http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1968978,00.html
Afghanistan's opium poppies will be sprayed, says US drugs tsar
· Calls for herbicide use follow record harvest
· Fears sensitive move will boost support for Taliban
Declan Walsh in Kandahar
Monday December 11, 2006
The Guardian
Afghanistan has agreed to poppy-spraying measures in a desperate bid to
deflate the soaring drugs trade, America's anti-narcotics tsar announced
at the weekend.
The move was urgently needed to prevent Afghanistan becoming a
narco-state, said John Waters, the head of the White House's Office of
National Drug Control Policy. "We cannot fail in this mission."
But the prospect of herbicide use aroused criticism from other western
officials, who are sceptical of its benefits and fear it will push
farmers into the arms of the Taliban. "Nobody in the international
community is loving this," said one.
Crop spraying is highly sensitive in Afghanistan. Government officials
traditionally reject aerial spraying, saying low-flying planes
dispersing clouds of herbicide could destroy licit crops and arouse
painful memories of Soviet-era carpet bombing. Reports of limited aerial
spraying, in which the US denied involvement, sparked health scare
stories among villagers in Nangarhar and Uruzgan provinces.
To assuage those fears, Mr Walters ruled out the use of planes and said
spraying would initially use ground-based techniques. President Hamid
Karzai had approved herbicide use, he said. "I think the president has
said yes, and I think some of the ministers have repeated yes."
But Mr Karzai's office was less sure. One official would not confirm the
change. "We are thinking about the issue and looking to see how we might
proceed," he said.
Britain, which leads anti-narcotics efforts in Afghanistan, firmly
opposes aerial eradication but has no firm policy on ground spraying.
Herbicide use this year could presage the introduction of aerial
eradication in 2008 - which would bring Britain into conflict with the US.
The debate has been injected with fresh urgency by this year's record
opium harvest. Production rose 49% to 6,700 tonnes in 2006, more than
90% of the world's supply. Taliban commanders have started to take a
slice of drug profits, which fuel the insurgency. The money trail also
leads to the higher echelons of government, where corruption at
provincial and central levels has eroded public confidence in Mr Karzai.
The pressure for herbicides comes from US officials and politicians who
signed off on a $600m (£300m) counter-narcotics budget this year but
received little result for their money. Many are influenced by the
alleged success of US-funded aerial spraying programmes in Colombia,
where Farc rebels benefit from the cocaine trade.
Mr Walters said glyphosate, sold under the name Roundup in the US, would
be used. He did not say when spraying would start, but poppy planting is
under way in southern provinces including Helmand, where farmers
harvested a record crop under the noses of British soldiers this year.
+++
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