Daljit Dhaliwal:
These states, these five Central Asian republics, all have problems, to varying degrees, with Islamic fundamentalism. How does that actually complicate the drugs picture, one, and two, could they become a threat to U.S. interests in the area?
Mark Malloch Brown:
Well, it complicates it at several levels. First, you know, there is a general danger, for U.S. foreign policy at the moment, and I would say more broadly, Western foreign policy. The extraordinary principled support for human rights that has characterized Western foreign policy in the last decade or so, is lost in this war against terrorism. We must not allow governments to characterize all their political opponents as somehow terrorists, or neo-terrorists. We cannot allow this to come down to the support of corrupt status quos, which allow no democratic expression and voice for their people, because indeed it was precisely those kinds of conditions that arguably were the breeding ground for Al Qaeda in the first place, and elsewhere in the Islamic world. Second, we absolutely must avoid, at all costs, the presumption that somehow Islamic fundamentalism is synonymous with terrorism. You know these are countries for whom Islamic culture is going to be a critical part of a stable political culture.
Daljit Dhaliwal:
A lot of the movements did start out as moderate Muslim movements, but became radicalized, because of the repressive nature of the regimes.
Mark Malloch Brown:
Well, that's right, and they became that because they had no political means of democratic expression. So it would be incredibly short sighted, to support governments in a crack down on democratic expression, in the view that that was the way to end terrorism. All it may do is breed new generations of terrorists.
Daljit Dhaliwal:
And how much of a threat do you think that could become to the United States?
Mark Malloch Brown:
Well, managed properly it needn't be, in that, the U.S., through large parts of its history has always been the ally and champion of democratic expression and human rights around the world. And it must not get its compass points distorted here. And give up on that agenda. It's got to make sure that the targets of its anti-terrorist activity are indeed those who despise democracy and have turned their backs on them. It must not itself, by accident, become the ally of anti-democratic regimes.
Daljit Dhaliwal:
I just wanted to come back to our film a little bit. We saw a woman there who used to teach at a university. But when her country's economy collapsed in Tajikistan, she lost her job and she was forced into drug trafficking just so that she could make a living for her children. Is the UN equipped to deal with this very basic issue?
Mark Malloch Brown:
Well, you know, if we're about anything, it's about the fight against poverty. And, you know, here is yet one more manifestation of how poverty limits and distorts people's choices, and forces them into activities they would never choose, if they had any other choices available to them. And so in that sense, we keep on coming back to the issue of how do we build, you know, viable political economies underneath people, which expand their choices, and allow them the opportunity to participate, as wage earning, God- fearing citizens in their countries. People get driven to these things. They don't choose them. And, there's a chicken and egg in all of this, that when terrorism and narcotics take a hold on a society, the conditions of stability which allows you to allow economic growth, encourage economic growth to flourish, are missing. So, you know, in a sense, the more narcotics trafficking and terrorism there is in a society, the fewer choices people have to do other things, because the other parts of the economy shrivel and die. So the challenge for us is to somehow break the nexus, encourage normal economic activity to flourish, and then you will see people migrate to that area of the economy, with great willingness, because nobody chooses, for themselves or their family, either this
risk, or this exclusion from the parameters of normal, civilized life.
Daljit Dhaliwal:
We've established that drugs are a problem in Afghanistan, but they're also a problem in the narco societies of the five Central Asian countries that we've talked about. Does the UN have any kind of regional plan to tackle the problems of drug production in Afghanistan, and in Central Asia, given that the two are so interlinked?
Mark Malloch Brown:
Well, I recently had conversations both with my colleague, the head of the UN drug control program, and also with my representatives from each of these five central Asian republics, with just this in mind. The need to construct a regional program, which combines strengthening to the law enforcement proponents in the different region, to the crop substitution arrangements, to the economies of all countries, and particularly those parts of the society which are directly touched by this. So you need to combine some elements of law and order, strong elements of development, and some elements of education and prevention, to try and prevent
the spread of this narcotics economy, in these countries. And to put this together on a regional basis, is something we're now embarking on, because you're absolutely right, it's the only way to deal with this.
Daljit Dhaliwal:
And if we don't tackle it at that level, what's the threat to the United States?
Mark Malloch Brown:
Well, you know, the direct threat, as your viewers will by now know, is more to the United States' allies, it's to Europe and Russia, who are the consumers of this particular drug chain. But the indirect threat is very much to the United States, because it's this kind of nexus of terrorism and
drugs, or guerrillas and drugs, which is driving U.S. policy towards Colombia and its neighbors, which is flooding the markets of U.S. cities, and corrupting the lives of young Americans, with cocaine. And crack. And so these two issues are first cousins. Fail in one, and we're likely to fail in both. Because, you know, these drugs are very easily substitutable, the networks that produce one easily migrate to be the networks that produce and ship the other. And they both represent a dangerous, but rather black economy trend, in globalization, which is the rise of an international criminal economy, closely allied with terrorist guerilla forces, in different parts of the world. And this is a real threat to the security of America.
Daljit Dhaliwal:
You said that it takes years, or even decades, for democratic institutions to develop. How long, then, should we wait before we declare those a complete failure?
Mark Malloch Brown:
Well, or a complete success, I suppose. You know, democracy is a intrinsically happily messy
Business, as it's a way of managing competition
between people, about life and death issues in their society. And therefore, you know, the measure is never the historian's measure, where
you reach the point where you look back and say
it's succeeded. It's a much more short term,
continuous measure. And you know, as I've argued, I mean, this first year of this great
democratic experiment in Afghanistan has tended to respond to people's priorities. It's got kids into school, it's got the beginnings of law and order established in their streets. It's begun to get a civilian economy under way, and it's given them a government, which has some legitimacy
which they can all trust. So in terms of a first year score card, it's pretty good.
Daljit Dhaliwal:
OK, so if repressive regimes create militant movements, are you suggesting that the United States should ally itself with the militants rather than with the governments?
Mark Malloch Brown:
No, I'm not perverse enough to encourage that kind of coalition for the United States. I think foreign policy is a lot more nuanced than that. But I think the U.S. would really be missing out on the real lesson of September if it thought that a
crackdown on civil liberties and democratic rights amongst its allies was an effective long term strategy to avoid terrorism.
Daljit Dhaliwal:
Now, if the drug control programs in Central Asia fail, and the booming opium economy in Afghanistan continues apace, what are the dangers for Afghanistan's neighbors? And do you also see dangers for the global community at large?
Mark Malloch Brown:
Well, for Afghanistan's neighbors, it's more people who become drug users, it's more instability as a larger and larger share of those countryies' income depends on this trade. And it's almost certainly the criminalization of political life. So it's a huge cost. For the world, it's an increasing number of a young generation of people who are drug users.
It's also the possibility of a growing nexus between narcotics and terrorism, which will finance terrible incidents and attacks on democratic institutions in many places, no doubt, before it's through. So the urgency of taking on this issue cannot be underestimated.
Daljit Dhaliwal:
Mark Malloch Brown, thanks very much for joining us here on WIDE ANGLE.
Mark Malloch Brown:
Thank you.
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