Monday, December 06, 2004
The big bad narco state
Afghanistan is preparing for the inauguration of its first elected leader in a very long time (I can't say ever, as I don't know if they've ever elected a leader). Karzai is certainly the first leader elected in at least 30 years, which is no small feat, and a momentuous event in the history of Afghanistan.
Just goes to show, doing something might be a hell of a lot better than doing nothing. I would say the same applies to Iraq, as the status quo ante wasn't exactly a wonderful thing, with the Iraqi people starving inside a UN-sanctioned cage and American troops in Saudi Arabia inspiring bload-soaked dreams in the mind of the most wanted man in the world.
But I digress. The remnants of the Taliban and Al Qaeda are still a threat, as the security precautions in the runup to Karzai's inauguration clearly shows. However, according to Karzai, the bigger threat has now become drugs.
However, Karzai has said the country’s booming drug economy, which now accounts for an estimated one-third of national income, is now a bigger threat than the insurgents and will be the top priority for the coming years.
Yes, drugs ARE a problem for Afghanistan. They now supply somewhere north of 80% of the world's heroin. Drugs operate outside any legal framework, and they make a LOT of money because of the risk premium associated with supplying it. That's a recipe for drug gangs with lots of power. Think Al Capone, but on a nationwide scale, and with a bunch of battle-hardened militias who've spent the past 20 years fighting each other. Heck, think Columbia, which is another place where drugs have turned an entire country into a war zone.
If we were truly to be honest about this, however, we'd have to recognize that the problem in places like Afghanistan and Columbia is one created by policy choices made by western governments. Since drugs are illegal, and since there are lots of people who want to use them in spite of it, it makes a lot of money. In western nations with lots of well-paying alternatives to drugs, you are less likely to find drug power turning into a threat to social order and the nation-state. In poorer nations with fewer alternatives, it is a much bigger threat. In other words, the costs of the West's decision to ban drugs is borne more by poor nations than western nations.
It's worth remembering why Al Capone became so powerful. Prohibition had terrible timing, coming shortly before the Great Depression. Not only did a whole lot of people really NEED alcohol, but legal sources of income were harder to come by. This made trading in an illegal good VERY attractive, and in a poverty-stricken land, gave the people who traded in that illegal good very powerful.
America's solution to the problem was to LEGALIZE alcohol. We did that because Americans felt the pain of the alcohol war, and so had an incentive to stop it.
Unfortunately, Americans don't feel the pain of our current drug war, at least not to the extent that the third world feels it. That means we are less inclined to do something as drastic as legalize drugs.
Of course, we're talking heroin. Lots of people think it would be okay to legalize marijuana, and a smaller number might say the same of Cocaine (Columbia's drug of choice), but not many think it's so wonderful to legalize heroin.
Perhaps I'm an optimist, but I have a hard time imagining that large numbers of people would rush out to try heroin were it to be made available in the local Wal-Mart tomorrow (which it shouldn't be...I favor special, government-regulated sales centers). It's not like it's impossible to find it now. People aren't stupid, and all that money spent fighting drugs might be used to provide truly useful treatment programs and/or information that scares people enough that they wouldn't want to try the drug in the first place.
What of the children? In a nation where a 0.5 second flash of Janet Jackson's naked breast causes Football fans to collapse in a fit of apoplexy, saying "what message are we sending children" trumps all rational argument.
Children are far smarter than people make them out to be. How many of you wanted to try heroin, much less many of the drugs in the pharmacy of substances stored in leather jackets on street corners across America. Some will, to be sure, but some like to drink themselves to oblivion or drive recklessly on crowded highways. They are in the minority, and as we've seen from 60+ years of drug prohibition, they don't go away when you make the thing they like to do illegal.
I'm just suggesting there are more productive ways to deal with the problem of drug abuse than to place whole nations at risk of civil war in a failed attempt at "stopping" the flow of drugs into western countries.
Afghanistan is preparing for the inauguration of its first elected leader in a very long time (I can't say ever, as I don't know if they've ever elected a leader). Karzai is certainly the first leader elected in at least 30 years, which is no small feat, and a momentuous event in the history of Afghanistan.
Just goes to show, doing something might be a hell of a lot better than doing nothing. I would say the same applies to Iraq, as the status quo ante wasn't exactly a wonderful thing, with the Iraqi people starving inside a UN-sanctioned cage and American troops in Saudi Arabia inspiring bload-soaked dreams in the mind of the most wanted man in the world.
But I digress. The remnants of the Taliban and Al Qaeda are still a threat, as the security precautions in the runup to Karzai's inauguration clearly shows. However, according to Karzai, the bigger threat has now become drugs.
However, Karzai has said the country’s booming drug economy, which now accounts for an estimated one-third of national income, is now a bigger threat than the insurgents and will be the top priority for the coming years.
Yes, drugs ARE a problem for Afghanistan. They now supply somewhere north of 80% of the world's heroin. Drugs operate outside any legal framework, and they make a LOT of money because of the risk premium associated with supplying it. That's a recipe for drug gangs with lots of power. Think Al Capone, but on a nationwide scale, and with a bunch of battle-hardened militias who've spent the past 20 years fighting each other. Heck, think Columbia, which is another place where drugs have turned an entire country into a war zone.
If we were truly to be honest about this, however, we'd have to recognize that the problem in places like Afghanistan and Columbia is one created by policy choices made by western governments. Since drugs are illegal, and since there are lots of people who want to use them in spite of it, it makes a lot of money. In western nations with lots of well-paying alternatives to drugs, you are less likely to find drug power turning into a threat to social order and the nation-state. In poorer nations with fewer alternatives, it is a much bigger threat. In other words, the costs of the West's decision to ban drugs is borne more by poor nations than western nations.
It's worth remembering why Al Capone became so powerful. Prohibition had terrible timing, coming shortly before the Great Depression. Not only did a whole lot of people really NEED alcohol, but legal sources of income were harder to come by. This made trading in an illegal good VERY attractive, and in a poverty-stricken land, gave the people who traded in that illegal good very powerful.
America's solution to the problem was to LEGALIZE alcohol. We did that because Americans felt the pain of the alcohol war, and so had an incentive to stop it.
Unfortunately, Americans don't feel the pain of our current drug war, at least not to the extent that the third world feels it. That means we are less inclined to do something as drastic as legalize drugs.
Of course, we're talking heroin. Lots of people think it would be okay to legalize marijuana, and a smaller number might say the same of Cocaine (Columbia's drug of choice), but not many think it's so wonderful to legalize heroin.
Perhaps I'm an optimist, but I have a hard time imagining that large numbers of people would rush out to try heroin were it to be made available in the local Wal-Mart tomorrow (which it shouldn't be...I favor special, government-regulated sales centers). It's not like it's impossible to find it now. People aren't stupid, and all that money spent fighting drugs might be used to provide truly useful treatment programs and/or information that scares people enough that they wouldn't want to try the drug in the first place.
What of the children? In a nation where a 0.5 second flash of Janet Jackson's naked breast causes Football fans to collapse in a fit of apoplexy, saying "what message are we sending children" trumps all rational argument.
Children are far smarter than people make them out to be. How many of you wanted to try heroin, much less many of the drugs in the pharmacy of substances stored in leather jackets on street corners across America. Some will, to be sure, but some like to drink themselves to oblivion or drive recklessly on crowded highways. They are in the minority, and as we've seen from 60+ years of drug prohibition, they don't go away when you make the thing they like to do illegal.
I'm just suggesting there are more productive ways to deal with the problem of drug abuse than to place whole nations at risk of civil war in a failed attempt at "stopping" the flow of drugs into western countries.
