I hope my fellow bloggers will forgive me this self-indulgent post, but I could not resist. You see, the FT has a leader about the Afghan drugs trade, arguing:
The first thing to say is that while crop eradication and locking up bad guys may be an important part of addressing the crisis, they are not by themselves a solution. That can only come over years of a sustained and consistent strategy to develop a real market economy which would provide a better livelihood for farmers than the dangerous and volatile drugs business.
That will, it is true, require security and a role for the military. It will mean targeting the middlemen, smugglers and, yes, chemists who operate the infrastructure of the drugs business, hitting their finances and improving co-operation with Afghanistan’s neighbours.
Above all, it will mean that while the small poppy farmer escapes the attentions of the authorities, the big drug barons do not. That demands ending the de facto impunity enjoyed by some Afghans, a move that can be sanctioned by only the president.
Wise counsel; but is it also a little familiar? This is what I wrote on 27 May and again on 4 June this year:
First, the international community must forego the idea that it can sequence coercive and development activities; it is simply not possible given the conditions now or in the foreseeable future. Better therefore not to promise development in exchange for poppy eradication or think conditionality can work.
Second, the international community needs to take aerial eradication off the table and make clear that traffickers, not farmers, are the problem. Because Afghan farmers do not use chemicals, aerial eradication will likely be blamed as the cause of disease, premature deaths or crop destruction, which is a regular but unrelated occurrence in Afghanistan, as in any developing country. The Afghan government, already mistrusted, would suffer from any backlash, thus turning an insurgency into an insurrection.
Instead, the government should focus on rolling out the Afghan state, prioritizing the provision of security to local farmers. The international community, in turn, should focus on building local capacity to maintain security and deliver basic services.
Crucially, this should be coupled with arrests and the prosecution of drug lords and their backers in government. Unless these “narcotics entrepreneurs” are targeted, arrested and prosecuted, little will change. Though, this should be done under the nomenclature of anti-corruption – which Afghans care about – and not of counter-narcotics, which most Afghans think is a Western focus.
The difference lies in the FT’s focus on the development of a market economy and my added point that insecurity comes from the corrupt Afghan police, the reform of which is a sine qua non of an improved counter-narcotics policy. Readers may remember that I advocated drastic solutions to be on the table, including dismantling the Ministry of Interior entirely, placing the police force under the Afghan National Army, or setting up a new gendarmerie-style police initially under the army.
Pardon me, dear readers, but I feel quite pleased with myself. If I could actually spell and string a well-sounding sentence together I too could have been writing FT leaders (even if only on a small and obscure topic). Not a bad feeling to end the day on.
