A VERY UNHOLY WAR

Attacking Opium And Coca Farms With Bioweapons Sounds Great. . . To Officials

IMAGINE a mind-altering drug that is harvested from a plant grown in just a
few small regions of the world. Efforts to curb demand are floundering and
international trade has made the barons of the industry rich and powerful.
Then, one day, crop dusters fly over the crops, scattering a fungus or
bacterium which the plants can't resist.

A new way of waging war on crack and heroin ? Well, it could be. Scientists
working for the US government and the UN admit they are trying to develop
biological agents to destroy coca bushes and opium poppies, and make no
secret of their desire to use them in such places as Colombia or
Afghanistan (see p 20).

But what if the fields in this scenario were the vineyards of Bordeaux or
the Napa Valley ? And what if the attackers were Islamic extremists bent on
lashing out at the West's favourite recreational drug ? OK, so it's
unlikely, but there is almost nothing to stop terrorists or rogue states
arming themselves with biological agents that could be used against
Japanese rice, Russian potatoes or Californian grapes.

Plant disease agents are a lot easier to manufacture and deliver than
biological weapons aimed at people. They can't attack your technicians, are
adapted to travel vast distances on winds or insects, and are easy to
release - upwind and you're off. What's more, most are fungi that produce
conveniently hardy spores that can persist in soil for years.

The agents now being developed to attack opium, coca and marijuana plants
have been in the pipeline a long time. But that's mainly because the
researchers are looking for strains that infect only the drug crops.
Terrorists and dictators wouldn't have to be so fussy. A cheap and dirty
anti-crop agent could be produced far more easily than an anthrax bomb.

The notion isn't new. Before it disavowed biological weapons in 1972, the
US had developed a wheat rust bomb to drop on the Ukraine, while in
Uzbekistan, Russian scientists were developing something similar to drop on
Kansas. Now, concern about this type of bioweapon is growing again among
senior security chiefs. And while cold-war style paranoia may be part of
it, there are some real causes for concern.

The most obvious is the huge strain that will be placed on food supplies as
the world's population expands, making crops a more seductive target.
Another factor is that, thanks to an upsurge in new plant diseases through
increases in global agricultural trade and monocultures, there are now more
strains of crop pathogens for weapons makers to choose from - and more
vulnerability in the fields they might target.

Sceptics may doubt whether anti-crop agents could act quickly enough to be
powerful instruments of war. But the lesson from BSE and the Belgian dioxin
fiasco is that you may not need to cause mass starvation to wreak economic
or political havoc. In many nations, grain prices alone make a big
difference to urban peace. And it may take only a hint of contamination
with fungal toxins to close down a nation's food exports.

Against this background, the enthusiasm of the US and UN for using a
"Fusarium" fungus to infect drug crops seems reckless bordering on the
crazy. Advocates claim that such agents are ecologically safe provided they
exist naturally in the targeted regions. And most probably do, but not in
the quantity that spraying would bring. The sheer scale of the infection
could increase the risk of the fungi mutating into strains capable of
attacking non-drug plants, causing who knows what damage to farms or
ecosystems.

The UN claims the fungi are merely "pest control agents" which will be
released only in countries whose governments consent. It also points out
that various disease spores are used to control thistles and water weeds in
the US and no one calls it biological warfare. Try telling this to the four
million peasants who depend on coca or poppy crops, or to the drug barons,
or to the neighbouring country into whose fields the spores may drift.

Deliberately infecting crops, even drug crops, starts us down a slippery
slope. It tells the world that using disease to achieve an end is
legitimate - and fairly easy. Whatever the UN might say, these fungi
certainly look like biological weapons, which are supposed to be prohibited
by an international treaty. Developing them may well be easy. Putting the
genie of biological weapons back into the bottle may not be.