In my public presentations about Seeds of Terror, I’m frequently asked for my opinion on proposals to bulk purchase or simply legalize Afghanistan’s poppy crop, either for use in pharmaceuticals or as a bio-fuel.
The questions usually go: “Wouldn’t it be easier if we just bought all the poppy?” Or: “Shouldn’t we just take all that opium and put it into legal drugs?”
And there’s something to that. I think it’s entirely possible that opium poppy grown legally and hygienically in Afghanistan could one day help supply what the International Council on Security and Development calls a critical shortage of pain killer in the developing world.
I am also intrigued by recent proposals that include ideas to distribute genetically modified poppy seeds, that would not produce narcotic opium, as part of a broad effort to develop alternative livelihoods. In that case the crop could be harvested and processed to make diesel bio-fuel and animal feed. One of the study’s authors tells me Afghan farmers stand to earn almost as much as they currently do selling opium poppy on the black market and it would not have a negative impact on food production.
These are good proposals but they will work only after Afghanistan has been stabilized, and rule of law is established.
However if Afghanistan’s poppy crop were legalized tomorrow, there would neither be the infrastructure nor the resources in place to regulate the world’s largest opium crop.
Who will make sure it gets sold to pharmaceutical companies and not to drug traffickers? I bet it won’t be Afghanistan’s notoriously corrupt police, many of whom also profit off the drug trade.
And who will ensure it gets harvested hygienically? Afghanistan’s Food and Drug Administration? Oh wait, there isn’t one.
Is there a bio-fuel firm that’s ready and eager to build a processing plant in lawless southern Afghanistan? Are there volunteers willing to risk their lives in the war-torn poppy belt to train locals to run it?
Those are only the basic obstacles. The real issue is much larger – and not ours alone to assess: It’s easy for us to sit here in the United States and talk about legalizing Afghanistan’s poppy crop, since almost none of the opiates produced there end up on US streets (and in fact, heroin use in this country is declining, according to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health).
Folks have a different perspective on legalization proposals in places like Pakistan, Iran, Central Asia and Russia, where heroin addiction rates are skyrocketing. Russia, which has the world’s largest number of heroin addicts, has called on the United Nations to mandate that international troops in Afghanistan launch an aggressive poppy eradication campaign.
It isn’t possible to talk about Afghanistan in terms of “wouldn’t it be easier if…” or “shouldn’t we just…”
There will be nothing easy about stabilizing Afghanistan. And there is no silver bullet strategy to magically transform it into a “Central Asian Valhalla.”
There is just one exit strategy for Afghanistan. Nation building – from the bottom up. Afghans need roads, schools, security and a strong, clean and stable government. Putting all that in place can’t be done piecemeal. It will take money, time, coordination and patience.
I’m not suggesting that it will be easy. But the cost of not doing it could be unthinkable.