[Vision2020] Afghanistan's Record Opium Crop

[Ted Moffett]

Visionaries:

While we are distracted with Iraq and threats of terror, Kobe Bryant and 
ridiculous repressive government policies that block people who love each 
other from forming stable relationships, consider the lack of focus on or 
interest in Afghanistan:  a country we bombed to oblivion and were going to 
rebuild.

It is as though the entire nation has ADD!

Ted

Read below:


  Afghans on Edge of Chaos
  As opium production and banditry soar, the country is at risk of anarchy, 
some warn, and could allow a         Taliban resurgence
  By Robyn Dixon
  The Los Angeles Times

  Monday 04 August 2003

  WARDAK, Afghanistan - Two months after a gun attack, the bullet holes in 
the Datsun sedan have been patched and it runs beautifully. But water 
engineer Asil Kahn walks with a limp and he still has two bullets in his 
body, one of them half an inch from his spine.

  The vehicle's humanitarian logo made him a victim in the battle for 
Afghanistan's future, where water engineers, mine-clearers and humanitarian 
workers - people the country needs most - are prime targets for militants 
trying to destabilize President Hamid Karzai's interim government.

  The May attack on the Afghanistan Development Agency car in Wardak 
province, south of Kabul on the road to Kandahar, injured Kahn but killed 
the driver.

  "They weren't robbers or thieves," said Kahn, 46. "They just wanted to 
kill us. They're people against the government. They thought that maybe 
there would be some foreigners or some officials from aid organizations in 
the car. That's why they shot us."

  U.S. forces have their hands full trying to subdue attacks in Iraq. But 
with the slow buildup of a national Afghan army, an inadequate U.S. and 
coalition presence and poor progress on reconstruction projects, Afghanistan 
is spiraling out of control and risks becoming a "narco-mafia" state, some 
humanitarian agencies warn.

  Already the signs are there - a boom in opium production, rampant banditry 
and huge swaths of territory unsafe for Western aid workers. The central 
government has almost no power over regional warlords who control roads and 
extort money from truck drivers, choking commerce and trade.

  If the country slips into anarchy, it risks becoming a haven for resurgent 
Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters. And the point of U.S. military action here 
could be lost - a major setback in the war against terrorism.

  Money spent on the war may end up being wasted, and dragging the country 
back from chaos could be even more costly. America spends about $900 million 
a month on its forces stationed here, but little of the $3 billion 
authorized for aid in the Freedom Support Act has been spent.

  U.S. promises of a Marshall Plan for Afghanistan raised Afghan 
expectations, but security and reconstruction woes are undermining support 
for the coalition among ordinary Afghans. Their disappointment and 
disillusionment plays into the hands of anti-government militants.

  Humanitarian agencies, calling for a big boost in international funds for 
security and reconstruction, contend that the commitment to Afghanistan is 
relatively low. A CARE International paper in January stated that postwar 
international aid spent in Bosnia-Herzegovina was $326 per capita, compared 
with $42 promised for Afghans up to 2006. For every peacekeeping soldier 
there were 48 Bosnians, compared with one for every 5,380 Afghans, the paper 
said. Yet Bosnia poses no appreciable terrorist threat.

  There are 8,500 U.S. military personnel leading the 11,500 anti-terrorist 
coalition forces in Afghanistan. An additional 5,000 international troops 
secure the capital city, Kabul. A key missing piece is an Afghan army, but 
with only 4,000 troops trained so far, it will take many years to reach the 
planned 70,000-strong force. It won't be ready in time to ensure free and 
fair elections scheduled for June. Some of the 4,000 trained soldiers have 
already defected because of poor salaries and low morale.

  The security vacuum outside Kabul has emboldened Taliban fighters, who 
constitute the bulk of anti-government militants, some who cross from 
Pakistan, others based in the east and south. U.S. officials say the Taliban 
controls part of the opium business, a rich source of funds to attract 
fighters.

  As security worsens, there are sharp differences between the aid community 
and Western leaders on how to prevent a deepening slide.

  Many in the international aid community in Kabul believe the coalition's 
latest response to the security problem - small scale military teams 
tackling modest reconstruction projects - will have little impact and will 
put aid workers at more risk by blurring the line between them and soldiers.

  About 40% of the $5.2 billion pledged by the international community last 
year has been spent but with little progress on big reconstruction projects 
like the Kabul-to-Kandahar road. Much of the money has been eaten up by 
emergency relief - food, medicine, blankets and tents.

  Haji Abdul Khaliq, 54, arrived in Kabul exhausted by 14 hours on the 
shattering, rocky track of a highway from Kandahar. It was inconceivable to 
him that $2 billion had been spent in his country since January last year.

  "From what we can see, they didn't spend more than a dollar," he 
spluttered angrily. "There are no paved roads, no reconstruction of 
government buildings, no help for the people and no government salaries.

  "I think at first people were very hopeful, [but] day by day they lose 
hope," said Khaliq, a turbaned, white-bearded general from a Kandahar 
military base who is fighting Taliban militants in the south.

  The term Taliban can be a little confusing in a city like Kandahar, where 
most people in power were once with the Taliban.

  Typical of many Afghan moujahedeen fighters, Khaliq is loyal only to his 
commander. Though he's fighting anti-government militants, he is 
contemptuous of Americans and despises Karzai and his government.

  Khaliq said Taliban forces in the region were growing bolder. A June 30 
explosion at a Kandahar mosque that injured more than a dozen was apparently 
aimed at the anti-Taliban mullah there. A day later another anti-Taliban 
mullah was shot dead in Nakobak village, six miles south of Kandahar.

  In the same week, said Khaliq, Taliban fighters from Pakistan set up a 
base northeast of Kandahar in Zabul province. Afghan forces attacked, 
killing a dozen Taliban fighters and capturing about five.

  The Taliban rebels offer local people good salaries - more than $100 a 
month - to fight, while Khaliq grumbled that he and his men are not being 
paid at all. Afghanistan's severe budgetary problems are leaving many civil 
servants unpaid.

  In Afghanistan, U.S. forces have not suffered the steady casualties borne 
by the much larger force in Iraq. But anti-government militants in recent 
months have killed aid workers, attacked mine-clearers and burned girls 
schools. In June, a suicide bomb attack in Kabul killed four German soldiers 
from the International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF.

  The security problem delaying the Kabul-Kandahar road project is denying 
the country the economic fillip of a six-hour trade route between the 
cities. Taxis can do the road in 14 hours, but truck transport takes at 
least two days.

  Taxi drivers working the road daily tell hair-raising tales of armed 
attacks by thieves and bandits. With something akin to nostalgia, they 
recall the security of the Taliban era, when they could drive all night 
without fear.

  U.S. forces are focused on eradicating remnants of the Taliban. But to 
many Afghans, a more immediate problem is bandits, often associated with the 
venal commanders and warlords who control the roads.

  Sher Alimad, 38, a driver from the western city of Herat, said he was 
attacked in mid-June by five gunmen at Gereshk, about 40 miles west of 
Kandahar. He was beaten, tied up and thrown into his trunk, driven to a 
deserted road and robbed of 12,000 Afghanis (about $250).

  A surge in trade by small businessmen after the Taliban's fall is being 
slowly strangled by extortion and banditry.

  A group of truck drivers sat wearily in the dust at Dashte Deh Sabz on the 
northern outskirts of Kabul, after their loads of gravel for the thriving 
brick industry were seized by a local commander named Maulana. They said he 
had taken over the gravel trade.

  "He's collecting from everyone. No one else can bring it into the city 
except for him," said driver Khalifa Yakub, 21, who said he was beaten by 
checkpoint soldiers and jailed for three days when he tried to protest. His 
dream of running his own small gravel transport business has died. He's 
become an employee.

  "These people, they're commanders, they're dealers, they're businessmen, 
they're killers, they're everything," he said ruefully.

  President Karzai has repeatedly called for the deployment of ISAF forces 
outside Kabul, a request echoed by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and 
international aid agencies, but resisted by U.S. and European leaders. Last 
month an open letter from 80 aid organizations called for a national ISAF 
presence, warning that efforts to rebuild and hold elections were at risk.

  Karzai has called for international donors to offer $20 billion over five 
years to help the country rebuild. CARE International called for at least 
$10 billion.

  Playing down the security problem on a recent visit, Defense Secretary 
Donald H. Rumsfeld said provincial reconstruction teams, or PRTs - 
military-civilian teams of 50-100 people deployed to rebuild infrastructure 
- would play a key role in improving security. Four are working, independent 
of ISAF, and eight are planned.

  Lt. Gen. Norbert van Heyst, the German commander of ISAF forces in Kabul, 
described the city as a "safe island" because of ISAF's presence, but 
expressed concern that militant attacks in the south and east could spill 
into the capital. However, he said, extending ISAF beyond Kabul was 
unrealistic.

  "For the entire country you would need 10,000 additional troops, and 
nobody is willing to do that," he said, adding that PRTs were a more 
realistic first step. "I'm convinced that this concept can improve 
security."

  It's a view contested by many in the humanitarian sector. Barbara 
Stapleton of ACBAR, the coordinating body for Afghan relief, said the 
military should focus on improving poor security, not duplicate the role of 
humanitarian agencies.

  PRTs "have neither the mandate nor the resources to have a significant 
impact on either reconstruction or security," she said, adding that the 
teams eroded Afghan confidence in the neutrality of humanitarian agencies. 
"In a highly complex security situation, they further muddy the waters."

  Stapleton said some U.S. military anti-terrorist forces had conducted 
crude searches in a village in southern Afghanistan, bursting into homes and 
offending cultural sensibilities.

  "Then they went in later with sweeteners and built wells. And the people 
refused to use them. It's actually a crude way of dealing with a highly 
sophisticated and very intelligent people."

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