U.S. introduced that in Turkey to convert the Turkish opium
farmers away from producing opium for heroin.

These strategies aren't perfect, but they're certainly better than
anything we have going on in southern Afghanistan at the moment.