August 22, 2002: United Nations Development Programme Administrator Mark Malloch Brown discusses Afghanistan's opium trade with host Daljit Dhaliwal.
Daljit Dhaliwal:
Mark Malloch Brown, connect the dots. How does the booming opium trade in Afghanistan affect us here in the United States?
Mark Malloch Brown:
Well, I think there are big dots and somewhat littler dots, and the big dots are just this recognition since September 11 that issues such as narcotics, but equally terrorism, and even very
different issues, public health issues, such as HIV-AIDS, which thrive in situations of failed government, and in places where countries can't, on their own, respond to them and contain them. But if we, the rest of the world,
particularly the United States, leave these problems unattended to, they have a horrible habit of coming and stinging us in our backyard.
Daljit Dhaliwal:
Well, what's the threat to the United States in that most of the drugs that come out of Afghanistan actually make their way to Europe, or to Russia, and they don't end up in American neighborhoods.
Mark Malloch Brown:
I think it's the little dots, in the sense that there clearly is a very real dimension that while
these particular drugs . . . and indeed, opium or heroin used in the U.S. is not a significant drug problem. They are part of a global drug political
economy, which is very undermining of U.S. interests. And in that way, I think the United States is quite correct to see it as an extension of the drug fight that they're fighting in Latin America and elsewhere. Drugs undermine
countries. Allies of the United States, peoples everywhere. And in that sense, I think the U.S. has recognized that while its first target in Afghanistan is terrorism, and the Al Qaeda group, that, inevitably, the second target is illegal narcotics production.
Daljit Dhaliwal:
And that leads into the United Nations efforts that you're involved in in Afghanistan to try and rebuild the country. I mean a mind-boggling task. Where do drugs, in particular, figure in the bigger picture?
Mark Malloch Brown:
It's an extraordinary force in the political economy of Afghanistan. You've got to understand that until last year, there were two sources of income for an aspiring young man or woman
in Afghanistan. One was carrying a gun. And the second was narcotics production. Hopefully, the carrying a gun option has been made significantly less attractive by the establishment of a national government in
Kabul determined to establish the peace. But with the source of income from gun-running and being an armed soldier in the employ of a warlord having declined, it's put ever more emphasis on the alternative source of illegal income - narcotics production. So until we get under that control, the ability to establish a peace-time economy where people make money out of legitimate activities and seek their fortunes through regular employment … we're not going to get there until we've crushed this terrible problem of narcotics production.
Daljit Dhaliwal:
And what is the U.N., in particular, trying to do, in terms of trying to eradicate the poppy crop?
Mark Malloch Brown:
Well, we're working hard both within Afghanistan, crop substitution programs where farmers are paid to plant alternative crops, and are paid for each kilo of poppies that they don't take to market.
But we're also trying to establish police and security arrangements throughout the country to allow central government to impose its new laws
on the subject throughout the land. And third, by trying to revive a peace-time legal economy in the country, we hope more broadly to persuade Afghans to seek their fortunes and future in something other than opium production.
Daljit Dhaliwal:
Unfortunately, opium is the economy in Afghanistan. How do you get a poor farmer to try and give up growing opium and substitute that for
other crops like wheat, where they're not gonna make the same kind of money? And that was a lesson that we have already learned in Colombia.
Mark Malloch Brown:
Yeah. No. Well, it's partly you try to get the price right. You give them as large a subsidy as possible for not growing it. A principle that American and European farmers know a lot of the subsidy policies that we apply there. You
pay people not to grow. But given the relative returns on poppy cultivation versus, as you say, something like wheat, it's hard to do it by that means alone. So you have to have a broader rural development strategy where it's not
just that you're encouraging alternative crops but you're building a whole way of life, which is within the law, and allows farmers to create a decent life of schools and education for their kids, health care for them and their families, plenty of opportunities that come from being responsible
members of their local society. And to try and draw a boundary around that and say, "To participate, to enjoy these benefits for yourself and your kids, you have to be part of a non-poppy economy."
Daljit Dhaliwal:
So the incentives have to be stronger than just maybe substitution and eradication. You're talking about giving people a stake in the society in which they live.
Mark Malloch Brown:
Absolutely. And you don't do that overnight. Particularly in a country which hasn't enjoyed national government or peace in 20 years or more. It's a big challenge to get there, and you know, in fact, we faced in Egypt months after the fall of the Taliban government a
dramatic increase in opium cultivation. And that has come about because first, the loss of income from warlordism. And, second, the breakdown of the Taliban's very brutal law-and-
order arrangements across the country where, over the last couple of seasons they had suppressed production. Suddenly, there was anarchy. Nobody was in charge and it gave its
farmers a chance to grow a large crop this year. And with the suppression of the crop in the previous two years, prices had gone upwards as demand had started to increase over supply. So this year's been a very tough year. And on a one-year basis is a setback in the war against opium versus the last year of the anti-American Taliban government.
Daljit Dhaliwal:
There's a real sad and crude irony there that it was the Taliban who were able to actually control the flow of poppy production. And nobody else has really been able to do it effectively.
Mark Malloch Brown:
Well, I think that's right. I mean there was an element of cat and mouse in it in that they were not destroying the poppies, but they were storing them, and in that sense, they had plenty ready to swamp Western markets with if they so choose. So they were creating both a carrot and stick to try and improve their relations with Western governments.
And so, I think in the short term, the change of government has been bad for production and it looks as though we'll have a bumper crop of something like 240 tons.
But going forward, this government, with its absolute commitment to eradicating the crop and its recognition that it is a threat ... the kind of ... liberal democracy they're seeking to establish in the country, I think, will be a much better, long-term ally in the fight to end poppy production.
Daljit Dhaliwal:
How successful, though, has the interim government been? I mean there have been accusations that they haven't been trying to eradicate the poppy crop with the kind of gusto that they should be employing.
Mark Malloch Brown:
Frankly, not that successful. Not, I think, because of an absence of gusto. This is a government with a lot of gusto. But its gusto doesn't always carry much further than Kabul, the capital. This is a government which has not established its writ and its authority throughout the country. So in areas where there is a strong local warlord dimension, and there is where there's something as valuable as poppy production, they have difficulty in establishing their authority. And that's what we're confronting.
Daljit Dhaliwal:
What is the situation with the warlords? Are they part of the problem? Or are they part of the solution?
Mark Malloch Brown:
Well, they're part of the problem, but you're not gonna solve it unless you make them part of the solution. It's not, I think, practically possible to displace them and just extend central government roughshod over their very well entrenched local interests.
Daljit Dhaliwal:
But if they threaten the interim government, I mean ... isn't there a case? The United States could then get involved.
Mark Malloch Brown:
I think the United States is likely to get much more involved in interim security arrangements in Afghanistan than it wishes to. There's no doubt about that. On the other hand, to take the warlords on frontally and militarily would be a huge undertaking. The reason there are warlords at all in Afghanistan is that you have a political culture developed over many centuries which reflects the geography. Mountains and valleys, with isolated communities in those valleys, communities divided by ethnic background and centuries of suspicion. An environment where it's very hard to assert central government, and where warlordism thrives, particularly when it has a ready-made income like the poppies.
So overcoming this will be an incremental process in which the central government makes alliances, extends its authority. It'll be the kind of nation-building process that we saw in Europe, or the United States, or the United Kingdom ... and an
extreme version ... a very extreme version of the long debate in the United States between state and federal government.
Daljit Dhaliwal:
How much money has actually been made available by the international community, the United States, in particular, to fight the problem? Just of drugs in Afghanistan.
Mark Malloch Brown:
Well, because the solution is rural development and crop substitution, and agriculture, it's very hard to isolate just the drug money. But tens of millions of dollars have been made available as
part of a package where, in the last six months or so, you know, total expenditure has been $1 - $2 billion, on the recovery and development of the country.
Daljit Dhaliwal:
Now do you think that that money would've been forthcoming if we hadn't have had 9/11?
Mark Malloch Brown:
Nope. Afghanistan, at the time of 9/11, was in the grip of a major drought and food crisis. And we in the United Nations, who'd been working there through thick and thin, were appealing for humanitarian assistance, which we were not getting on anything like the required scale. So the willingness to engage with
Afghanistan is obviously a post September 11th phenomenon.
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