Karzai Will Need Harper's Support to Resist U.S. Spraying

Afghan President Hamid Karzai will need Canada's help if he hopes to resist American plans to begin spraying Afghanistan's poppy fields in the same way the U.S. is spraying herbicide on Colombia's coca crop, according to one of the few western non-governmental organizations that is on the ground in southern Afghanistan.

The Senlis Council appealed this week for the Harper government's support in keeping U.S. anti-drug crop defoliation out of the Afghan poppy equation.

"The situation is deteriorating and the Karzai government is weakening," said Senlis Council Executive Director Noreen MacDonald.

But Afghan Ambassador to Canada Omar Samad, who has said he has problems with Senlis's ideas for "the legitimization of opium," told Embassy that Prime Minster Stephen Harper and Mr. Karzai had a side meeting at the UN Monday where "they discussed the problem." He would not elaborate on the content of their discussion except to say that "poppies were on the agenda."

"At the end of the day, [to eradicate or not eradicate the poppy crop] is an Afghan decision," said Mr. Samad. "We are working with all of our friends, including the Americans, to move forward."

At the same time The Holland-based think tank Transnational Institute warned Canada, the U.S. and Afghanistan that stepping up anti-opium activities would be a dangerous, overreaction to the UN's recent report on increased opium production in Afghanistan. That puts both think tanks in line with NATO's Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer who is also against ISAF forces being used to help in the destruction of Afghan opium fields.

The issue of Afghan poppy eradication has been a contentious one in Holland, with the Dutch defence minister favouring wiping out the poppy crops and the development minister opposed to the practice.

In Ottawa, the Senlis Council made its case that the eradication policy and crop spraying in particular would not only undermine the interim Afghan government, but also it would deepen rural poverty and miss out on a real opportunity for Afghans to supply the world with a product it badly needs.

"Most of the world is not even familiar with the idea of painkillers," said Ms. Macdonald.

Her organization has collected data from all over the world about the availability of painkillers outside rich western countries. The results are dismal. Latin America, for example, which has increasing cancer and HIV/AIDS burdens, consumes less than one per cent of the global morphine production. The reason Latin American palliative care sufferers are denied the painkillers, according to the Senlis Study, Afghan Village-based Poppy for Medicine Projects, is due to the high cost of morphine combined with overly restrictive laws and under-prescription by medical staff who lack training in poppy-based medicine.

But this summer, the U.S. State Department presented its updated counter-narcotics strategy for Afghanistan. The strategy still depends on poppy eradication efforts–a process carried out by the same U.S. mercenary contractor, DynCorp, which sprays coca in Colombia–in conjunction with the Afghan army. The updated U.S. strategy contained strong hints that the American administration is now considering aerial chemical spraying in opposition to the wishes of the Karzai government.

Chemical spraying and even continuance of the present policy of poppy eradication is playing right in the hands of the Taliban and driving a wedge between NATO allies in Afghanistan, say Peter Bergen, the author of Holy War, Inc.: Inside the Secret World of Osama bin Laden and a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, and Sameer Lalwani who is a policy analyst there.

Writing for The Los Angeles Times, both experts worry that the eradication strategy is not only wasting money but is "doing harm" to Afghan farmers instead of investing in growing the rural Afghan economy. They recommend setting up an agency "modeled on the Canadian Wheat Board, which would purchase crops from farmers at consistent prices, and market and distribute them internationally."

They also endorse the Senlis council's plan to harness poppy cultivation for the production of legal medicinal opiates.

The council has also become–because of what it has seen on the ground in Afghanistan–a critic of the Canadian International Development Agency's work in Kandahar. But even the recent Senlis report on CIDA's failings comes back to the need for dealing with the social economic and political structures that create and maintain poverty in Afghanistan.

"Opium licensing should be viewed and endorsed as a measure that is able to achieve a much faster response to the current crisis, since it seeks to utilize existing agrarian skills and expertise," concludes the report.

EMBASSY