Where Democracy's Greatest Enemy Is a Flower

By ASHRAF GHANI

Published: December 11, 2004 abul, Afghanistan IN his inaugural address on Tuesday, President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan laid out his priorities for the next five years. Chief among them was stopping the country's growing drug trade. Mr. Karzai knows well that drug wars are often declared, but rarely won. In the 1990's, the United Nations tried to give Afghan farmers incentives not to grow opium, but the plan was not backed with adequate force. In 2001, the Taliban tried force without financial rewards. Neither approach convinced Afghan poppy farmers to give up opium cultivation. Similar efforts elsewhere have met with mixed results. In Colombia, brutal military campaigns against drug-cultivating communities have devastated local economies, setting off violence, which in turn has led to further repression. Drug production in Colombia continues to rise. Meanwhile, Thailand has significantly dented the narcotics trade by balancing tough enforcement with equitable and farsighted economic policies. While the drug economy was being dismantled, Thailand managed to recover from the economic crisis of 1997 and has enjoyed fairly steady economic growth since then. ARTICLE TOOLS E-Mail This Article Printer-Friendly Format Most E-Mailed Articles

TIMES NEWS TRACKER Topics Afghanistan Drug Abuse and Traffic Karzai, Hamid Alerts

Having underestimated Afghanistan's narcotics problem since 2001, the international community now recognizes the connection between drugs and terrorism, and believes that urgent action is essential. But lessons from other nations show that today's quick wins can sow the seeds of future poppy harvests. Afghanistan's war on drugs will not be won quickly - nor can it be won without economic growth and political stability. Crop destruction "victories" will prove pyrrhic if Afghan farmers cannot find other ways to make a living and do not understand why drugs threaten their future. Today, many Afghans believe that it is not drugs, but an ill-conceived war on drugs that threatens their economy and nascent democracy. The drug trade is worth more than $2.8 billion to our economy - more than a third of our gross domestic product. Destroying that trade without offering our farmers a genuine alternative livelihood has the potential to undo the embryonic economic gains of the past three years. The likely results would be widespread impoverishment, inflation, currency fluctuations and capital flight.

In the United Nations survey on Afghan drug production published this month, farmers cited "poverty" as their main reason for cultivating poppy; an acre of poppy can bring in 20 times the profit of an acre of wheat. Eradicating the poppy will threaten the livelihood of more than 2.3 million Afghans. Unless the new administration can deliver tangible reconstruction benefits to farmers. eradication will stir resentment against the government and its international partners. President Karzai has been clear that nothing threatens Afghanistan's long-term political and economic health more than narcotics. We cannot fulfill our sovereign and democratic destiny if a drug mafia chokes political freedom. We cannot move beyond our dependence on foreign aid without a healthy and legal private sector generating tax revenues. We cannot open our borders and our economy to attract private investment if fighting a narco-mafia requires increasing repression. Afghans understand that drug production is fundamentally un-Islamic; they know that our political leadership cannot serve them and also the interests of the drug mafia; they see that drug profits do not stay with the poor (last year, while the value to farmers of opium production went down by more than 40 percent, traffickers increased their profits by almost 70 percent). So how can Afghanistan and its international partners win this war in the long term? There are four key elements to a winning strategy: First is a long-term plan for training, equipping and deploying national police, border police and counter-narcotics officers that will arrest and otherwise disrupt the high-value targets (the traffickers and processors) while also controlling our borders and enforcing the rule of law throughout the countryside. These forces will not come cheap - at least $1 billion per year for five years, over and above the current investment in building the national army. We also need to stimulate economic growth in a way that decreases the proportionate influence of the drug economy. This will depend in great part on rebuilding the country physically: investing in energy production, improved water systems and highways - a 10-year, $20 billion challenge. Next, we need an agricultural strategy that links farming households to domestic and international markets. With grain worth so little in comparison to opium, and agricultural productivity in Afghanistan only one-eighth that of middle-income countries, a short-term plan to substitute wheat for poppy will not work. We need market-based land reform; credit programs for small farmers and cooperatives; and government investment in light industry to fulfill the potential of our irrigable land. Preferential trade agreements that help our farmers and small businesses become part of world markets would also be vital. All this will cost at least $1 billion a year for at least five years. Last, the government must improve our judicial system, our financial institutions and provincial governments. Arbitrary arrests and detentions of poppy farmers will bring only widespread resentment; trials and imprisonment of alleged drug traffickers without due process will undermine the credibility of the state and strengthen the drug mafia. Public institutions

committed to the rule of law will not come cheaply or quickly in Afghanistan, and may take as much as $1 billion a year over 10 years. President Karzai, having demonstrated his gifts for consensus building, must now be given the space and support by his foreign allies to prepare Afghans for an Afghan solution to our narcotics problem. He and his government will use our loya jirgas (or great councils), radio (the preferred news medium for most Afghans) and personal meetings with Afghans from all walks of life to lay the foundation for this strategy. The issue is not whether strict enforcement and economic support are both required, but how they are sequenced, balanced and communicated. In the long term, success demands that average Afghans understand why we must defeat the narcotics industry - for our country, for our faith and for our children. But poppy farmers will accept the loss of their crops, their land and their livelihoods only if they believe in an alternative future, and if they see commensurate punishments for those at the top of the drug pyramid. They will strive for an alternative economic future only when given the skills and resources to help forge a legal agrarian economy. Above all, they will join a national consensus for drug eradication only when they believe that their government and its international partners care about their long-term well-being, and not just the war on terrorism. Ashraf Ghani is Afghanistan's finance minister. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/11/opinion/11ghani.html?_r=0&pagewanted=all&position= (Afghan Opium production continued to increase after the publication of this article, peaking in 2008. Afghanistan now exports refined heroin as well as opium) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashraf_Ghani

Ashraf Ghani: Afghan national identity at risk

Afghanistan January 4, 2013 By: Michael Hughes

Afghan government official Ashraf Ghani Credits: Getty

Afghan official Ashraf Ghani told TOLONews on Thursday that his homeland is in jeopardy of losing its national identity while neighboring countries bank on the Afghan government imploding after U.S. troops exit in 2014. "We are facing the threat of losing our national identity. Our neighbors, some international experts and those who do not want the good of Afghanistan are waiting for a regime collapse," said Ghani, who currently heads President Karzais security transition commission. Ghanis comment was a thinly-veiled reference to Pakistan, which has reportedly been aiding, abetting and providing sanctuary to Taliban militants for years. Some analysts have even accused Islamabad of trying to detribalize Afghan society in an effort to control territory, especially within the countrys south and east, which would give Pakistan strategic depth in the event of a war with India. Hence, Pakistan stands to gain immensely from the erosion of Afghan nationalism and the propagation of the Talibans firebrand ideology.

Ghanis sentiments, however, contradict a peace process roadmap designed by Afghanistans High Peace Council (HPC) which was leaked earlier this month, a plan that would empower Pakistan as the prime interlocutor in any settlement between the Karzai regime and the Taliban. According to the Times of India, the roadmap has infuriated Indian officials who suspect Washington of trying to declare victory and get out, as the countdown draws near. Meanwhile, U.S. officials have exaggerated the significance of recent talks held in Chantilly, France between Afghan government officials and Taliban figures. According to the Afghanistan Analysts Network's Thomas Rutting, claims of the Taliban softening its posture represent wishful thinking by Western leaders who are in mission liquidation mode and tend to frame minor developments as major breakthroughs. The Chantilly meeting gave the Taliban more of its desired recognition as a party to the conflict and helped further establish the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan as a fact on the ground. Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahed said the invitation to the conference showed that the Taliban has a political representation in the world. He even claimed that the Emirate represented the existing regime of Afghanistan, pointing to functioning courts and educational institutions as proof. Rutting also underlined the fact that the process still requires a broader representation of the populace and must include more members of Afghan civil society. Ghani believes Afghanistans future looks bleak if its national army and police are not fully trained and equipped. Lack of capacity, inadequate resources and a functionally nonexistent air force are considered the main shortfalls of the Afghan security forces. "Government officials are also afraid of the uncertain situation of the country after 2014," he added. Yet U.S. officials have seemed obsessed with quantity over quality, pumping up the number of Afghan troops to 352,000, a size that is both unwieldy as well as unaffordable. The estimated cost to maintain such a force is $4.1 billion a year, more than twice the Afghan states annual revenue. The IMF has estimated that Afghanistan will not be able to finance its own security forces until at least 2023. The Washington Posts Rajiv Chandrasekaran reports that, despite the U.S. providing years of training and investing almost $50 billion, not one Afghan army battalion is capable of operating without U.S. advisers while Afghan policemen spend more time extorting bribes than they do keeping the peace. President Karzai is set to meet with President Obama at the White House next week to discuss the level of U.S. troops that will remain in Afghanistan after the official 2014 NATO withdrawal. On Thursday CNN reported that General John Allen has submitted a plan to the Pentagon that could keep between 6,000 and 15,000 American personnel in Afghanistan for counterterrorism efforts and training Afghan security forces. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta a few weeks ago said the fundamental mission was to ensure Al Qaeda never again finds a safe haven within Afghanistan from which it could attack the

United States or any other country. The goal here is an enduring presence," Panetta added during a November 28 press conference. Many are worried that the U.S. withdrawal might resemble what happened after the Soviets left Afghanistan in 1989, when many of the U.S.-backed mujahidin militants turned on each other and the country devolved into a bloody civil war.

Michael Hughes, Afghanistan Headlines Examiner

Michael Hughes is a Washington D.C.-based journalist and foreign policy analyst whose work has appeared in CNN, The Huffington Post and Afghan Online Press. He has been cited as an expert in Reuters and the Middle East Policy Journal and has made several live appearances on RT News. He is also a...