Is our Drug War Fueling Narcoterrorism in Afghanistan?

The Taliban prevents poppies from being eradicated due to their high price on the black market (courtesy of War is Boring). See how opium allowed Taliban back into Musa Qala on the Long War Journal.





The argument against the drug war was gaining steam pre-9/11, but the debate kind of got put on the backburner for obvious reasons due to the nation having higher priorities post-9/11. However, now I think it is more important than ever to frankly discuss how our long-running "War against Drugs" is running contrary to our objectives in the War on Terror. One of the key components of counter-insurgency is to eliminate the source of funding for the enemy. In Iraq, this involves targeting and disrupting extremist financial cells and discouraging foreign infiltration (in Iraq's case this would be from Syria and Iran). Another key component of counter-insurgency is to stimulate small local businesses to keep people well-employed and discouraged from joining the insurgency in troublesome areas. Those principles are being applied in Iraq, but I saw this piece on CNN's "This Week at War" last month and I became a little concerned regarding Afghanistan.

Well, what General Grange is talking about here is classic counter-insurgency. There are so many different opinions in Afghanistan right now how to deal with the drug issue. The United States is pushing the idea of spraying crops which is, according to many people, absolutely counter-intuitive to winning hearts and minds, which is essentially counterinsurgency. What General Grange is proposing is an idea that's been proposed by some other groups, essentially you legalize the poppy growth in certain villages, certain areas. The communities there self-police the amount of poppy cultivation that they've been licensed to grow and you work with them, rather than work against these farmers by destroying their crops. So in essence, this is one solution, but -- and it works, if you will, in a counter-insurgency environment which is what the battle in Afghanistan and the border of Pakistan would be all about. But there are so many different ideas. The British want to help the farmers. The UN wants NATO to take a bigger role. There just aren't enough NATO troops to do the job they're doing at the moment, never mind get in and police poppy crops. So the international community has a whole plethora of ideas and after six years, still can't agree and the poppy production this year was gone up about another 20 percent, 8,200 tons of opium produced this year.

It seems that our endless quest to rid the world of narcotics has proven to be a double-whammy in A-stan. By making drugs illegal, we have driven up the cost (just like prohibition!) of drugs making it a lucrative trade for terrorists to fund their operations. Likewise, by destroying the crops of rural Afghanis, we aren't helping out on the "Hearts and Minds" front, and may be giving them reason to sympathize with the Taliban fascists. While the drug war has a plethora of unintended consequences in our own country (see this website for details), it seems to be having more unintended consequences in our efforts in Afghanistan as well.

By legalizing drugs, we could knock out the blackmarket that fuels narcoterrorism and assist in empowering Afghans who harvest the poppy crop. I know I'm having "armchair weenie syndrome", since I've never been near Afghanistan, so someone weigh in on this proposal. I understand it's radical, but these are drastic times, damnit.

Destruction of our inner city: Another problem with the War on Drugs