The war on terror is being detangled from the war on drugs in Afghanistan:
The 4,000 U.S. Marines now pushing deep into Taliban-controlled tracts as part of an expanded war in southern Afghanistan are setting up fire bases amid some of the most productive poppy fields in the world’s opium-producing capital.
It’s not harvest time in Helmand province, the center of Afghanistan’s thriving opium poppy industry. But even if the flowers were blooming, it’s doubtful the Marines would do much about it.
Convinced that razing the cash crop grown by dirt-poor Afghan farmers is costing badly needed friends along the front lines of the fight against Taliban-led insurgents, U.S. authorities say they are all but abandoning the Bush-era policy of destroying drug crops.
This decision is long overdue. An aggressive fight against poppies might have made sense when it appeared that Afghanistan was largely pacified, but it’s been inexcusable for some time now. It’s been suggested that the alienation caused by our policy on poppies was largely responsible for the resurgence of the Taliban.
Bush administration officials cited the success of anti-drug efforts in Colombia in defense of anti-drug efforts in Afghanistan. There are two problems with that argument; Afghanistan is not Colombia, and Karzai is not Uribe. Colombia is of strategic importance largely because of the drug trade, and we have a strong, reliable ally there in President Uribe. Neither is true for Afghanistan. Out strategic interest in Afghanistan is fighting terror, not drugs, and President Karzai is neither strong nor reliable. Damaging the war on terror in service of an (unnecessary) war on drugs was sheer folly.
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