Losing Two Wars at Once (and Neither is in Iraq)

TIME Magazine writes about the story of Haji Bashar Noorzai, an Afghan warlord currently under arrest in the United States after he was placed on a list of drug kingpins. Noorzai came to New York voluntarily, believing that he could be helpful to the U.S. in their efforts to rebuild his country. From the article:

As he got up to leave, ready to be escorted to the airport to catch a flight back to Pakistan, one of the agents in the room told him he wasn't going anywhere. That agent, who worked for the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), told him that a grand jury had issued a sealed indictment against Noorzai 3 1/2 months earlier and that he was now under arrest for conspiring to smuggle narcotics into the U.S. from Afghanistan. An awkward silence ensued as the words were translated into his native Pashtu. "I did not believe it," Noorzai later told TIME from his prison cell. "I thought they were joking." The previous August, an American agent he had met with said the trip to the U.S. would be "like a vacation."

That was April of 2005. Noorzai is still in Manhattan awaiting trial as record amounts of opium continue to be grown and exported from his home in southern Afghanistan. The DEA, of course, think they've accomplished something:

It is in this context that U.S. officials argue over who's a friend, who's an enemy and how you can tell them apart. Drug enforcement officials claim Noorzai's capture as a major prize. Afghanistan is the world's largest source of heroin, and his arrest, says DEA administrator Karen Tandy, "sent shock waves through other Taliban-connected traffickers." But Noorzai was also a powerful leader of a million-member tribe who had offered to help bring stability to a region that is spinning out of control.

Exactly, the message sent to Afghan warlords here is not to stop exporting opium, it's to stop working with the Americans.

The article brings up some good points on how we're running into problems dealing with both the war on drugs and the war on terror as we enter our 6th year trying to rebuild that country. Unfortunately, it doesn't mention anything about the work of the Senlis Council or other alternatives to eradication. Also, I don't think this is a very accurate depiction of what drives the opium farming:

In Afghanistan, a weak government has produced a security vacuum that in turn inhibits economic development and diversification, forcing impoverished farmers to grow lucrative crops like the opium poppy for cash.

The security vacuum is not what drives the desire to grow opium. The high profits available to warlords who join the drug trade is what drives it. Those warlords demand that the farmers in their region grow opium. As a result, the warlords then pay the Taliban fighters for protection from any coalition forces tasked with eradicating the fields. The security vacuum is a result of the attempts to eliminate opium farming; it's not the original impetus for the farming. This paragraph explains why that's so important.

Now, in the Taliban's traditional stronghold in the south--where Noorzai's tribe lives--the radical Islamic group is actively encouraging poppy cultivation on a grand scale, a dramatic shift from its days in power when its puritanical tenets forbade drugs and drug trafficking. Why the change? As a Western diplomat in Kabul puts it, "It takes money to fund an insurgency." Of the $3 billion earned last year by Afghan narcotraffickers, roughly $800 million trickles down to the Afghan farmers who grow the crop. According to a senior Western official in Kabul, a small portion of that sum is "more than enough to finance" the insurgency--and the Taliban gets more than a small portion. "The more money the traffickers make, the more they can give to the Taliban, the more weapons the insurgents can buy and the more dangerous the insurgency becomes," says Kamal Sadaat, head of Afghanistan's antinarcotics police force.

But warlords making money from opium don't just "give" money to the Taliban. The only reason they do so is to buy protection from the coalition forces. If you want to undermine the Taliban's ability to finance their insurgency, you have to stop being a threat to the drug traffickers. Arresting people like Noorzai only raises the stakes and convinces other warlords that they need protection as well.

The trial can be seen as a test case for the costs and benefits of arresting and prosecuting a man like Noorzai. Does the potential cost to the battle against terrorism in Afghanistan outweigh the benefit to the war on drugs? These are the kind of wrenching questions that the U.S. must weigh in its new twilight struggle for stability both at home and abroad.

This is the conundrum we're dealing with there and it's a major reason why waging the war on drugs can be highly counterproductive when trying to stop terrorism as well. Especially when there are intelligent alternatives.

(thanks to KEN for the tip)