Terrorism & Security
posted June 29, 2006 at 1:00 p.m.

Report: US-led Afghan mission is failing

Drug policy analysts say 'militaristic' attempts to eradicate poppy crop driving farmers to Taliban.

By Tom Regan | csmonitor.com

A report by a Paris-based international security and policy advisory group, the Senlis Council, says that the US-led mission in Afghanistan is failing because US policies on eradicating the Afghan poppy crop aren't working.

The Independent reports that the group, which specializes in drug policies, predicts violence in the south of the country will escalate because the Taliban has been so effective at exploiting the anger "felt by farmers at the destruction of opium crops and by civilians who have suffered in US-led operations."

Lt-Gen David Richards, the British officer who is due to take over all NATO operations in Afghanistan with US troops under his command, warned the crop eradication program was driving farmers into the hands of the Taliban and the Western forces are creating new enemies.

Last week Hamid Karzai, the [Afghan] president, levelled unprecedented criticism at the US-led coalition's tactics, deploring the deaths of hundreds of his countrymen and women while the Taliban grows in strength. About 600 people have been killed this year.

The United Nations says more than 90 percent of the world's heroin supply comes from Afghanistan.



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Radio Free Europe reports that despite the efforts to destroy poppies, the southern Afghan province of Helmand is heading for "a bumper crop." Many farmers, who had originally supported President Karzai's call for a ban on poppy production are now returning to it because of a steadily worsening economic situation. And often, the Senlis report says, it is the Taliban who are there to offer them "help, understanding, and protection...." Radio Free Europe also quotes Mark Harper, Tory member of the British Parliament and the shadow defense minister, as a critic of the US-led coalition's strategy.

"If the [British] government wants to support the Afghan government's attempt to remove opium production, then it can't do that properly with the level of forces that we've got, and also with the amount of money that the Western allies are spending on alternative livelihoods for the farmers, Harper Opium production is a significant portion of the Afghan economy, and unless farmers have got something else that they can do to support their families they're going to be driven into the arms of warlords and the Taliban."

[Mr.] Harper stresses that the Taliban is using the eradication failures to win greater support. He points out that the British government now has soldiers in Helmand to help with reconstruction. Harper suggests that massive reconstruction and development be done first to gain the trust of the locals before eradication policies are begun.

Corruption is another problem hurting the program. Senlis, which had almost two dozen "highly mobile Afghan researchers in Helmand" who contributed to the report, says that these researchers reported many cases where Afghan officials ignored the crops of large producers who could afford to pay them a bribe, but wiped out the crops of poorer farmers who couldn't.

In particular, the Council had a warning for Canadian troops in the country, saying they are "paying with their lives" for supporting the US eradication policies in Kandahar province.

"The Canada government and the international community continue to seemingly unquestioningly accept America's fundamentally flawed approach to southern Afghanistan," said Emmanuel Reinert, executive director of the Senlis Council. "But this is jeopardizing both the troops' lives and the stabilization, reconstruction and development objectives. The Canadian troops in Kandahar are doing a heroic job in the most difficult of circumstances and are to be commended; but the overall policy context within which they are obliged to work is putting them at risk."

The Toronto Star reports that the recently elected Conservative government and military leaders in Canada were quick to denounce the Senlis report, calling it "anti-American and outright wrong in its assessment of the state of the 10-month-old Canadian-led mission."

"It makes me angry because it trivializes the efforts of soldiers on the ground who are doing the right thing every day," said Lt.-Col. Ian Hope, commander of the Princess Patricia's battle group in Kandahar. "They try to take those efforts and use them for political purposes."

And Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Canada is working to eliminate the threat of terrorism, but also wants to eliminate drug trafficking that's causing problems on [Canadian] streets. "For that reason we support the efforts of the international community to eradicate drug production," Harper said.

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reports that Canada's defense minister says the report "doesn't reflect the reality on the ground." "It's fine for this think-tank to come up with these conclusions. However, our people on the ground see things otherwise," O'Connor told CBC Newsworld.

The Star reports that Mr. Reinert says he was surprised at the "virulent reaction" to the report, and that his group is not casting "lofty accusations from afar" but relying in the work of more than 30 researchers in total who are in Afghanistan. Regardless of the reaction, Reinert says, the "Canadian government is in denial over the true perception of its troop deployment to Afghanistan's troubled Kandahar province."

He said that whether it is hard to hear or not, the perception is that Canadian troops, like the Americans, the British and the privately hired security guards, are widely viewed as the enemy.

"Our competitive advantage, our added value to this debate ... is that we are not identified with any military or government organizations..." he said. "What we are bringing to the table is the perception of people in Afghanistan ... and our people on the ground are telling us that they see the troops as invaders, they are telling us that the patience of Afghanis is running out almost five years after the war."

Macleans' magazine of Canada also reports that some military experts do believe that Canada has made mistakes in its drug policy with Afghanistan.

"It was stated to me by the senior diplomats or bureaucrats involved with Afghanistan that Canada certainly had made some very serious errors," said Sunil Ram, a former Canadian soldier who now teaches at the American Military University in Virginia. "This especially focused on the issues of the drug trade, which Canada very judiciously ignored even dealing with."

There are widely differing views on how the US-led eradication program is going. The United Nations News Service reports that Afghanistan is already a "narco-economy" and is in danger of becoming a "narco-state," with drug production as the largest employer. But The Washington Times reports that the head of the US Drug Enforcement Administration told Congress Thursday that her organization is making '"great progress" in targeting the drug lords and criminal organizations that control the heroin supply.

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