Newshawk's comment: Note the last paragraph, reflecting the
antiprohibitionist view. Is this journalist starting to "get it"?

WAR ON DRUGS IMPOVERISHES FARMERS

The Bekaa valley in Lebanon gets little from UN

AALBEK, Lebanon - During Lebanon's long civil war, the Bekaa Valley
flourished as one of the world's most fertile regions for growing cannabis
for hashish and poppies for heroin. In 1992, as it struggled to emerge
from more than a decade of self-destruction and lawlessness, Lebanon
successfully controlled its illicit drug crops, with the support of the
United States. But in the process it left tens of thousands of farmers
indigent.

In return, the United States and the United Nations promised to help these
farmers grow other crops, like cherries, apricots, and potatoes. But
farmers say that adequate international aid never materialized. Now, amid
broken promises and economic desperation, they are threatening to plant
those profitable and illegal crops.

A few farmers have already begun planting them. ''We all used to grow
hashish and heroin.''

That is not a secret.

We just want a decent life. These are good people who believe in God and
raise good families,'' said Mohammad Fawaz, a member of the Central Bekaa
Agricultural Cooperative and a candidate in the first local elections here
in 30 years. ''We were never comfortable growing illegal crops.

We just did it to survive,'' Fawaz said. ''During the war, it was either
that or pick up a gun. It was chaos here then. We don't want to return to
those days ever again.

But desperation forces people to do desperate things.

And I am afraid these farmers are desperate.'' The plight of the Bekaa
farmers has surfaced in the cynical aftermath of aggressive US rhetoric
about the ''war on drugs.'' Critics attacked these kinds of US and UN
eradication strategies at the recent UN drug summit as futile efforts that
are destructive for local economies. Critics say the drug eradication
efforts lack long-range alternative development programs for poor farming
communities. The Bekaa's highly profitable fields of pink flowering opium
poppies and green stalks of cannabis that once flourished along the
roadsides were all but destroyed in the past six years as US-funded
Lebanese troops burned fields and sprayed contaminants on crops from US
helicopters. The effort was by all accounts successful, and last year the
Clinton administration removed Lebanon from its list of major
drug-producing nations. But the effort also triggered an agrarian revolt,
led by a religious leader named Sheik Sobhi Toufeili, who used to be part
of the Hezbollah guerrilla movement.

The Shiite cleric's so-called Hunger Revolution has tapped into a
groundswell of populist resentment among the farmers who feel betrayed by
the West and ignored by the wealthy elite of Beirut. Even the Daily Star,
Lebanon's respected English-language daily, reluctantly acknowledged in a
February editorial the legitimacy of Toufeili's protest movement. ''His
motives were geared toward his own political gain, but his outcry for the
government to invest in the social and economic well-being of the region is
justified,'' the paper wrote. ''The international community owes Lebanon
support in its continued effort to prevent the re-emergence of the drug
business.'' Western officials in Lebanon concede that international aid
distributed largely through UN development programs has failed to meet its
promises.

The United Nations has spent $13 million in recent years to help farmers.

But its own studies estimate the costs run four times that simply to create
adequate irrigation in the area. US officials point out that USAID has
begun its own five-year plan targeting the farmers with millions of dollars.

The highlight of their effort, said James Stephenson, a USAID
representative in Lebanon, was a shipment this winter of 3,000 Holstein
cows flown into the Bekaa from New England, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and
Maryland. The dairy cows were dismissed by farmers and other critics as a
token effort that does not approach the hundreds of millions of dollars
that other countries such as Turkey have received for their antidrug
efforts. In the garden of his modest home, Bassam, 29, explained the basic
economics behind his decision to grow cannabis once again. If he
cultivates it on a 500-square-yard field, he will produce approximately
four kilos of hashish, worth roughly $8,000, at minimal labor cost. If he
grows potatoes or government-subsidized tobacco on the same field, he will
produce a crop worth about $350 and have to pay laborers at least $150 to
tend and harvest the plants. ''Our families are starving.

We believed the US when it said it would help us. We destroyed the old
crops, but now we have nothing.

Where is America now that I owe the local bakery $700 for bread?'' asked
Bassam, who spoke on condition that his last name not be used. ''We stopped
the drugs here, and now America turns its back on us.'' Bassam said that
about 10 percent of Bekaa farmers have returned to illegal crops on small,
remote patches of land. But he warned that most farmers are tempted to do
the same if there is no alternative. Mohammad Fawaz lives in a comfortable
home. His wife and daughters offered a silver platter of fresh fruit, and
tea served in china cups. He said he is among the wealthier farmers because
he saved his money and bought large tracts of land on which he grows
primarily tobacco, potatoes and apricots. ''For most farmers, it is a
180-degree turn for the worse now,'' he said. ''The US government promised
to deliver aid through the UN. But we have not seen a penny.'' Fawaz said
the money that has been channeled through the United Nations, whose
antidrug efforts has been dominated and funded by the United States, has
been absorbed into the organization's administrative costs.

The farmers have been offered UN loans at interest rates between 12 and 18
percent.

UN-subsidized pesticides and fertilizers are also expensive. Ross
Mountain, a UN Development Program coordinator, told farmers during a
recent tour of a poor village in the Bekaa, ''I hear your complaints loud.
I hear your frustrations, and I share them.'' A UN report found that 60
percent of the 54,000 farmers in the region grew cannabis during the war
and that the successful US-led eradication efforts left virtually all of
those farmers out of work. The impoverished region already faced economic
calamity.

The Bekaa has limited access to potable water, inadequate social and health
services, and the highest illiteracy rate in the country. Water is the key
to the transition away from drug crops, which require minimal irrigation.
There are large underground aquifers from nearby mountains and rivers, but
those sources are very difficult to reach.

And the infrastructure necessary to use them for irrigation is expensive.
Mountain said that after the United Nations took care of basic needs for
the population, there was only $13 million left to create an irrigation
system that requires an investment of more than $50 million. Phillip
Coffin, a researcher for the New York-based nonprofit Lindsmith Center,
says there is a pattern in other poor countries, of the United States and
the United Nations ''shaking a carrot in front of farmers and beating with
a stick at the same time.'' Coffin added, ''It is part of the misguided
global drug war by the US and the UN, which ignores the economics of the
drug trade and the fact there will always be poor farmers who will grow as
long as there is demand for drugs.''

Checked-by: Mike Gogulski