Opium economy will take 20 years and £1bn to remove
by Patrick Wintour via reed 2008-02-09 08:16:40

Afghanistan's opium economy will take up to 20 years to eradicate and require a £1bn investment from world leaders, according to a government study published yesterday.

The 102-page report was welcomed by the international development secretary, Douglas Alexander, even though it contains some highly critical messages about the effectiveness of some of the aid programmes.

Compiled by the Department of International Development and the World Bank, the analysis suggests at least an extra £1bn needs to be invested in irrigation, roads, alternative crops and rural development to attract farmers away from the lucrative and growing opium industry.

Its conclusions came as the UN produced fresh figures on the opium trade. The UN's Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) believes this year's crop will be similar to, or slightly lower than, last year's record harvest.

In 2007 Afghanistan had more land growing drugs than Colombia, Bolivia and Peru combined.

"While it is encouraging that the dramatic increases of the past few years seem to be levelling off, the total amount of opium being harvested remains shockingly high," said UNODC chief, Antonio Maria Costa, in a statement.

"Europe and other major heroin markets should brace themselves for the health and security consequences," he said.

"Much is already happening and very large investments are being made," the report says.

"But these have been fragmented and not within a programatic approach and not with a counter narcotic lens. To achieve results will require consistent approaches, considerable time, persistence in the face of short term setbacks and massive co-ordinated sustained investment, as well as political vision and stamina."

Highlighting the lack of coordination in the current aid effort, the report warns: "The result of weak Afghan leadership and poor donor adherence ... will be some very messy and ill co-ordinated development activities.

"In rural livelihood programmes for example some donors have agreed to consultations, but nevertheless finance programmes outside the budget with scant reference either to the government or agencies."

It says less than a quarter of the total aid to Afghanistan currently goes through the Afghan national budget, and also criticises the military forces in Afghanistan for not sourcing goods and products from within Afghanistan.

"The economic growth needed to displace the opium economy and the development of the necessary infrastructure and governance to support it will take at least one or two decades".

Providing security is an essential component of the counter narcotics effort, but the study says the provincial reconstruction teams set up by Nato forces "by and large have not been successful in ensuring a safer environment for development programmes".

The teams should provide a credible bridge between security activities and their development agenda, and a conducive environment in which the latter can be pursued.

However, the study warns: "It is not clear the PRTs [provincial reconstruction teams] have been able to provide this safe environment for development programmes.

"Moreover foreign military personnel rotate fast which reduces the consistency of policies in PRTs and leads to a disconcerting tendency to 'always try something new'."

It adds that "once a vicious circle sets in development options greatly shrink. Security has deteriorated since 2005. This has two big effects. First donor contributions get eroded as more is spent on security and less on delivery, and second there is a slow down in project delivery."

It argues that in Helmand, the province in which British troops operate and the citadel of opium production, the Taliban insurgency severely limits people's movements making marketing of legal agricultural produce more difficult and dangerous.

In areas of insecurity "opium markets work well. Opium traders provide advances, travel to the farm gate to purchase the crop and cover the cost of transport and bribes to those manning the check posts. They also take the physical risk of travel in secure areas."

The report says: "This creates a near impossible policy challenge trying to establish governance and sustainable development in conditions where there is a fight against insurgents and a political necessity to 'do something' about poppy."

In Helmand once security increases, the report suggest the province could become the home of cotton production. Other new products are raisins, melons, cumin as well as livestock farming.

The report recommends investments of $550m (£275m) to boost rural enterprise development, and $400m for rural road planning, construction and maintenance.

Overall, Afghan farmers need start-up assistance, matching investment grants, cost sharing market development and a commitment to deliver through community development councils with the aid itself seen as coming from the Afghan government, and not the true donor.

The number of poppy-free provinces is expected to rise from 12 in 2007, to 14 or 15, mostly in the north and east, out of a total of 34 Afghan provinces, the UNODC said.

But opium production continues to grow "at an alarming rate" in the south and west, it said. All the poppy farmers surveyed in southern Afghanistan said they paid a tax of 10% of their opium income to the Taliban or corrupt government officials.

© Guardian News and Media Limited 2008

http://www.guardian.co.uk/afghanistan/story/0,,2253074,00.html

Europeans see what America cannot
by Eric Margolis via rialator 2008-02-09 21:23:55

At this week's NATO conference in Vilnius, Lithuania, an angry U.S. Secretary of Defence Robert Gates accused some Europeans of not being prepared to "fight and die" in Afghanistan in the battle against the Taliban.

The undiplomatic Gates is quite right. Most Europeans regard the Afghan conflict as a. wrong and immoral; b. America's war; c. all about oil; or d. probably lost.

To many Europeans, the NATO alliance was created to deter the real threat of Soviet aggression, not to supply foot soldiers for George Bush's wars in the Muslim world.

While Gates and the Harper government were pleading for more troops, the commander of the 40,000 NATO troops in Afghanistan, U.S. Gen. Dan McNeill, landed a bombshell. If proper U.S. military counter-insurgency doctrine were followed, McNeill admitted, the U.S. and NATO would need 400,000 troops to defeat Pashtun tribal resistance in Afghanistan.

When the Soviets occupied Afghanistan, they deployed 160,000 troops and about 200,000 Afghan Communist troops -- yet failed to crush the mostly Pashtun resistance. Now, the U.S. and NATO are trying the same mission with only 66,000 troops, backed by local mercenaries grandly styled the Afghan National Army.

Canada's calls for 1,000 more NATO troops, and the U.S. decision to send 3,200 marines, will not alter the course of this war, which is turning increasingly against the western occupiers. In fact, the war is spreading into neighbouring Pakistan, a nation of 165 million, stretching U.S. and NATO forces ever thinner.

A primary reason for Gates' recent call for U.S. troops to begin attacking pro-Taliban Pashtun tribesmen inside Pakistan is due to their growing attacks on allied supply lines to Afghanistan.

As this column has reported, over 70% of U.S./NATO supplies come in by truck through Pakistan's tribal belt known as FATA, including all of their oil and gas. Attacks by pro-Taliban tribesmen against these vulnerable supply lines are jeopardizing western military operations inside Afghanistan.

HUNTERS NOW HUNTED

The hunters are becoming the hunted. Cutting off invaders' supply lines is a time-honoured Pashtun military tactic. They used it against Alexander the Great, the British, and Soviets, and are at it again.

What angry Sec. Gates fails to see is that by pushing NATO into a distant Asian war without political purpose or seeming end, he is endangering the very alliance that is the bedrock of U.S. power in Europe.

Europeans increasingly ask why they need the U.S.-dominated military alliance, a Cold War relic, in which they continue to play foot soldiers to America's atomic knights, to paraphrase the late German statesman, Franz Josef Strauss.

Why does the rich, powerful European Union even need NATO any more? The Soviet threat is gone -- at least for now. Nuclear-armed France and Britain are quite capable of defending Europe against outside threats. Why can't the new European Defence Force take over NATO's role of defending Europe and protecting EU interests?

In short, most Europeans see no benefit in playing junior members in an alliance whose historic time has passed and that serves primarily as an instrument of U.S. power. Washington's sharpest geopolitical thinker, Zbigniew Brzezinski, calls NATO a "stepping stone" the U.S. uses to project power into Europe.

By pushing NATO towards a bridge too far, the Bush administration may end up fatally undermining the alliance and encouraging anti-American forces in Europe.

In fact, it's becoming evident that the cash-strapped U.S. needs the EU more than the EU needs the U.S.

CONSCRIPTION

Final point. If impassioned claims by U.S. and Canadian politicians that the little Afghanistan war must by won at all costs, then why don't they stop orating, impose conscription, and send 400,000 soldiers, including their own sons, to fight in Afghanistan?

Of course they won't. They prefer to waste their own soldiers, and grind up Afghanistan, rather than admit this war against 40 million Pashtun tribesmen was a terrible mistake that will only get worse.

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http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/12744