AFGHANISTAN'S FINE BALANCE: NARCO-ECONOMY OR NARCO-STATE?

Is Afghanistan moving from being a narco-economy to a narco-state?
The answer is finely balanced.

No discussion of Afghanistan, including the House of Commons debate
last night on Canada's military contribution, can skirt the obvious.
Afghanistan's economy, such as it is, depends on opium. And the drug
trade, in turn, is intertwined with the central government, regional
warlords, local insurgencies and Taliban forces hiding in Pakistan.

According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), 52
per cent of Afghanistan's gross domestic product in 2005 came from
the "drug economy." Afghanistan, continued the UN report, supplies a
staggering 87 per cent of the world's opium.

The good news from last year was that the number of hectares devoted
to opium fields declined by 21 per cent, a function of the
government's eradication programs and financial help for peasants to
grow other crops. The bad news was that production only dropped by
2.4 per cent, courtesy of higher yields. Opium is being grown in 28
of the country's 32 provinces.

There's not much doubt, therefore, that Afghanistan is a narco-
economy. Whether it's a narco-state depends on your definition of
whether Afghanistan itself is a state.

In the sense of having a flag, a seat at the United Nations, and a
government and parliament in the capital Kabul, it is a state. Beyond
that, however, it remains a tribal-based society, with warlords and
regional barons, who in their fiefdoms are much more powerful than
the government in Kabul.

For some of them, the drug trade is an important source of revenue,
and revenue is an important source of their political power. They are
either directly involved, or they tax opium production by others.

Since many of these warlords participate on their own terms in the
Kabul government, it can be argued that the Afghan government is at
least an indirect participant in the drug trade. Certainly, those
groups battling the established order, including foreign forces such
as Canada's, depend on drug revenues to purchase arms, bribe local
officials and coerce still others.

The challenge Canadian forces face goes way beyond the almost
impossible task of simultaneously bringing order and reconstructing
the economy, showing a hard and kindly face at the same time. As long
as the drug trade fuels the insurgencies across Afghanistan -- in
other words, as long as Afghanistan remains a narco-state -- Western
forces such as Canada's will never be able to "drain the swamp" of
money that fuels their foes.

Which leads to a wider strategic debate: Should Western countries and
the Afghan government try to eradicate poppy-growing or control it?
The British argued that eradicating poppy-growing quickly would leave
farmers even more destitute, and therefore more open to influence
from warlords. The Americans wanted immediate and maximal
eradication. Either way, the drug trade will be illicit, although
sufficiently lucrative to keep people engaged in it.

The drug trade casts a further shadow on the capability of Canadian
forces to achieve their "mission" in and around Kandahar. They can
move out of their central locations and "take the fight to the
enemy," in military lingo, and even kill a few people who wish the
Afghan government ill. But as long as there is a rather safe haven
across the border in Pakistan, and a supply of money from drugs, the
insurgency won't disappear. At least not any time soon.

The Canadian forces are part of a larger U.S./NATO deployment, with
teams such as Canada's fanning out across the country to attempt to
extend stability and to allow the Americans to withdraw some troops,
in large part because of the morass in Iraq they created.

NATO announced last year a reinforcement of 15,000 troops for
Afghanistan. Canada offered up 2,200. For a mission so complex, in a
country so complicated, NATO easily could have used three or four
times as many troops.

Within NATO, countries have widely different rules of engagement.
Some won't let their soldiers shoot except in self-defence. Others
don't want them fighting at all, and so keep them close to barracks.

Others -- Canada being one -- actually want their soldiers to seek
out the "enemy," assuming these enemies can be found.

A big enemy is the drug trade, and there's almost nothing Canada's
little, brave contingent of forces can do about that.