Narcotics are good for democracy

Afghan plant-growers gathered new big harvest of raw materials for producing drugs.
Soon tireless couriers will deliver the high quality drugs all over the world, and the bulk of the drugs will be brought to the countries-members of the anti-terrorist coalition. Terrorists are not going to give up, they have enough weapons and finance. Producing drugs is one of their sources of income.

Two years passed after the USA took over Afghanistan, but the US is still unable to distract the majority of Afghanis from their “peaceful agricultural business”. According to the Washington Times, Head of the United Committee of Chiefs of Staffs, general Richard Myers visited Afghanistan in April and saw that producing opium poses a threat to the stability, not only in Afghanistan. He shared his concerns with US Defense Minister Donald Ramsfeld. However, the Defense Minister seems have other pressing problems: at that time he had the photos compromising US troops in Iraq, on his desk.

Many US analysts are coming to the conclusion that al-Qaida receives drugs from Afghanistan. The money earned by selling drugs, is directed to funding terrorist activities worldwide.

Surprisingly, the USA prefers to ignore Afghani’s producing drugs. At least, for the time being while “democracy is constructed in Afghanistan”. Americans are afraid to start anti-drug campaign now – it is not profitable politically and economically.

According to the Washington Times, 80 percent of Afghanis live in the countryside and make their living by growing poppy. Southern areas of the country are especially rich with poppy.

The British tried to persuade Afghanis to turn to growing expensive spices, such as saffron. However, the “people moving on the path of democracy” disliked the idea. Afghanis intend to continue to be the key suppliers of drugs for “Her Majesty” as the majority of drugs sold in Great Britain, come from Afghanistan.

Best friend of Americans Hamid Karzai needs good outcome of the elections scheduled for September, and for this reason wants no argument with the Afghani military leaders. They are extremely busy now with controlling drug producing in their regions. Mr. Karzai is afraid to face rebellion if he deprive his “allies” and “voters” of their job.

Americans use drug producers as informers reporting on the activities of the Taliban and al-Qaida members, and do not want to confront Afghan peasants either.

Bush’s administration considered the option of spreading the weedkiller destroying poppy, from the air. This tactic is applied in Columbia by the US Department of State against Coca drug. In Afghanistan Americans do not dare to do this not to make Afghan military leaders angry. In addition, poppy crops are too close to living areas.

US intelligence claims that some members of al-Qaida sell drugs from Afghanistan, although they do not make much money on this. Who knows? Raw materials are transported to Pakistan and converted into “real” narcotics. There al-Qaida people purchase them.  This year coalition forces seized two big freights of narcotics being transported for al-Qaida.

The Washington Times writes that Osama bin Laden turned to selling drugs after he was deprived of his main sources of income – “charity foundations” and “shelter companies”.

Under the rule of Taliban in the end of the 1990s Afghanistan became the leading producer of opium and heroin. Finally Taliban leaders disliked this bad fame and they tried to reduce the  amount of producing drugs, but then the coalition troops arrived and introduced the idea that narcotics are compatible with  democracy.

Sergey Borisov