Afghanistan's Elections Delayed as Poppies Bloom

This journal supported the American led war against the Afghan Taliban in response to the attacks on Washington and New York on September 11, 2001. Mr. Bush's White House responded to the attacks with diplomacy and wisdom -- the Taliban was even offered a way to stay in power, just hand over Osama bin Laden. It is, therefore, particularly heart-breaking to watch a success turn to failure right before one's eyes. President Hamid Karzai has said his country's parliamentary elections have been postponed to September from May. He cited technical reasons, like the continuing warfare in his nation.

The food aid is still coming in, which is keeping things from reaching apocalyptic proportions. Beyond that, the "liberators" have achieved little in fixing Afghanistan. The Indira Gandhi hospital in Kabul has no heat, and inside the wards, the temperature has been below freezing frequently. Those in incubators and respirators are at risk from power cuts in addition to everything else. Three and a half years after the war, the capital's best hospital doesn't have round-the-clock lighting. Meanwhile, Kabul Airport doesn't have radar.

Mr. Karzai's government says $27 billion is needed to fix his country, and at the Tokyo and Berlin Reconstruction conferences, the developed world pledged $13.4 billion, not quite half. The US Congress just approved $81 billion in war appropriations for Iraq and Afghanistan, but the House of Representatives cut Mr. Bush's request for Afghan reconstruction projects. New York University's Center on International Cooperation estimates $3.9 billion in reconstruction funds have been dispersed, and only $900 million has been spent on projects that were completed.

With no roads to get crops to market, with a central government that barely controls the capital city, and with mouths to feed, Afghanistan's farmers are growing opium poppies, a traditional crop. Opium now accounts for 60% of the nation's economic activity, and Afghanistan grows 90% of the world's opium. The New York Police Department, which lost a couple dozen of its own on September 11, says that heroin prices have fallen in recently months from $90 a gram to just $65, and purity is up. The police in London and Berlin say their beats also have falling prices and rising purity.

The US State Department says the smack from Afghan poppies retails for 100 times what the farmers get paid, which means the middlemen are the real beneficiaries of this mix of failing policies. Some of them are western mobsters, but enough are Afghan warlords, who use the proceeds to buy weapons and bribe officials to keep Mr. Karzai's power at bay. Delayed parliamentary elections are the least of Afghanistan's problems, and of America's. Instead, one needs to ask just how many decades of narco-war Washington plans of fighting; the one in Columbia has been going on for over a generation.


© Copyright 2005 by The Kensington Review, J. Myhre, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent.
Produced using Fedora Linux.

Home