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PRESS RELEASE - 8th September, 2007
 Edition
41.
Cannabis News Items From Around the World
from Drug War Chronicle, Issue #500, 7/9/07
Czech deputies responsible for writing an amendment to the penal
code are proposing much lesser sentences for pot smokers, mushroom
eaters, and possibly, marijuana growers, the Czech daily Pravo reported
August 27. There is a possibility the amendment will include no
penalty for growing small amounts of marijuana for personal use,
the paper said.
Current Czech drug laws make no distinction between marijuana
and so-called hard drugs. Under that law, anyone producing illicit
drugs is subject to five years in prison. But while the law makes
no distinction, judicial practice does. In most cases, the possession
of "quantities lesser than great" (in the case of marijuana,
up to 20 cigarettes) is handled as an administrative offense,
not a criminal one.
The proposed amendment would completely
remove the possibility of a five-year sentence for simple marijuana
possession, making the maximum sentence one year. The maximum
sentence for small-time growing would most probably be six months.
from Drug War Chronicle, Issue #500, 7/9/07
The Denver city council agreed August 27 to put an initiative
to make adult marijuana possession offenses the lowest law enforcement
priority on this fall's municipal ballot. It's not that the council
likes the idea; in Denver, the council must either send initiatives
that have gathered the required number of voter signatures to
the voters or approve them and put them into law immediately.
Unlike a number of other cities across
the country that have lowest law enforcement priority marijuana
ordinances, marijuana is actually legal under Denver's municipal
code. Voters there voted to legalize it in 2005, but local law
enforcement and political officials have refused to implement
the will of the voters, instead arresting marijuana offenders
under Colorado state law. Despite the clear signal from the voters,
marijuana arrests actually increased last year.
Although the council unanimously approved
putting the initiative before the voters, various members lambasted
it as mainly symbolic and its supporters for making "a joke"
out of elections.
"You're trying to make a joke out of the electoral process
in Denver," said Councilwoman Carol Boigan. "I think
this is aimed at street theater and capturing media attention."
Even members who support drug policy reform, like Councilman Chris
Nevitt, who supported the 2005 legalization initiative and the
failed 2006 state legalization initiative, said the lowest priority
initiative was the wrong way to go.
"The war on drugs is as misguided as the war on Iraq,"
said Nevitt, who compared the country's drug laws to the failure
of Prohibition. "This issue needs to be taken to the state
and federal level. Denver voters have already spoken."
The initiative is the brainchild of
Citizens for a Safer Denver,
the latest incarnation of executive director Mason Tvert's SAFER (Safer Alternatives
for Enjoyable Recreation), which started off winning campus votes
to equalize penalties for marijuana and alcohol, then moved on
to the stunning legalization victory in Denver two years ago.
SAFER's primary point, which it hammers at continuously, is that
marijuana is safer than alcohol.
Tvert and his fellow activists have specialized in tormenting
the Denver political establishment for its stand on marijuana,
particularly targeting Mayor John Hickenlooper, who owns the Wynkoop
microbrewery and who opposed the legalization initiative, the
failed statewide legalization initiative (which won majority support
in Denver), and the pending initiative. They once followed Hickenlooper
around with a man wearing a chicken suit named "Chickenlooper"
when he refused to debate them.
SAFER and its latest municipal incarnation have also specialized
in innovative tactics designed to incite media attention to advance
their cause. And they've been at it again in recent weeks. In
an August 23 press release the group offered to withdraw its initiative
if the city council and mayor would agree to enact a moratorium
on marijuana arrests during next summer's Democratic national
convention, agree to formally recognize that adult marijuana use
is less harmful than alcohol use, and agree to explore marijuana
policies that reflect the understanding that marijuana is less
harmful than alcohol.
"In order to demonstrate their commitment to a more rational
approach to the use of marijuana and alcohol -- and to set an
example for the rest of the nation -- our campaign respectfully
requests city officials enact a moratorium on citations for adult
marijuana use during the 2008 Democratic National Convention,"
said Tvert in the press release. "Tens of thousands of people
will be flooding Denver for this tumultuous event, and visitors
and city residents should not face the threat of arrest for simply
making the rational, safer choice to use marijuana instead of
alcohol, if that is what they prefer. After all, this is the first
city in the United States that has voted to remove all penalties
for private adult marijuana use," he noted.
"We understand the Denver City Council and Mayor Hickenlooper
are extremely concerned about maintaining order during the convention.
By allowing adults to consume marijuana instead of alcohol during
this hectic time, they could potentially prevent the disorder
that all too often accompanies the use and abuse of alcohol."
"The council was looking for ways to keep our initiative
off the ballot, so we decided to help them out," Tvert told
the Chronicle this week. "We also wanted to generate some
attention as the spotlight is put on Denver for the Democratic
national convention."
The council and mayor unsurprisingly didn't bite, but the offer
received saturation press in Denver and Colorado, and even managed
to earn a story in the Washington Times, "Pot Touted to Calm Denver Rallies."
"The council basically pulled a 180 trying to fight to keep
it on the ballot in the face of our offer," Tvert said. "We
weren't allowed to withdraw the initiative, but this just shows
they're trying to void this any way possible."
Tvert also had some less than kind words
for the mayor and the council. "The council has signaled
they will oppose the initiative," he said. "There are
three who say they are with us in spirit but against this particular
law. Our city council has every right to tell the police to stop
arresting adults for marijuana possession, but these people are
acting like cowardly sell-outs," he said, singling out council
members Chris Nevitt and Doug Linkhart, both of whom support marijuana
legalization.
Neither Nevitt nor the mayor's office returned Chronicle calls
seeking comment, but Linkhart did.
"I would like to see marijuana legalized in Colorado,"
said Linkhart. "Voters here in Denver have twice voted for
that, and I supported those efforts. But I don't support this
initiative. The police are sworn to enforce the law, and you either
have the law or you don't," he said.
Linkhart also attacked Tvert over his tactics. "His stunts
make some elected people angry, and that may hurt his cause,"
he said. "He is good at getting a lot of attention and getting
the media involved, but I'm not sure that really helps his cause."
"They say this measure is only symbolic, but it will create
a law that they will have to break if they want to continue doing
business as usual," Tvert said. "We're forcing their
hand on this."
Tvert and Citizens for a Safer Denver also managed to generate
a story in the Denver Daily News
the day of the council vote that outed at least four council members
and the mayor as having smoked marijuana. Titled "Hypocrisy
on Pot?," the piece could not have been more timely.
"We knew the mayor had partaken," said Tvert. "He
says he had admitted it, but it was news to most people. This
just shows how full of crap they are. We had a couple of council
members saying marijuana is a gateway drug, but those council
members who smoked, as well as the mayor, all seem to be functioning
well," he snorted.
And while the fall vote is still weeks away, Tvert and the crew
are keeping up the pressure on the mayor and the council. Their
latest move is to demand a public hearing on a measure that would
renew the city's partnership with the Coors Brewing Company, based
in suburban Golden. The deal would allow Coors to sponsor events
at the Colorado Convention Center, among other venues. The deal
"sends the wrong message to children," said Tvert.
"Once and for all, the Council needs to explain why it is
necessary to punish adults for using marijuana in order to send
the right message to children, yet somehow it's no problem to
have our city officially partner with an alcohol company to promote
alcohol use to all who attend these events, including children,"
he said, adding that he is concerned that Coors could be sponsoring
a circus next month where many children will be in attendance.
Maybe the Denver political establishment
would be better off getting on board with its citizens' views
on what the marijuana laws should be. At least then, it wouldn't
have Tvert to hound it.
from Drug War Chronicle Issue #500, 9/7/07A Santa Cruz medical marijuana cooperative
that was raided by the DEA in 2002 was dealt a setback August
28 when a federal judge granted a US Justice Department motion
to stop them from suing it. The lawsuit, filed on behalf of the Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana(WAMM) and the city and county of Santa Cruz sought to sue US
Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez to prevent his office from continuing
raids on medical marijuana providers in California.
2005 WAMM march, downtown Santa Cruz (courtesy santacruz.indymedia.org)
The lawsuit cited California's Compassionate
Use Act, approved by voters in 1996, which makes the medical use
of marijuana legal in the state. But the Justice Department successfully
argued that marijuana remains illegal under the federal Controlled
Substances Act, and US District Court Judge Jeremy Fogel agreed,
granting its motion to block the lawsuit.
"Naturally, we're disappointed.
I had hoped for something better," said Mike Corral, who,
along with his wife Valerie, were cofounders of WAMM.
WAMM and Santa Cruz may be down, but
they're not out just yet. Judge Fogel left two of the county's
claims intact: a 10th Amendment argument that the states -- not
the federal government -- have say over marijuana, and an argument
that medical necessity trumps federal drug laws. The county's
legal team says it will continue to argue those claims while trying
to build a stronger case that the federal government is improperly
intervening in areas that should be the purview of the states.
http://blog.writch.com/?postid=813
Boy, if you ever wanted to know anything about the history of cannabis
as medicine, this should be your first stop:
http://antiquecannabisbook.com/
The museum they reference (w/o links) is:
http://www.reefermadnessmuseum.org/
W. B. O'Shaughnessy, M.D.
http://blog.writch.com/?postid=812
I came across a reference today in the most sideways manner,
but found it so curious that I had to point it out. W. B. O'Shaughnessy,
M.D. is the man who discovered that people didn't have to die
from cholera if you gave them intravenous electrolytes.
He is also the doctor who brought medical marijuana to the west
(from India).
In looking over his seminal work, ON THE PREPARATIONS OF THE
INDIAN HEMP, OR GUNJAH, I found that he would purchase a seer
weight of gunjah for between twelve annas and a rupee, while bhang
went for a pice.
A rupee was what is now about $4 in silver. There are a sixty-four
pice in a rupee, and four pice in an anna.
A seer is a measure of weight just shy of a kilo.
Gunjah is dried flowers. Bhang is trimmings (for making bhang,
the drink, and things).
by Sydney Blumenthal
On Sept. 18, 2002, CIA director George Tenet briefed President
Bush in the Oval Office on top-secret intelligence that Saddam
Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction, according to
two former senior CIA officers. Bush dismissed as worthless this
information from the Iraqi foreign minister, a member of Saddam's
inner circle, although it turned out to be accurate in every detail.
Tenet never brought it up again.
Nor was the intelligence included in the National Intelligence
Estimate of October 2002, which stated categorically that Iraq
possessed WMD. No one in Congress was aware of the secret intelligence
that Saddam had no WMD as the House of Representatives and the
Senate voted, a week after the submission of the NIE, on the Authorization
for Use of Military Force in Iraq. The information, moreover,
was not circulated within the CIA among those agents involved
in operations to prove whether Saddam had WMD.
On April 23, 2006, CBS's "60 Minutes" interviewed Tyler
Drumheller, the former CIA chief of clandestine operations for
Europe, who disclosed that the agency had received documentary
intelligence from Naji Sabri, Saddam's foreign minister, that
Saddam did not have WMD. "We continued to validate him the
whole way through," said Drumheller. "The policy was
set. The war in Iraq was coming, and they were looking for intelligence
to fit into the policy, to justify the policy."
Now two former senior CIA officers have confirmed Drumheller's
account to me and provided the background to the story of how
the information that might have stopped the invasion of Iraq was
twisted in order to justify it. They described what Tenet said
to Bush about the lack of WMD, and how Bush responded, and noted
that Tenet never shared Sabri's intelligence with then Secretary
of State Colin Powell. According to the former officers, the intelligence
was also never shared with the senior military planning the invasion,
which required U.S. soldiers to receive medical shots against
the ill effects of WMD and to wear protective uniforms in the
desert.
Instead, said the former officials, the information was distorted
in a report written to fit the preconception that Saddam did have
WMD programs. That false and restructured report was passed to
Richard Dearlove, chief of the British Secret Intelligence Service
(MI6), who briefed Prime Minister Tony Blair on it as validation
of the cause for war.
Secretary of State Powell, in preparation for his presentation
of evidence of Saddam's WMD to the United Nations Security Council
on Feb. 5, 2003, spent days at CIA headquarters in Langley, Va.,
and had Tenet sit directly behind him as a sign of credibility.
But Tenet, according to the sources, never told Powell about existing
intelligence that there were no WMD, and Powell's speech was later
revealed to be a series of falsehoods.
Both the French intelligence service and the CIA paid Sabri hundreds
of thousands of dollars (at least $200,000 in the case of the
CIA) to give them documents on Saddam's WMD programs. "The
information detailed that Saddam may have wished to have a program,
that his engineers had told him they could build a nuclear weapon
within two years if they had fissible material, which they didn't,
and that they had no chemical or biological weapons," one
of the former CIA officers told me.
On the eve of Sabri's appearance at the United Nations in September
2002 to present Saddam's case, the officer in charge of this operation
met in New York with a "cutout" who had debriefed Sabri
for the CIA. Then the officer flew to Washington, where he met
with CIA deputy director John McLaughlin, who was "excited"
about the report. Nonetheless, McLaughlin expressed his reservations.
He said that Sabri's information was at odds with "our best
source." That source was code-named "Curveball,"
later exposed as a fabricator, con man and former Iraqi taxi driver
posing as a chemical engineer.
The next day, Sept. 18, Tenet briefed Bush on Sabri. "Tenet
told me he briefed the president personally," said one of
the former CIA officers. According to Tenet, Bush's response was
to call the information "the same old thing." Bush insisted
it was simply what Saddam wanted him to think. "The president
had no interest in the intelligence," said the CIA officer.
The other officer said, "Bush didn't give a fuck about the
intelligence. He had his mind made up."
But the CIA officers working on the Sabri case kept collecting
information. "We checked on everything he told us."
French intelligence eavesdropped on his telephone conversations
and shared them with the CIA. These taps "validated"
Sabri's claims, according to one of the CIA officers. The officers
brought this material to the attention of the newly formed Iraqi
Operations Group within the CIA. But those in charge of the IOG
were on a mission to prove that Saddam did have WMD and would
not give credit to anything that came from the French. "They
kept saying the French were trying to undermine the war,"
said one of the CIA officers.
The officers continued to insist on the significance of Sabri's
information, but one of Tenet's deputies told them, "You
haven't figured this out yet. This isn't about intelligence. It's
about regime change."
The CIA officers on the case awaited the report they had submitted
on Sabri to be circulated back to them, but they never received
it. They learned later that a new report had been written. "It
was written by someone in the agency, but unclear who or where,
it was so tightly controlled. They knew what would please the
White House. They knew what the king wanted," one of the
officers told me.
That report contained a false preamble stating that Saddam was
"aggressively and covertly developing" nuclear weapons
and that he already possessed chemical and biological weapons.
"Totally out of whack," said one of the CIA officers.
"The first [para]graph of an intelligence report is the most
important and most read and colors the rest of the report."
He pointed out that the case officer who wrote the initial report
had not written the preamble and the new memo. "That's not
what the original memo said."
The report with the misleading introduction was given to Dearlove
of MI6, who briefed the prime minister. "They were given
a scaled-down version of the report," said one of the CIA
officers. "It was a summary given for liaison, with the sourcing
taken out. They showed the British the statement Saddam was pursuing
an aggressive program, and rewrote the report to attempt to support
that statement. It was insidious. Blair bought it." "Blair
was duped," said the other CIA officer. "He was shown
the altered report."
The information provided by Sabri was considered so sensitive
that it was never shown to those who assembled the NIE on Iraqi
WMD. Later revealed to be utterly wrong, the NIE read: "We
judge that Iraq has continued its weapons of mass destruction
(WMD) programs in defiance of UN resolutions and restrictions.
Baghdad has chemical and biological weapons as well as missiles
with ranges in excess of UN restrictions; if left unchecked, it
probably will have a nuclear weapon during this decade."
In the congressional debate over the Authorization for the Use
of Military Force, even those voting against it gave credence
to the notion that Saddam possessed WMD. Even a leading opponent
such as Sen. Bob Graham, then the Democratic chairman of the Senate
Intelligence Committee, who had instigated the production of the
NIE, declared in his floor speech on Oct. 12, 2002, "Saddam
Hussein's regime has chemical and biological weapons and is trying
to get nuclear capacity." Not a single senator contested
otherwise. None of them had an inkling of the Sabri intelligence.
The CIA officers assigned to Sabri still argued within the agency
that his information must be taken seriously, but instead the
administration preferred to rely on Curveball. Drumheller learned
from the German intelligence service that held Curveball that
it considered him and his claims about WMD to be highly unreliable.
But the CIA's Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation, and Arms
Control Center (WINPAC) insisted that Curveball was credible because
what he said was supposedly congruent with available public information.
For two months, Drumheller fought against the use of Curveball,
raising the red flag that he was likely a fraud, as he turned
out to be. "Oh, my! I hope that's not true," said Deputy
Director McLaughlin, according to Drumheller's book "On the
Brink," published in 2006. When Curveball's information was
put into Bush's Jan. 28, 2003, State of the Union address, McLaughlin
and Tenet allowed it to pass into the speech. "From three
Iraqi defectors," Bush declared, "we know that Iraq,
in the late 1990s, had several mobile biological weapons labs
Š Saddam Hussein has not disclosed these facilities. He's given
no evidence that he has destroyed them." In fact, there was
only one Iraqi source - Curveball - and there were no labs.
When the mobile weapons labs were inserted into the draft of Powell's
United Nations speech, Drumheller strongly objected again and
believed that the error had been removed. He was shocked watching
Powell's speech. "We have firsthand descriptions of biological
weapons factories on wheels and on rails," Powell announced.
Without the reference to the mobile weapons labs, there was no
image of a threat.
Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, Powell's chief of staff, and Powell himself
later lamented that they had not been warned about Curveball.
And McLaughlin told the Washington Post in 2006, "If someone
had made these doubts clear to me, I would not have permitted
the reporting to be used in Secretary Powell's speech." But,
in fact, Drumheller's caution was ignored.
As war appeared imminent, the CIA officers on the Sabri case tried
to arrange his defection in order to demonstrate that he stood
by his information. But he would not leave without bringing out
his entire family. "He dithered," said one former CIA
officer. And the war came before his escape could be handled.
Tellingly, Sabri's picture was never put on the deck of playing
cards of former Saddam officials to be hunted down, a tacit acknowledgment
of his covert relationship with the CIA. Today, Sabri lives in
Qatar.
In 2005, the Silberman-Robb commission investigating intelligence
in the Iraq war failed to interview the case officer directly
involved with Sabri; instead its report blamed the entire WMD
fiasco on "groupthink" at the CIA. "They didn't
want to trace this back to the White House," said the officer.
On Feb. 5, 2004, Tenet delivered a speech at Georgetown University
that alluded to Sabri and defended his position on the existence
of WMD, which, even then, he contended would still be found. "Several
sensitive reports crossed my desk from two sources characterized
by our foreign partners as established and reliable," he
said. "The first from a source who had direct access to Saddam
and his inner circle" - Naji Sabri - "said Iraq was
not in the possession of a nuclear weapon. However, Iraq was aggressively
and covertly developing such a weapon."
Then Tenet claimed with assurance, "The same source said
that Iraq was stockpiling chemical weapons." He explained
that this intelligence had been central to his belief in the reason
for war. "As this information and other sensitive information
came across my desk, it solidified and reinforced the judgments
that we had reached in my own view of the danger posed by Saddam
Hussein and I conveyed this view to our nation's leaders."
(Tenet doesn't mention Sabri in his recently published memoir,
"At the Center of the Storm.")
But where were the WMD? "Now, I'm sure you're all asking,
'Why haven't we found the weapons?' I've told you the search must
continue and it will be difficult."
On Sept. 8, 2006, three Republican senators on the Senate Select
Committee on Intelligence - Orrin Hatch, Saxby Chambliss and Pat
Roberts - signed a letter attempting to counter Drumheller's revelation
about Sabri on "60 Minutes": "All of the information
about this case so far indicates that the information from this
source was that Iraq did have WMD programs." The Republicans
also quoted Tenet, who had testified before the committee in July
2006 that Drumheller had "mischaracterized" the intelligence.
Still, Drumheller stuck to his guns, telling Reuters, "We
have differing interpretations, and I think mine's right."
One of the former senior CIA officers told me that despite the
certitude of the three Republican senators, the Senate committee
never had the original memo on Sabri. "The committee never
got that report," he said. "The material was hidden
or lost, and because it was a restricted case, a lot of it was
done in hard copy. The whole thing was fogged up, like Curveball."
While one Iraqi source told the CIA that there were no WMD, information
that was true but distorted to prove the opposite, another Iraqi
source was a fabricator whose lies were eagerly embraced. "The
real tragedy is that they had a good source that they misused,"
said one of the former CIA officers. "The fact is there was
nothing there, no threat. But Bush wanted to hear what he wanted
to hear."
-Sidney Blumenthal
from Drug War Chronicle, Issue #500, 9/7/07
To no one's surprise, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime
(UNODC) announced last week that Afghan opium production had reached
another record high. The announcement comes against a background
of continued high levels of violence between Taliban insurgents
reinvigorated in part by the infusion of drug trade money and
combined US/NATO/Afghan forces as the insurgency continues to
regenerate itself.
The increase in poppy production is lending
heft to increasingly shrill calls by the Americans to respond
with a massive -- preferably aerial -- poppy eradication campaign.
Now, there are signs the Karzai government's firm opposition to
aerial spraying is weakening. But US foreign policy, Afghanistan,
and drugs and conflict experts contacted by Drug War Chronicle
all said such a campaign would be counterproductive -- at best.
According to UNODC'sAfghanistan Opium Survey 2007, the extent of the poppy crop increased 17% this year over 2006,
with nearly 450,000 acres under cultivation. But opium production
was up 34% over last year's 6,100 tons, a figure UNODC attributed
to better weather conditions, with total opium production this
year estimated at what the UNODC called "an extraordinary"
8,200 tons of opium.
Afghanistan now supplies around 93% of the world's opium, up just
a bit from last year's estimated 92%.
The UNODC reported that the number of opium-free provinces had
increased from six last year to 13 this year. It noted that production
had diminished in center-north Afghanistan, where Northern Alliance
warlords reign supreme, but had exploded in the east and southeast
-- precisely those areas where the Taliban presence is strongest.
Half of the world supply comes from a single Afghan province,
Helmand in the southeast, where, not coincidentally, the Taliban
has managed to "control vast swathes of territory" despite
the efforts of NATO and Afghan troops to dislodge it.
"Opium cultivation is inversely related to the degree of
government control," said UNODC head Antonio Maria Costa
in a statement accompanying the report's release. "Where anti-government
forces reign, poppies flourish. The Afghan opium situation looks
grim, but it is not yet hopeless," he added.
Costa called on the Afghan government and the international community
to make a more determined effort to fight the "twin threats"
of opium and insurgency, including more rewards for farmers or
communities that abandon the poppy and more sanctions on those
who don't, as well as attacking the prohibition-related corruption
that makes the Karzai government as complicit in the opium trade
as any other actor. [Ed: Costa of course didn't use the word prohibition
-- but he should have.]
He also called for NATO to get more involved in counter-narcotics
operations, something it has been loathe to do. "Since drugs
are funding insurgency, Afghanistan's military and its allies
have a vested interest in destroying heroin labs, closing opium
markets and bringing traffickers to justice. Tacit acceptance
of opium trafficking is undermining stabilization efforts,"
he said.
But this week, NATO appeared unmoved. "We are doing the best
we can, we would ask others to do more," NATO Deputy Assistant
Secretary-General for Operations Jim Pardew told a Brussels news conference Wednesday. "The fight against narcotics is first and foremost
an Afghan responsibility but they need help."
NATO spokesman James Appathurai added
that: "NATO is not mandated to be an eradication force, nor
is it proposed. Eradication is one part of a complex strategy."
NATO's reticence is in part due to rising casualties. So far this
year, 82 NATO soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan, according
to the I-Casualties web site, which tracks US and allied forces killed and wounded
in both Iraq and Afghanistan. That's along with 82 US soldiers,
at least 500 Afghan National Police, numerous Afghan Army soldiers,
hundreds -- if not thousands -- of insurgents, and hundreds of
civilians.
In all of last year, 98 US and 93 NATO troops were killed; in
2005, 99 US and 31 NATO troops were killed; and in 2004, only
52 US and six NATO soldiers died. The trend line is ominous, and
with public support for intervening in the opium war weak in Europe
and Canada, NATO reluctance to get more deeply involved reflects
political reality at home.
It's not the same with the US government. Less than a month ago,
and anticipating a record crop this year, the government released
its US Counternarcotics Strategy
for Afghanistan<. The strategy
called for integrating counterinsurgency and counternarcotics,
a resort to mass eradication, and the increased use of the US
military in the battle against the poppy.
"There is a clear and direct link between the illicit opium
trade and insurgent groups in Afghanistan," the State Department
report said. The Pentagon "will work with DEA" and other
agencies "to develop options for a coordinated strategy that
integrates and synchronizes counternarcotics operations, particularly
interdiction, into the comprehensive security strategy."
Bush administration officials have long pushed for aerial eradication,
and the UNODC report has added fuel to the flames. On Sunday,
Afghan first vice-president Ahmed Zia Massoud broke with President
Karzai to call for a more "forceful approach" to tackle
the poppies "that have spread like cancer," as he and
Karzai both have put it. "We must switch from ground based
eradication to aerial spraying," he wrote in the
London Sunday Telegraph.
But the British government begs to differ. Senior Foreign Office
officials dismissed such calls, saying "it is difficult to
envisage circumstances where the benefits of aerial eradication
outweigh the disadvantages."
The Karzai government, while apparently now split on whether to
okay aerial spraying, is turning up the pressure on the West to
do more. On Monday, the Afghan government announced it had formally
asked NATO and US forces to clear Taliban fighters from opium-growing
areas before Afghan troops move in to eradicate.
"For a new plan for this year, we've requested that the foreign
military forces go and conduct military operations to enable us
to eradicate poppy crops," Interior Ministry spokesman Zemarai
Bashary said at a Monday press
conference. "In areas where
there's insecurity, we need strong military support to be able
to eradicate poppy fields. Police can't eradicate poppies and
fight insurgents at the same time," he said.
That request came on the heels of criticism of the West last week
from President Karzai himself. He accused the international community
of dropping the ball when it came to counter-narcotics in Afghanistan,
noting pointedly that where his government had control, poppy
production had dropped.
UNODC head Costa Wednesday kept up the pressure, telling that
Brussels news conference: "There is very strong pressure
building up in favor of aerial eradication in that part of Afghanistan.
The government has not decided yet and we will support the government
in whatever it decides to do," he said.
But while aerial spraying and increased US and NATO military involvement
in the anti-poppy campaign look increasingly probable, that route
is paved with obstacles, according to the experts consulted by
the Chronicle.
"The change in the Afghan position is a direct response to
the US upping the pressure on the Karzai government to adopt a
Colombian-style model of aerial eradication," said Ted Galen
Carpenter, vice president for defense and foreign policy studies
at the libertarian-leaning Cato
Institute. "Until very recently,
the Karzai government really resisted that because they understood
this will antagonize a good many Afghan farmers, but when you
are the client of a powerful patron, the pressure is difficult
to resist."
While massive eradication may indeed
have some impact on the opium trade, it will come at a "horrific
cost," said Carpenter. "That will drive farmers into
the hands of the Taliban and its Al Qaeda allies, which is absolutely
the last thing we need in pressing the war against Islamic terrorism,"
he said. "Afghanistan was hailed as a great success as recently
as two years ago, but now it's looking very dicey, the security
situation is deteriorating rapidly, and a massive eradication
campaign will only make it worse."
"Eradication was stronger this year than last, but it still
amounted to almost nothing," said Vanda Felbab-Brown, a nonresident
fellow at the Brookings Institution who specializes in drugs,
insurgencies, and counterinsurgencies. "So now, the pressure
for aerial eradication is almost at fever pitch. But there is
real debate about whether this would really achieve anything or
end up being counterproductive. I think it would be a disaster,"
she said, citing the now familiar reasons of humanitarian problems
and increasing support for the Taliban.
When asked to comment by the Chronicle, Barnett Rubin, Director
of Studies and Senior Fellow at New York University's Center on
International Cooperation, pointed to his blog posts at Informed Comment Global Affairs. Calling eradication "the most photogenic tool" in
counter-narcotics strategy, Rubin wrote that he was often forced
to point out that: "The international drug trade is not caused
by Afghan farmers."
The key problem is not drugs, Rubin argued, but drug money, which
finances the insurgency and corrupts government forces. Embarking
on a campaign of eradication does not effectively go after the
drug money, he wrote, because 80% of it goes to traffickers. And
it will increase the value of poppy crops, making them more attractive
to farmers.
"More forcible eradication at this time," Rubin wrote,
"when both interdiction and alternative livelihoods are barely
beginning, will increase the economic value of the opium economy,
spread cultivation back to areas of the country that have eliminated
or reduced it, and drive more communities into the arms of the
Taliban."
US policy is being driven less by what will work in Afghanistan
than by domestic political concerns, Felbab-Brown said. "With
presidential elections coming up, Afghanistan is going to be a
political issue. The question Democrats will ask is 'Who lost
Afghanistan'? Thus, there is a real incentive for the Republicans
to demonstrate results in some way, and the easiest way is with
aerial spraying. This is a classic case of policy being dominated
by politics," she said.
"Lost in all the politics is the fact that eradication has
never worked in the context of military conflict," Felbab-Brown
noted. "It only comes after peace has been achieved, whether
through repression, as in the Maoist model, through alternative
development, or through eradication and interdiction. Since the
security situation in Afghanistan is not improving, it is very
unlikely eradication will work. Karzai likes to talk about drugs
as a cancer afflicting Afghanistan, but by embracing aerial eradication,
we are prescribing the treatment that kills the patient,"
she said.
"Counter-narcotics efforts will not be successful until security
improves," said Felbab-Brown. "That's the priority,
and that will require various components, one of which is inevitably
more troops on the ground." But she said she sees no political
will for such a move in NATO or in the US. "As a result of
Iraq, there is no will to increase troops in this vitally important
theater, so I am very skeptical about the prospects for that,"
she said.
"The situation is growing grimmer and grimmer, and the US
response has been to move in the wrong direction," she summarized.
"Now, it appears the train has left the station, and the
voices that tried to stop it are falling by the wayside. American
Afghan policy is being held hostage to domestic political concerns."
"Nobody has a good answer for Afghanistan," said<
Drug Policy Alliance head Ethan
Nadelmann, who recently published an
article calling for the creation of a global vice district there. "The question is what are the choices? One, we can keep
doing what we're doing, which is not accomplishing anybody's objectives.
Two, we could embark on an aggressive aerial eradication campaign,
which would be a humanitarian disaster and push people into the
hands of the Taliban," he said, summarizing the most likely
policy options to occur.
"Three, there is outright legalization,
but that isn't on anybody's political horizon," Nadelmann
continued. "Four, there is the notion of just buying up the
opium. That might work for a year or so, but it would almost inevitably
become a sort of price support system with the country producing
twice as much the following year. There's no reason why farmers
wouldn't sell some to us and some to the underground; it would
only inject another buyer into the market."
Finally, said Nadelmann, there is the
Senlis Council proposal to license
opium production for the licit medicinal market. "The Senlis
proposal is an interesting idea, but there are a lot of issues
with it, including the question of whether there really is a global
shortage of opiate pain medications. It is good that Senlis put
that provocative idea out there, but the question is whether it
is workable," Nadelmann said.
There is another option, he explained. "Let's just accept
opium as a global commodity," he said, "and let's think
of Afghanistan as the global equivalent of a local red light district.
It has all sorts of natural advantages in opium production --
it's a low-cost producer and there is a history of opium growing
there. With global opium production centered almost exclusively
in Afghanistan, as it is now, there is less likelihood it will
pop up somewhere else, possibly with even more negative consequences,"
he argued.
"We are not talking about a place with a vacuum of authority
that fosters terrorism, but a regulated activity serving a global
market that cannot be eradicated or suppressed, as we know from
a hundred years of history," Nadelmann continued. "We
have to accept the fact that it will continue to be grown, but
we should manipulate the market to ensure that the US, NATO, and
the Karzai government advance their economic, political, and security
objectives."
While the notion may sound shocking, the US government has historically
been unafraid of working with criminal elements when it served
its interests, whether it was heroin traffickers in Southeast
Asia or the docks of Marseilles or cocaine traffickers during
the Central American wars of the 1980s or Afghan rebels growing
poppies during the war against the Soviets. "We've gotten
in bed with organized criminals and warlords throughout our history
when it served our objectives," Nadelmann noted.
Such a move would not require public pronouncements, Nadelmann
said; in fact, quite the opposite. "Bush wouldn't come out
and declare a policy shift, but you just sort of quietly allow
it to happen, just as during the Cold War you made deals with
strongmen because you were pursuing a more important objective.
There have to be moral limits, of course, but to the extent you
can semi-legitimize it you increase the chance of effectively
regulating and controlling it," he said.
"You can call this suggestion Machiavellian,"
Nadelmann said, "or you can call it simple pragmatism, but
given a lot of crummy choices, this could be the least worst."
THAT'S ALL FOR NOW FOLKS!
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September 8, 2007 12:08 PM
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