AFGHANS SOW SILENT TERROR THROUGH OPIUM SALES

If you wanted to wreak havoc on your neighbours and undermine their security
with a minimum of military force, how would you go about it? You wouldn't
need terrorist cells, biological weapons, or even "dirty" bombs.

All you'd need is opium.

Exhibit A is Afghanistan. That tiny, much-abused country was the world's
largest producer of opium in 2002 and looks likely to maintain its dubious
title this year.

About 3,400 tonnes of opium were produced in Afghanistan last year, roughly
three-quarters of the world's production, according to the United Nations.
Anyone who doubts that this is the most cost-efficient form of global
"unconventional warfare" should look at the results.

Afghanistan's opium harvest earned more than $3 billion last year, more than
15 per cent of the country's GDP. And no one can put a figure on the
corruption and criminal violence this has added to the transnational
narco-economy.

Drug profits finance terrorism, of course: They pay for weapons, safe houses
and training. But the fact is, drug trading at this level is a form of
social and economic terrorism on its own.

Most Afghan opium ends up on the streets of Europe and Russia as heroin,
where addiction and drug-related crime continue to skyrocket. It's also a
primary cause of the dramatic increase in HIV/AIDS in the immediate region.
AIDS infections in Central Asia climbed 600-fold between 1994 and 2001, with
needle-injected drug use accounting for nearly 90 per cent of the increase.

The uptick in Afghan opium production is sure to aggravate the spreading
AIDS epidemic in Eurasia, and further increase the burden on health and law
enforcement for the region's struggling governments.

The most disturbing thing about this picture is that the latest opium
bonanza has occurred after the West went to war in Afghanistan to make the
world safe from terrorism.

In the 19 months since Operation Enduring Freedom, Afghanistan's social and
security problems have increased to the point where its new leaders openly
worry they could soon be presiding over a "narco-mafia state."

Opium production is now higher than it was when the Taliban ruled.

The former fundamentalist regime banned cultivation in an 11th-hour attempt
to win financial assistance and political support from the West.

The new government has banned opium, too. But it has few means of enforcing
the ban on the warlords who control the trade in the south, east and north
of Afghanistan.

The profits from the drug trade have enabled the warlords to increase their
power in the provinces, which further weakens central government control -
in a time-honoured cycle of Afghan politics.

The warlords' help was essential to destroying the Taliban. Now their
destruction is essential to saving Afghanistan.

In the absence of an effective national government infrastructure,
Afghanistan has spiraled further and further into crisis.

The bitter irony is that even as the opium trade subverts the country's
neighbours, it has served as a quick fix for Afghanistan's war-damaged rural
economy.

With an average income of $2.50 a day, mountain farmers are easily persuaded
to grow poppies when opium prices have risen from $45 a kilogram to nearly
$580 a kilogram in just two years.

Even though less than 1 per cent of Afghanistan's arable land is devoted to
poppy production, the industry has spawned an invisible government,
bolstered by financial kingpins and private armies that openly defies the
central administration in Kabul.

The opium economy has "chained ... farmers, landless labour, small traders,
women and children to the mercy of domestic warlords and international crime
syndicates," says Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the U.N. Office
on Drugs and Crime.

In other words, the factors that made Afghanistan an incubator for drugs,
crime and terrorism since 1979, when the Soviet Union invaded, haven't
changed.

Costa issued his U.N. report in January. Six months later the international
community is still arguing about what to do.

In August, NATO is set to take over the administration of the Afghan
peacekeeping force around Kabul (Canadian troops will be the largest
contingent). But neither NATO nor U.S. troops in the country have the forces
or the mission to tackle drug lords.

The promised financial assistance from international donors falls short of
the $20 billion that Afghan leaders and foreign analysts estimate it will
take to rebuild the economy, create a viable police force and army, and
drive out the drug traffickers.

Without this help, "we'll have lost the first battle of the war against
terrorism," Dennis Kux, director of a U.S. Council on Foreign Relations task
force on Afghanistan, warned last week.

It certainly doesn't inspire much confidence in the management of the war
itself.