Daljit Dhaliwal:
I just want to come back to the eradication programs for a little while. They have been controversial and we have seen protests in the north and in the east of Afghanistan.
What's caused those protests?
Mark Malloch Brown:
Well, I think we have to understand that for rural communities, used to living off of their own resources, with very little support from central government, and in fact, a view that whenever central government intervenes
in their life, it can only mean trouble. In that context, very much, for example, like in the mountainous rural areas of Bolivia, where a similar, crop substitution program led just weeks ago to a pro-cocaine cultivation presidential candidate coming in second in the elections. You've seen the same sense of poor farmers and rural groups feeling that finally they found a cash crop which allows them a decent life for themselves and their family, and that, you know, unthinking technocrats and politicians from the urban center of the country are suppressing it for their own interests rather than the interests of the rural poor.
Daljit Dhaliwal:
The film also highlights that the interim government, despite being an ally of the United States, and promising to fight the war against drugs, has failed. I mean do you see that as a fair characterization?
Mark Malloch Brown:
A fair characterization in terms of results, not a fair characterization in terms of will. I think this is a government which is acutely attuned to the
priorities of the United States and its European allies. Many of its senior leaders, including Mr. Karzai himself, and those in charge of
finance and reconstruction in the government, have spent many years in the United States. They're very well aware of U.S. and European priorities and what it takes to sustain that
support. And they realize that narcotics is the twin of terrorism, and they've got to demonstrate continuously that they're tough on both issues. So I think there's no absence of will.
The problem is there's an absence of means. Their writ just does not run strong in those parts of the country where the poppy is being cultivated. And until that is corrected, until their authority is felt in those parts of the country, their sound is always going to be stronger than their bite.
Daljit Dhaliwal:
So how do you give the warlords a stake in the country?
Mark Malloch Brown:
Well, you give them a stake through the same kind of federal versus Washington system that we see here in the United States, where, you know, there is a balance of power. It's between what is delegated to
the local level and what is dealt with at the national level. And second, you put the warlords into a democratic framework. You, over time, whittle away at the idea of a warlord being able to
sustain his base on armed force or ethnic alliance alone. You force local elections. You put them to the democratic test of being able to win those elections. So you socialize them into
a democratic state while dividing powers between
the center and the regions.
Daljit Dhaliwal:
And there have been reports that the warlords are taking money for eradication programs, and they're not eradicating the poppy crop, and that farmers turned up at the gates of
the houses of these warlords demanding money. I mean how do you even begin to try and grapple with the problem of the warlords, given that they're armed to the teeth, they have fiefdoms that you've described.
Mark Malloch Brown:
Well, they're a mixed bunch. You know, some of these warlords are, you know, heroic figures in the resistance against the Taliban and foreign interference in the country who enjoy a huge level of popular support in their areas.
And also have a dedicated track record of trying to secure development in their regions. Others are the thugs that your question implies. And, you know, we're going through this extraordinary process of nation building but at a highly accelerated rate because of all that has happened in Afghanistan. And it's, in a sense the responsibility for being home to the horror of September 11. And so all the
processes of nation-building, which can take decades, if not centuries, in many countries, have been accelerated into this high-speed sprint where, you know, warlords are either being integrated, or isolated, and, hopefully, politically
emasculated, where they're not willing to become part of a democratic liberal future for the country.
Daljit Dhaliwal:
Do you think personally that we're on a losing streak in the war against drugs in Afghanistan? And how do we solve the problem? Do we throw more money at it? How much more money do we need?
Mark Malloch Brown:
Well, you know, my years in development, I've seen solutions which depend on changing the political arrangements in a producer country always in some sense as being a losing streak. In Colombia there were these violent organized cartels which were responsible for the drug trade with the United States. Those cartels were destroyed, but the drug trade didn't stop. It found a new home - the guerilla movement in Colombia. What has been consistent throughout this is drugs will always find a new route, a new patron, unless you can
deal with the demand end. If you still have users willing to pay a very high price for the commodity, drugs will find a way of reaching them. So we are always on a losing streak while demand for opium and heroin remains high on the streets of Europe or of Russia, or when demand
for cocaine remains high in the streets of the United States. You're never gonna solve the problem through trying to crack down on the supplier countries alone. You've got to deal with demands in the user countries.
Daljit Dhaliwal:
Do you think there's an argument then to be made for trying to legitimize drugs in the broadest sense?
Mark Malloch Brown:
No. I think there's an argument which, you know, fair people can disagree on, around soft drugs, such as marijuana. There's, I think, zero argument for drugs such as these. Being in the work I'm in,
I've seen the impact of these drugs on people, and it's devastating to individuals, to families, to communities ... the ability of those communities to earn a living, to participate in any way in society. So, no, I think there's absolutely no argument for legalizing hard drugs.
Daljit Dhaliwal:
You've been to Afghanistan and observed the situation at first-hand. What kind of devastation does this cause farmers and their families who have to grow opium?
Mark Malloch Brown:
Well, I think you have to understand this in a particular context of timing, which was at the end of last year, there were two dramatic events in the rural economy of Afghanistan. First was the American-led coalition campaign against the Taliban, where America was relying on ground troops who were Afghans. And therefore, there was a huge surge of resources ... of dollars into the warlord economy. The second thing was that the Taliban control over poppy production was suddenly lifted as they were overthrown, which allowed a huge surge in planting. Both these facts have made it enormously difficult for
the civilian peace-time economy that we've been trying to establish since to really be attractive to rural Afghanistan, which saw these great two surges of opportunity from fighting and from poppy production. Now against that, you have to set the fact that poppy production is very hard work. It involves all of the family in it. It's labor intensive and dangerous, particularly now that the new government has declared it illegal. So both the production itself, and the trans-shipment of it out of
Afghanistan to Central Asia is fraught with all the kind of physical and financial risks that the crop will be seized and taken away from you and such which makes it hardly a stable basis
for a poor family to make a decent living, or a living which will allow it to put its kids in school, etc. It's too labor intensive for the whole family, on the one hand, and too unpredictable because of its illegal character on the other.
So, you know, even if theoretically, they're making a bit of a killing on this, this is not the way any of us would choose to make a living.
Daljit Dhaliwal:
And it's a trade that a large number of women are increasingly being drawn into, not just in terms of working the poppy harvest, but also the trafficking of the drug.
Mark Malloch Brown:
Yeah. Yes. And, of course, trafficking which doesn't stop at the Afghanistan border. I mean the most, in a sense, dramatic side effect of all of this is the extraordinary jump in usage of opium and heroin in the countries of trans-shipment, in Central Asia, in Iran. Iran appears to have something like a two percent usage among its adults, which is a very high rate. Matched only by some of its Central Asian neighbors. So it's leaving in its wake a trail of tremendous social devastation.
Daljit Dhaliwal:
You said earlier on that Afghan leaders are aware that narcotics is the twin of terrorism. Could you just flesh that idea out a little bit more?
Mark Malloch Brown:
Yes. It's the twin at home and abroad. At home, the two make a natural nexus. Where it's a source of income for terrorists who, by virtue of being an armed force in the
society, can easily lend their armed protection to the organization of the drug trade. So these are two forces in a society which naturally make common cause against the forces of civilian rule and law and order, and such like. And abroad, they are an equal twin because, for the United States, or its European partners, Afghanistan is a source of two evils, not one. Terrorism and drugs. Both of which pose a threat to the stability and well-being of American citizens and their European counterparts.
Daljit Dhaliwal:
Now you've been in charge of raising funds for Afghanistan's long-term development. Was it easy to get the donor countries to pledge the kind of money that they did?
Mark Malloch Brown:
Well, it was a race against time. I am always acutely aware that the kind of intensity of public interest, which, therefore, drives the interest of political leaders, is always short term in nature.
When the TV cameras move on somewhere, the interest moves with them. So within a month of the new government taking office in Kabul at the end of last year, we had a donors conference in Tokyo and the sheer speed with which we were able to pull together plans led to a very
generous outpouring of support. And my own view was that every week we have delayed beyond that initial month would have cost us hundreds of millions of dollars of lost money as donors remembered the rest of the world and their
obligation and commitments to help elsewhere. But, you know, that said, generous though it was, in the course of things it was only a first down payment.
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