Afghanistan's Drug Problem

[Dayuhan]

Second point first. Yes we appear to agree that the switch to nation building was a major error in judgement.

IMHO there were two Afghan related incidents along the timeline which would have/should have prompted a US/NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan.

* when it was realized that the Karzai regime irredeemably corrupt.

* when the second? election was obviously rigged.

I'd have said even earlier. I think it was predictable, even inevitable, that any government the US installed in Afghanistan was going to fall short of expectations and face widespread opposition. It was predictable, even inevitable, that once US attention turned from "clear" to "hold" - to occupying and protecting territory and preserving a regime - attacks aimed at weakening that hold would begin. Once that starts, the occupier is backed into a position where leaving becomes a defeat, where the people doing the attacking can claim credibly to have driven the occupier out. Once you back into that position, you make a place where you lose by not winning and the enemy wins by not losing, which is not a good place to be, especially when home front political will is lacking, as would inevitably be the case in a country where the US has so few real interests and so little to gain.

To me the time to leave was before those attacks ever began, before we made that transition to "hold". We didn't need "clear, hold, build", we needed "clear and walk away". Leave while you're still on top, still scary, when nobody can claim to have driven you out, while the mojo is still intact and the message "don't make us come back" carries real weight.

All that, of course, is just my opinion and water long under the bridge, though there might be a lesson for the future somewhere in there.

And obviously one such point (but obviously not the only one) is where you have 100,000 troops and the crop in the field. That's a no brainer.

So you destroy the crop... then what? The users are still there, they want the stuff really badly, and they are willing to pat for it. Reduce supply, and the price goes through the roof. That makes production even more attractive, and makes producers all along the supply chain even more willing to take risks. So you have to do it all over again next year,and the year after, ad infinitum, and while you're doing it people in every other potential poppy-growing area on earth fire up to get a piece of the profit.

If we've learned anything from decades of trying to suppress coca production in Latin America, it's that as long as the demand is there and the profits are large, somebody will find a way to meet the demand.

Trying to control the drug problem by focusing only on supply looks to me like wading deeper and deeper into the swamp, and heaping more and more endless responsibilities on the people in the field.

Sounds good but you miss the obvious link between availability and use. Anyway as drugs in the states is a trillion dollar industry you don't really believe that corruption in that regard has not reached the highest levels of politics/government/law enforcement do you?

This of course is true: fifty years or more of idiotic policy leaves a legacy that is not going to be unraveled quickly or easily. Shouldn't it be easier, though, to unravel our own corruption and our own counterproductive laws and habits than those of Afghanistan, or any number of others? Trying to control our drug problem in Afghanistan, Columbia, Mexico etc has a superficial appeal, in that the most visible impacts, including the worst of the violence, are imposed on people in other places. Ultimately, though, we end up relying on governments that don't share our interests, concerns, or priorities, or else trying to undertake governance functions in other countries on our own, which is the last thing we want to do. At least if we face our own problem on our own soil, we have our own laws to work with, and any resistance is ours to manage. Of course there will be costs and troubles as well, but that's fair enough: it's our problem after all.