Poppy Cultivation in Afghanistan

Yesterday, Glenn Reynolds linked to a posts by Michael Yon and Strategypage arguing that while we are winning in Iraq, we are losing in Afghanistan. Michael Yon laments the poppy trade there and quotes from a Washington Times article that said this:

KABUL The top U.S. general in Afghanistan said yesterday he estimated that Afghanistan’s rampant opium poppy cultivation was funding up to 40 percent of the Taliban-led insurgency.

Seems plausible to me. Because Osama bin Laden cut them off financially years ago, the Taliban need to get their money from somewhere in order to repeatedly arm and train large groups of men to be sitting ducks for NATO bombs. It looks like poppy cultivation is what's funding NATO target practice these days, but I'm not sure that's such a huge problem. Here is one recent story about the Taliban:

ABOUT 80 Taliban fighters were killed when they tried to ambush Afghan and other soldiers in the south of Afghanistan, the US-led international coalition said.

The coalition said yesterday the troops were forced to call in air support when they were ambushed over the weekend in the highly volatile province of Helmand.

"The combined patrol immediately returned fire, manoeuvred, and employed close air support, resulting in almost seven dozen Taliban fighters killed during a six-hour engagement," the coalition said in a statement.

The attackers fled after the clash in the town of Musa Qala.

British troops left the town late last year following an agreement that handed over security to the town's elders.

The Taliban took over the town in February. The area is the centre of Afghanistan's illegal opium poppy cultivation.

Of course, Afghanistan has been growing poppies to produce opium for a long time, and the Taliban once tried to put a stop to it. Here is a story from early in 2001 about that:

Last year, Afghanistan produced nearly 4,000 tons of opium, about 75 percent of the world's supply, U.N. officials said. Opium -- the milky substance drained from the poppy plant -- is converted into heroin and sold in Europe and North America. The 1999 output was a world record for opium production, the United Nations said -- more than all other countries combined, including the "Golden Triangle," where the borders of Thailand, Laos and Myanmar meet.

Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Taliban's supreme leader, banned poppy growing before the November planting season and augmented it with a religious edict making it contrary to the tenets of Islam.

The Taliban, which has imposed a strict brand of Islam in the 95 percent of Afghanistan it controls, has set fire to heroin laboratories and jailed farmers until they agreed to destroy their poppy crops.

I guess Omar's religious edict against the poppy crop had an expiration date associated with it. But the point is that opium production in Afghanistan is not a Taliban phenomenon.

Like Michael Yon, Strategypage expresses drug-related worries about Afghanistan as well:

The Taliban like the expensive gadgets, like SUVs and satellite phones, but don't want the modern economy that would destroy the ancient Pushtun tribal culture. This battle is more advanced across the border in Pakistan, where two-thirds of the Pushtuns live. But the Pushtuns in Afghanistan feel the winds of change, and many have rallied to the Taliban cause, to halt the 20th century, and return everyone to the ancient ways. This sort of thing never works, but the Taliban are on a mission from God, and fueled by drug money. That will keep things going for a while.

Attacking the drug business, which provides at least half the Taliban's budget, means getting past the bought politicians, and implementing a campaign against poppy production. This can be done. In the last three decades it's been done in Pakistan (just across the border), and in Burma (along the Chinese border). But all the people involved will not easily surrender the vast sums of drug money they are getting. You're talking of sending people who have known poverty, back to it after having prospered for a few years. Many of the Pakistani Pushtun are still steamed about losing their poppy profits.

I don't agree with this perspective, and I will join the ranks of the defeatists in my party if victory is defined by eliminating poppy production (and corruption) in Afghanistan. It's not going to happen. I'm reminded of a relevant column by Charles Krauthammer some years ago:

For almost a decade before Sept. 11, we did absolutely nothing about Afghanistan. A few cruise missiles hurled into empty tents, followed by expressions of satisfaction about the "message" we had sent. It was, in fact, a message of utter passivity and unseriousness.

Then comes our Pearl Harbor, and the sleeping giant awakens. Within 100 days, al Qaeda is routed and the Taliban overthrown. Then the first election in Afghanistan's history. Now the inauguration of a deeply respected democrat who, upon being sworn in as the legitimate president of his country, thanks America for its liberation.

This in Afghanistan, which only three years ago was not just hostile but untouchable. What do liberals have to say about this singular achievement by the Bush administration? That Afghanistan is growing poppies.

Good grief. This is news? "Afghanistan grows poppies" is the sun rising in the east. "Afghanistan inaugurates democratically elected president" is the sun rising in the west. Afghanistan has always grown poppies. What is President Bush supposed to do? Send 100,000 GIs to eradicate the crop and incite a popular rebellion?

Underscoring this last point is a 2006 op-ed in the Christian Science Monitor, which had this to say about some initial successes in 2005 against poppy farmers:

Hasty poppy eradication in Afghanistan can sow more problems

Peasant farmers left without new livelihoods are heeding the call to join the insurgency.
...
In 2004, Nangarhar in eastern Afghanistan was estimated to produce approximately one-fifth of Afghanistan's opium. In 2005, its opium cultivation had decreased by as much as 96 percent. While considered an eradication success story, significant economic hardship and major social discontent followed.
...
The success in curbing drug production in Afghanistan has thus come at the price of undermining state-building and empowering the insurgency. After being the lead nation on counternarcotics, Britain is now also taking over counterinsurgency operations. Succumbing to the desire and international pressure to achieve speedy progress on drugs will ultimately undermine both efforts.

The drug business may very be funding the Taliban (though doubts about that can be found here), and I agree that it would be a nice thing to cut off that source of funding. But that's not really the goal even if it would be very nice. The goal is to kill Islamic extremists who wish to export terror to other parts of the world (or to facilitate the export of terror, as the Taliban did before 9/11). Right now, NATO forces are needed to do that job while indigenous anti-Taliban forces in Afghanistan are trained to do it themselves. When they can, we can leave (but not until that time, even if that takes many years).

The drug trade will always prosper in Afghanistan (it always has), and officials will always be corrupt. But some version of democracy will remain in effect, and Afghanistan will be an ally in the war on terror. And we'll fund them even if the opium business continues to fund the ever-"resurgent" Taliban. To set the elimination of the poppy trade in Afghanistan as a condition of success is like setting the passage of political benchmarks in Iraq as a condition of success: since these things are not going to happen, failure is pre-ordained. As such, if you are failure oriented, I recommend that you choose those criteria to measure success and start your failure party now. Meanwhile, there is the business of defeating Islamic extremism and creating allies in the war on terror. That happens to be going quite well in Iraq (even though Iraqi officials will always be corrupt and are unlikely to pass all of the political "benchmarks"), and it seems to be going well in Afghanistan, too. There, NATO forces are eradicating Taliban forces who seem ready to give their lives to protect their poppy fields. That particular approach to fighting poppy cultivation in Afghanistan makes sense to me.