Of course, when eradication has never worked anywhere before ever, it makes sense for U.S. officials to ratched up pressure on Hamid Karzai to spray poppy fields. Abu Muqawama notes a growing mission creep in this, but I don’t see it that way: at least in Afghanistan we’ve been done the courtesy by our government to see opium, counterterrorism, and counterinsurgency as different sides of the same problem.
Regular readers know our stance on the topic (which, granted, has evolved from “license” to “ignore” as we’ve done more research). Eradication is exactly the policy we need to pursue in Afghanistan if our goal is to drive the Afghans into the arms of the Taliban. It is beyond worthless—it is actively counterproductive.
This post was written by...
Joshua Foust – author of 1771 posts on Registan.net.
Joshua Foust is a Fellow at the American Security Project and the author of Afghanistan Journal: Selections from Registan.net. His research focuses primarily on Central and South Asia. Joshua is a correspondent for The Atlantic and a columnist for PBS Need to Know. Joshua appears regularly on the BBC World News, Aljazeera, and international public radio. Joshua is also a regular contributor to Foreign Policy’s AfPak Channel, and his writing has appeared in the New York Times, Reuters, and the Christian Science Monitor. Follow him on twitter: @joshuafoust
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And UNODC has painted a picture of a supposedly clear contrast that there is an increasingly poppy-free “north” (poppy-free provinces doubled by messing with statistics a little), and a “south” increasingly high on poppy.
Still, if one tries on that basis to tackle the south that may not necessarily be fatal, provided the means are elected carefully: if the emphasis is on interdiction and on keeping the process of storing and then destroying captured shipments under closer international control. But of course that’s not only what’s being indicated as coming.
Oh, and just in case one needs more arguments for the “ignore (for now)” option in the case of insurgency-hit areas, which I also see as the way to go, here’s a link:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/21/AR2007092101707.html?nav=rss_opinions/columnsandblogs
Quote: “Effective government control over the entire territory and the absence of armed conflict are crucial preconditions for the suppression of illicit crops.”
The author looks at several cases from the past to run the point home.
I remember reading that. I’m a fan of Felbab-Brown; I’ve used her work before in some papers and in research.