THE WAR ON DRUGS IS NOT THE WAR ON TERROR: SAVE THE AFGHAN POPPY FIELDS

What A Deadly Harvest.

As British troops move in to replace Americans in some of the most
volatile parts of southern Afghanistan, their valiant battle for
democracy is being undermined by their own Government's confused war on opium.

Yesterday the Senlis Council, an international security and
development policy think-tank, cautioned that the southern states are
slipping into a "state of war". Afghans, faced with overwhelming
poverty caused by the West's obliteration of their poppy crops, are
switching allegiance to the Taleban and other insurgents. You cannot
attack poppies and insurgents at the same time. Attacks on one breed the other.

By insisting on destroying the country's main source of income, the
Western coalition is pursuing a counter-productive policy.

True, Afghan poppies provide four fifths of the world's heroin,
exporting untold misery. But it is Westerners who buy it. True, opium
profits help to finance insurgents and to entrench warlords.

But they also provide a basic living for more than two million
Afghans. Opium is by far the most reliable and resilient crop in arid
areas where almost nothing else will grow. Plans to grow roses --
almost as valuable as opium when used for perfume -- haven't got very
far. Roses need water.

The war in Afghanistan is not a sideshow.

It is of fundamental importance in striking at the root of Islamist terror.

British forces are there to destroy the Taleban strongholds, to
obliterate the training camps of al-Qaeda. The last thing that
British forces need is a wrong-headed drugs policy that should,
frankly, be left until later. With the people increasingly
disillusioned with both their Government and with foreign aid, with
peace and prosperity elusive, stamping out this source of money is madness.

Farmers earn a pittance for wheat, the principal alternative crop,
and even less since the West started dumping wheat on their market.

In Colombia, the destruction of coca and opium plantations with
chemical sprays has left almost three million people near-destitute,
with a virulent loathing of the American Government that insisted on
the destruction as the price of its aid. And it hasn't even worked:
the price of cocaine is still falling, the market awash with it.

In Afghanistan, eradication is being carried out mostly by local
police who cannot believe their luck at being handed a perfect
opportunity for bribery. Around Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand
province where a quarter of the country's opium is grown, rows of
tall poppies apparently wave in the breeze next to empty fields --
the ones owned by farmers too poor to afford the protection money of
3,000 to 4,000 rupees per jerib (field). Poverty was desperate under
the Taleban. But the poorest farmers are incensed that their crops
are being obliterated to enrich others.

When the Taleban plant mines and destroy the vehicles used for
eradication, farmers feel that they are the only ones on their side.
Coalition forces reported that last month 420 Taleban fighters were
killed in southern Afghanistan. They keep coming, in numbers that
have clearly surprised the allies.

To make matters worse, hundreds of Helmand farmers are still claiming
that they have not been paid for voluntarily destroying their crops
in 2002. The British Government says that it handed over UKP 21
million in compensation payments to the transitional authority.

But farmers are still furiously brandishing IOUs of UKP 350 per field
that were never paid. They make no distinction between the different
authorities: they just blame the West. "We trusted the foreigners,
and they cheated us," is a typical comment from those interviewed in
the Senlis report.

No matter what the truth is, British involvement in such a
counterproductive and poorly executed strategy could hardly have been
better designed to sabotage the mission of our troops.

There is, thankfully, another way. This would be to channel
Afghanistan's opium into legitimate use as the basis for painkillers
such as morphine and codeine.

The global shortage of these is a scandal. The richest six countries
consume about 80 per cent and many patients in poor countries simply
go without.

Estimates suggest that the shortage is about 10,000 tonnes of opium a
year. Afghanistan produces about 4,400 tonnes.

Now there's a simple demand-supply equation.

Instead of trying to dictate Afghanistan's economic policy, why not,
in this era of trade liberalisation, turn illegal opium into
Fairtrade Opium? At one stroke, a policy of legitimate medicinal
export could reduce the amount of opium cash flowing into the pockets
of insurgents, and reintegrate farmers into a legal economic system,
without rendering them destitute.

The illegal trade would not disappear entirely, but under the policy
of the past four years, for which British and American taxpayers have
been shelling out about $500 million a year, there have been bumper
harvests and the trade has actually grown.

As with so many good ideas hotly resisted, there is a precedent.

Turkey has had a licence to grow opium for medicinal purposes since
1974. This was agreed after President Nixon had tried strenuously to
convince the Turks to destroy the crops.

He failed: the Turkish Government said that such a policy would
simply be too destabilising. Around 600,000 Turkish farmers now
happily earn their living from controlled poppy cultivation.

In Afghanistan, proposals for pilot schemes along these lines are
meeting a stonewall from the allies.

Someone somewhere seems to believe that the "war on drugs" is
equivalent to the "War on Terror". It is not. The two are linked, but
not inextricably. Let us not fail our troops by pursuing a
fashionable war at the expense of a vital one.