WHERE DEMOCRACY'S GREATEST ENEMY IS A FLOWER

Kabul, Afghanistan -- IN his inaugural address on Tuesday, President
Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan laid out his priorities for the next five
years. Chief among them was stopping the country's growing drug trade.
Mr. Karzai knows well that drug wars are often declared, but rarely
won. In the 1990's, the United Nations tried to give Afghan farmers
incentives not to grow opium, but the plan was not backed with
adequate force. In 2001, the Taliban tried force without financial
rewards. Neither approach convinced Afghan poppy farmers to give up
opium cultivation.

Similar efforts elsewhere have met with mixed results. In Colombia,
brutal military campaigns against drug-cultivating communities have
devastated local economies, setting off violence, which in turn has
led to further repression. Drug production in Colombia continues to
rise.

Meanwhile, Thailand has significantly dented the narcotics trade by
balancing tough enforcement with equitable and farsighted economic
policies. While the drug economy was being dismantled, Thailand
managed to recover from the economic crisis of 1997 and has enjoyed
fairly steady economic growth since then.

Having underestimated Afghanistan's narcotics problem since 2001, the
international community now recognizes the connection between drugs
and terrorism, and believes that urgent action is essential. But
lessons from other nations show that today's quick wins can sow the
seeds of future poppy harvests. Afghanistan's war on drugs will not be
won quickly - nor can it be won without economic growth and political
stability. Crop destruction "victories" will prove pyrrhic if Afghan
farmers cannot find other ways to make a living and do not understand
why drugs threaten their future.

Today, many Afghans believe that it is not drugs, but an ill-conceived
war on drugs that threatens their economy and nascent democracy. The
drug trade is worth more than $2.8 billion to our economy - more than
a third of our gross domestic product. Destroying that trade without
offering our farmers a genuine alternative livelihood has the
potential to undo the embryonic economic gains of the past three
years. The likely results would be widespread impoverishment,
inflation, currency fluctuations and capital flight.

In the United Nations survey on Afghan drug production published this
month, farmers cited "poverty" as their main reason for cultivating
poppy; an acre of poppy can bring in 20 times the profit of an acre of
wheat. Eradicating the poppy will threaten the livelihood of more than
2.3 million Afghans. Unless the new administration can deliver
tangible reconstruction benefits to farmers. eradication will stir
resentment against the government and its international partners.

President Karzai has been clear that nothing threatens Afghanistan's
long-term political and economic health more than narcotics. We cannot
fulfill our sovereign and democratic destiny if a drug mafia chokes
political freedom. We cannot move beyond our dependence on foreign aid
without a healthy and legal private sector generating tax revenues. We
cannot open our borders and our economy to attract private investment
if fighting a narco-mafia requires increasing repression.

Afghans understand that drug production is fundamentally un-Islamic;
they know that our political leadership cannot serve them and also the
interests of the drug mafia; they see that drug profits do not stay
with the poor (last year, while the value to farmers of opium
production went down by more than 40 percent, traffickers increased
their profits by almost 70 percent).

So how can Afghanistan and its international partners win this war in
the long term? There are four key elements to a winning strategy:

First is a long-term plan for training, equipping and deploying
national police, border police and counter-narcotics officers that
will arrest and otherwise disrupt the high-value targets (the
traffickers and processors) while also controlling our borders and
enforcing the rule of law throughout the countryside. These forces
will not come cheap - at least $1 billion per year for five years,
over and above the current investment in building the national army.

We also need to stimulate economic growth in a way that decreases the
proportionate influence of the drug economy. This will depend in great
part on rebuilding the country physically: investing in energy
production, improved water systems and highways - a 10-year, $20
billion challenge.

Next, we need an agricultural strategy that links farming households
to domestic and international markets. With grain worth so little in
comparison to opium, and agricultural productivity in Afghanistan only
one-eighth that of middle-income countries, a short-term plan to
substitute wheat for poppy will not work. We need market-based land
reform; credit programs for small farmers and cooperatives; and
government investment in light industry to fulfill the potential of
our irrigable land. Preferential trade agreements that help our
farmers and small businesses become part of world markets would also
be vital. All this will cost at least $1 billion a year for at least
five years.

Last, the government must improve our judicial system, our financial
institutions and provincial governments. Arbitrary arrests and
detentions of poppy farmers will bring only widespread resentment;
trials and imprisonment of alleged drug traffickers without due
process will undermine the credibility of the state and strengthen the
drug mafia. Public institutions committed to the rule of law will not
come cheaply or quickly in Afghanistan, and may take as much as $1
billion a year over 10 years.

President Karzai, having demonstrated his gifts for consensus
building, must now be given the space and support by his foreign
allies to prepare Afghans for an Afghan solution to our narcotics
problem. He and his government will use our loya jirgas (or great
councils), radio (the preferred news medium for most Afghans) and
personal meetings with Afghans from all walks of life to lay the
foundation for this strategy. The issue is not whether strict
enforcement and economic support are both required, but how they are
sequenced, balanced and communicated.

In the long term, success demands that average Afghans understand why
we must defeat the narcotics industry - for our country, for our faith
and for our children. But poppy farmers will accept the loss of their
crops, their land and their livelihoods only if they believe in an
alternative future, and if they see commensurate punishments for those
at the top of the drug pyramid. They will strive for an alternative
economic future only when given the skills and resources to help forge
a legal agrarian economy.

Above all, they will join a national consensus for drug eradication
only when they believe that their government and its international
partners care about their long-term well-being, and not just the war
on terrorism.