Afghanistan Aff

Drug war bad

Also, the crackdown in the country's far north is unlikely to stop the flow of opium and money to the Taliban in the south. In Zabul — the home province of Taliban spiritual chief Mullah Omar — poppy production grew by 45 percent last year. Helmand province, a Taliban stronghold, grew so much opium last year that if it was a separate country, it would rank as the world's top opium producer, according to Gretchen Peters, author of "Seeds of Terror," on how the Taliban is bankrolling itself through drug smuggling. Peters says the Taliban's video messages now talk about securing smuggling routes and protecting poppy plantations. Poppy fields in Taliban areas are so dangerous that eradication teams comb them for bombs before trying to destroy them. Last year 78 government agents were killed trying to destroy fields in the south. By contrast, the worst they faced in Badakshan was crying farmers. Zainuddin, the head security officer for Darayim district in Badakshan, says he feels awful every time he uproots a poppy field. "Sometimes I cry as I am hitting the poppies," says Zainuddin, who like many Afghans goes by a single name. "Because I know these are poor people and I am taking away the only thing they have." Over the past month, dozens of fields have been destroyed in the mountains of Badakshan. Nasrullah, a 35-year-old farmer, planted three small plots of white-and-violet poppies inside a hill of wheat, hoping the taller crop would hide the illegal blossoms. He stood in silence on a recent morning as nine police officers crossed a small gulch and climbed the hill. They assaulted his crop, hitting the flowers with long sticks until they fell to the ground. He put his face in his hands. "I didn't plant this for my own pleasure," he says. "I planted this so that my family could eat. All the rest of this is worth nothing," he says, waving at the wheat. "The choice I have to make now is either kill myself. Or leave the country."

Experts say that control efforts have met with mixed success when considered as specific case scenarios, but represent an overwhelming failure taken as a whole. "You see a growing number of people saying that money spent on the interdiction side is just foolish," says Nadelmann. The trouble lies in what is often referred to as the "push-down, pop-up effect," or squeezing one end of a balloon. Due to basic economic factors, eradications of crops in specific regions have almost never translated into long-term drug war successes. For example, in the 1990s, Peru and Bolivia were considered success stories of the drug war, while Colombia was perceived as a major threat. The United States successfully pressured Colombia's government to launch a program of aerially spraying and uprooting coca crops. Notable reductions were made, but these successes had a perverse effect. Even as the United States launched a multibillion dollar interdiction campaign in Colombia, coca growers in neighboring Peru and Bolivia quickly popped up to fill the supply void. Not only did regional production not decline, but there were unforeseen political consequences in the countries where coca growth was resurgent. Evo Morales, a former coca grower and a populist, rallied the support of Bolivia's coca growers and won Bolivia's recent presidential elections on a pro-coca platform (though not pro-cocaine—coca can be used to produce a mildly intoxicating chew and can be processed into a flour substitute). Ullanta Humala, a Peruvian nationalist who has pledged to legalize the coca crop, is currently leading opinion polls in the run-up to Peru's April 9 elections.