U.S. ANTI-DRUG MONEY WASTED IN AFGHANISTAN

As Afghan President Hamid Karzai works to overturn a parliamentary
election that did not turn out the way he wanted, the United States
continues to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on "good
governance" initiatives.

This $760 million program, to strengthen government agencies, was
America's single largest nonmilitary expense in Afghanistan over the
past year. All of it was money thrown away.

The mind dulls when confronted with large numbers like that. But $760
million spent another way would allow Washington to give every single
public school in the nation's 25 largest cities almost $200,000 extra
this year.

Afghanistan is the world's prototype for feckless, venal governments,
and Karzai plays the part of the uncaring, self-interested leader
better than almost anyone else. So why is the United States throwing
money at him - pushing Western, liberal-minded programs on a
government that can't, and won't, accept them?

Last year, the U.S. Agency for International Development began
promoting what it calls "Afghanization of aid." That's the new,
in-vogue approach donors are trying in numerous needy nations - to
"increase the administrative capabilities of the Afghan government,"
the agency says, and allow the nation's leaders to decide how the
money is used.

Well, in Afghanistan, government leaders have only one use for
foreign aid. They stuff the cash into suitcases and fly it to secret
bank accounts in Dubai.

Nothing better demonstrates the government's heedless, self-indulgent
attitude than its approach to the country's considerable drug
problem. Afghanistan remains the world's largest grower of opium
poppies. It supplies 90 percent of the world's heroin. Many thousands
of its citizens are addicts.

Earlier this month, the United Nations put out its annual
"Afghanistan Opium Survey" and found that, even after the United
States has spent more than $2 billion on drug enforcement there, "the
total area under cultivation" during 2010 "and the number of families
growing opium poppy, remained the same as in 2009" - but for one
thing. The U.N. found "an alarming increase of 97 percent" in
opium-poppy cultivation among northeastern provinces that are not
traditional poppy-growing areas.

One reason nothing seems to change: When Western narcotics
investigators locate major traffickers and arrange to have them
arrested, they find as often as not that Karzai quickly pardons them,
allowing the traffickers to return to "work."

Last fall, WikiLeaks made public several State Department cables
showing that Karzai's serial pardons infuriated U.S. officials. One
cable, signed by Ambassador Karl Eikenberry, discussed five
border-patrol officers who were caught with 273 pounds of heroin in
their patrol car. As soon as they were sentenced to prison, Karzai
pardoned them.

Reducing the opium crop is not merely a moral or health issue. The
Taliban sell the farmers their seeds and taxes the crop. And from
that, the United Nations estimates, the militants net $125 million a
year. Think of all the weapons, roadside bombs, sniper rifles and
other lethal equipment they can buy. If they want, they can purchase
attack helicopters and armored personnel carriers.

But the Taliban are not the only ones profiting from the crop. Afghan
officials also levy taxes and take bribes, American officials say,
enriching everyone in government. No wonder Karzai is so eager to let
the traffickers go.

Neighboring states are equally upset. Last fall, a Russian
counter-narcotics team crossed the Afghan border and seized 2,050
pounds of heroin and 340 pounds of crude opium. Iran is building a
fence along its border to keep out heroin traffickers. This month,
Uzbekistan captured an Afghan crossing the border carrying 59 pounds
of raw opium.

The only seemingly good news in the U.N. report was that an
agricultural blight reduced crop yields last year. But that also
raised opium prices. For years, Western forces have been promoting
"crop substitution" - growing legal crops in place of the poppies.
But now the price of opium is seven times higher than the price of
wheat, prompting thousands of people to jump back into the business,
confident that both the government and the Taliban will protect them.

Washington is locked in acrimonious debate about closing the budget
deficit. Republicans want to cut $200 billion out of the budget
(exactly the cost of Afghan war), but no one seems interested in
scrutinizing the pointless, runaway expenditures in Afghanistan.

Spending vast sums on drug enforcement - $450 million this year - in
a country that protects and promotes its drug traffickers makes about
as much sense as devoting hundreds of millions of dollars on "good
governance" initiatives for one of the most rapacious and uncaring
governments on earth.