Via Reuters: Afghan drug-fighting efforts failing- lawmakers
U.S. lawmakers told the Bush administration on Tuesday the program to fight Afghanistan’s poppy trade appeared on the brink of failure, which they said would undermine work to stabilize the country and spread more drugs throughout the world.
This is no shock to me. As I have noted before on numerous occasions, our attempts at coca eradication in the Andes has been an utter failure (yes, we have eliminated lots of coca plants over the years, but have done little to affect supply and price). As such, it is hardly a surprise that the poppy eradication in Afghanistan has been a failure, given the more difficult political situation and the dire economic condition of Afghan farmers.
Indeed, as I noted in a piece in Strategic Insights last month, there is a problematic synergy that exists between drugs and funding for terrorism. This is a serious problem, and one which the US government (or any government, for that matter) is dealing with realistically. The paradigm of crop eradication and crop substitution needs to be seriously revisited. The idea, as noted in the piece, that we could somehow sufficiently subsidize Afghan farming to offset the profits from poppy cultivation is absurd. What are we going to do, put the whole country on the US payroll? And how much do we have to pay everyone so that there no one is tempted to make a little side money by growing poppy? The whole concept ignores a long list of facts about human nature and the power of supply and demand.