An article about the exploits of the Royal Anglian Regiment reminds us that the fighting in Afghanistan has been very sharp indeed: over six months the Royal Anglians suffered one hundred and forty four casualties (nine killed and one hundred and thirty five wounded), in return for one thousand Taliban killed (which according to the traditional 5:1 ratio which would probably be more accurate for the technologically unsophisticated Taliban, implies at least a further five thousand wounded).
Yet I cannot escape the feeling that the quality of the politics has gone a long way to undermining the quality of the military efforts. Why oh why are we trying to stop people in that poor country from growing the cash crop they have grown since time immemorial and thereby making enemies of people who just want to make money? And as paying people to not plant opium is a demonstrable waste of time, if the governments of the west are so keen to stop opium ending up on the streets of western cities, why not take the vast ocean of money wasted on odious subsidies to affluent western farmers in Europe and the USA, and instead just buy whatever opium the Afghan farmers can grow? At a stroke the Afghan economy is improved in the short term, distorting subsidies removed from western economies and Afghan farmers and warlords alike given a very good reason to maintain good relations with their western patrons (i.e. addict them to subsidies).
Oh, come, you know the answer to that. Affluent western farmers vote in their countries, the Afghan farmers don’t vote in the UK or the US.
“addict them to subsidies”
That is powerful stuff indeed; perhaps too addictive.
Even the war-on-drugs people should not object to your policy Perry. As buying the opium at source would be the best way of preventing it being turned into the drug that is so dreaded.
However, the powers that be would rather the Taliban be allowed to play the role of the defenders of the farmers against the wicked West.
“The West is a superior civilization and as such can defeat Islamic radicals, both Sunni and Shia”.
So it was and so it could. The trouble is the West is not around any more – for example Western civilization understand that wars-on-drugs did not work and sneared at absurd regimes (such as Imperial China) that thought they could work.
Because demand creates it’s own supply. If you say “we’ll buy as much opium as you can grow at X price”, then everybody in the country who can grow opium for an opportunity cost of < X will do so, because suddenly opium is their best opportunity. The only way to make the market sane is to legalize the drug, while enforcing laws against any real crimes that somebody may commit while under the influence of the drug — just as you would if they were not under the influence of the drug.
Hmmm … lost the last bit of the first paragraph. Rather than using a less-than symbol, let me finish it as:
Actually, I like that ending better than the original. Please continue with the second paragraph.
Rich Paul, of course drugs should be legalised but the objective I had in mind was not the economic well being of Afghanistan but rather the defeat of the Taliban. If the money used to distort the world’s agricultural markets could be spent instead distorting Afghanistan’s opium markets in support of a military objective, I think that would still be quite an improvement on the current situation.
We do not progress by changing which market we distort.
We should stop distorting markets at home and get out of Afganistan.
We are not fighting ‘the Taliban’. We are fighting people protecting the crops they have been growing for a long time, as you say.
For once I completely agree with Rich Paul (both versions). Perry, I utterly fail to see how replacing one agricultural subsidy with another is any form of progress. Though if you’d suggested threatening to dump the finished product on the Iranian market unless the beards in Tehran behave then… Because there are many more tactics in warfare than the JDAM.
But overall, I suspect that giving a huge incentive to poppy growing would have an effect on the ‘stan similar to Mao’s infamous “War on Sparrows” would have on China.
No, clearly we are indeed fighting the Taliban… we are just not only fighting the Taliban and that is crazy.
Way too simplistic. What you fail to understand is that much of the Taliban’s manpower comes from Pakistan now. By stopping the idiotic ‘war-on-drugs’, that would have the effect of removing one major reason why many Afghans foolishly help the Taliban.
And yet you then correctly answer the question yourself…
Indeed. The object here is not the economic health of Afghanistan, it is winning a war against the Taliban.
The Taliban were a bunch of Islamic extremists who imposed themselves by force on the Afghan people, using the power vacuum created by the retreat of the USSR. They were the strongest of several gangs fighting for power. The US should engage in some “nation building” there – i.e. help another gang gain power, a gang that would not engage in international terrorism. Eradicating opium crops (or any other) would render the main mission impossible. The West should desist from the secondary mission (opium eradication) and concentrate on the main mission (preventing international terrorism). Eradicating, or trying to buy the opium crops is useless and idiotic.
From what I’ve been reading/watching/hearing in the MSM (and I view such information with the required scepticism) the cash made from the sale of the poppy crop is simply being passed on to ‘the insurgents’. So it doesn’t really matter who buys the crop, the money will still go to the enemy. Whether this would happen if we stopped trying to destroy the crop is up for debate.
We just have to face the fact that the whole Afghan situation is a mess, and the opium just makes it messier.
Should change the “would” to “did”. D’oh!
Perry,
I think the economic health of Afghanistan is an important way-point to a definitive victory. I don’t think turning the country into a narcotic mono-culture would help that. Afghanistan as an economic basket-case would simply allow another bunch of nutters to take charge.
My comment as to “the beards in Tehran” was meant almost tongue-in-cheek. I still think there is a possibility for the ayatollahs to be overthrown from within Iran (with our support, naturally) and that would be my favoured option because the other options are too utterly dreadful to desire. Flooding the Iranian market with cheap heroin will not endear us to the populace. My preferred option would be to flood their markets with the banned western stuff they really want. Can’t the NSA figure a way to disable the Iranian firewall?
BTW, does anybody know if anyone has photoshopped a Mahmoud Armageddon whooping it up astride the falling thermonuke from “Dr Strangelove”? I’d love to see it.
While I am definitely in favor of legalizing all drugs, I wonder what would be the repercussions of such legalization on the economies of countries such as Afghanistan or Columbia. I am sure these crops can be easily and cheaply grown in the US and Europe.
Not bad. I can’t think of a single healthy economy which is a mono-culture. The Colombians allegedly make good coffee (I hate coffee so I’m not prepared to judge) as well and I’m sure there’s loads of other stuff they could get into as well. Without warlords and drug-barons the tourism industry might even really kick off in these places… With a lower wage structure and less regulations the heroin and cocaine producers in the third world should be easily able to out-compete their counterparts in the West though…
Unless a lot changes quickly we’d end up with bloody EU subsidies for the desperately challenged coca growers of Italy. This along with a tax upon the stuff (which would be partly spent on the rehabilitation of folk who’ve taken a bit too much Umbrian marching powder)… Alas my greenhouse has been condemned so that would somewhat spoke the wheel for me getting paid by the EU not to grow skunk.
Cannot agree more with Rich Paul, he nailed it. The fattest profit margins in the drug production/distribution chain are at the point of the local cartels, who buy the crops from the poor (financially) farmers, make the drugs, and smuggle them across borders. This profit distribution is highly unlikely to change without a dramatic cost shock: the removal of a barrier to entry, i.e. legalization.
Perry, you are suggesting a different cost shock – an additional subsidy – but I think it has at least 3 weak points:
1) I think you are wrongly underestimating the amount of poppy a strongly subsidized Afghanistan can churn out. This is a country the size of Texas, with 80% of a 30+ mln population engaged in agriculture. Compare this percentage with the one in the West, and give them enough money to modernize from donkeys and hoes to tractors and fertilizers.
2) You will most likely end up poppy IMPORTED into Afghanistan from Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and probably even Iran and Pakistan.
3) You are assuming that the folks in the most profitable part of the chain will take this lightly. They have the advantage of already accumulated capital, access to reasonably good weaponry, and proven willingness to use it. My guess would be that as soon as the local farmers are of no use to them as suppliers of cheap poppy, they would try to impose a non-monetary cost to try to offset your subsidy – most likely a combination of terror and threats, dressed in another fig leaf about not co-operating with the aggressors/infidels.
Of course the Afghan situation is a mess Mandrill – but that does not mean the troops should leave.
It reminds me of another thread where someone was attacking the wicked West for attacking the Ottoman Empire – he was unaware that Turks declared war on the British (who had long been their friends) not the other way round.
No one forced the Taliban to ally with O.B.L. and A.Q. – they choose to do that.
They made this choice because their interpretation of Sunni Islam was the same – i.e. they accepted the interpretation that it is a religous duty to kill or enslave infidels (a term they interpret very broadly – for example many other Muslims are considered fair game) all over the world (not just in Afghanistan).
So we have to fight the Taliban – it was their choice, not ours.
How to prevent money going from the farmers to the Taliban:
Kill the Taliban.
If they are dead than can not demand this money.
“Not an easy task” – I did not say it was.
On drug legalization:
It has often been suggested in Colombia – where a lot of the profits of the cocaine trade go to the F.A.R.C. and the E.L.N.
However, even if cocaine was legalized there would still have to be a war of extermination against the F.A.R.C. and so on.
Some individuals may be won over, but the orgainzation itself is committed to an ideology that means that extermination (not “talks”) is the only logical option – as it is with the Taliban.
Sadly in history there are many situations where kill-or-be-killed is the rule. These two situations (Afghanistan and Colombia) are examples of this – the ideology of the enemy (an extreme version of Sunni Islam in the case of the Taliban, and a form of revolutionary Marxism in the case of the F.A.R.C.) make talks impractical.
“Legalize all drugs”
While this sounds so wonderfully idealistic, it makes one wonder what your attitude will be when the victims of those who drive, walk, argue, run, etc under the influence start arriving at the emergency rooms. What will the parents of the children down the street do when one of their kids is run over (on the sidewalk) by a person affected by “a little harmless grass”.
Or worse, when various nanny state organizations start removing neglected, abused children and/or spouses from the abodes of chronic drug abusers before they die.
Some of you need to remove your little, rose-colored specs and start seeing the reality of the world.
The legalization of all and any drugs would the the final catalyst that the power hungry need to become outright totalitarian, “for our own good” of course.
Winger, by your logic outlawing HIV should solve the problem of people dying of AIDS. You say, “What will the parents of the children down the street do when one of their kids is run over (on the sidewalk) by a person affected by “a little harmless grass”. Ah, the children, of course, let’s do it for the children…. My guess is that those parents would be happier under your scenario than under an alternative one, where the same affected person still runs over the kid, but has had to prostitute himself or herself before that, or to rob a drugstore… Drugs are still widely available today to everyone who wants them, they just cost more, with the profit going to less-then-palatable folks, like FARC, for example. The war on drugs is working just as well as the Prohibition did, only instead of in the United States, it’s financing corruption, crime, and terrorism abroad. I believe it was Churchill who said “If you destroy a free market, you create a black market.” And in black markets prices rise, quality and safety suffer, and the punishments tend to get meted to the “small fish.”
Now take off my little, rose-colored specs and give them back to me.
Idealistic in that I believe a person owns their own body. Practical in that clearly prohibition has been an utter failure.
I said it should not be illegal, I did not say narcotics are a good idea. Your approach (ban them) has failed. Big time. Utterly. Drugs are cheap and easy to find in any city anywhere in the western world. That is an indisputable fact.
I would say the same thing to them that I would say if those people arrived under the influence of alcohol (and that, not ‘drugs’, are the main driver of people ending up in emergency rooms).
The state based approach is immoral and regarless of that it has failed on an epic & global scale, so even on utilitarian grounds the prohibition argument blows goats…banning it by law was obviously not the best approach to discourage people from self-destructive behaviour.
Now destructive behaviour towards others on the other hand is and should be illegal. If you kill someone because you are drunk or stoned, go to gaol forever as far as I am concerned… punish behaviour towards others, not what people put on their bodies. Just like alcohol in fact (which is far more habit forming that weed).
Gaoling someone for having drugs, because drugs cause crime, is like gaoling someone for being poor because poverty causes crime.
The problem is not drugs, it is addiction to drugs. The fact drugs make you stupid is irrelevant because so does alcohol, and so does too little sleep, too much turkey, too much stress and reading anything by Noam Chomsky. Making drugs illegal however makes it much harder for a person to deal with their addiction because what they do it illegal as well as harmful… it enormously complicates the issue, creating an underground economy and creating criminals rather than just businessmen.
By buying up the crop in Afghanistan, surely that’s encouraging the ‘problem’ to be moved elsewhere? As Alisa mentioned, what are the repercussions? Could moving production to a fragile state exacerbate the enemy that the West is fighting against? We could possibly end up fighting on more fronts than Afghanistan if that’s the case, surely, or spending even more money buying up more crop?
I appreciate the sentiment, but I’m not sure I entirely agree with it.
Perhaps to make it more socially palatable, though, the British and American governments could encourage the opium growers to change their crop to the Turkish variety, which would thus allow us to have a use for it (morphine) and deal with the severe shortages the NHS is facing? If you’re going to spend the money, you might as well get something for it…
And for the record, drugs are seriously good fun 😉
Alisa:
Coca is a funny one. I’m not sure it could be economically grown in the US, even if legal. Poppies, well, the Golden Crescent will probably fail in the face of a legal international trade in opium and opiate drugs of abuse. It’s like marijuana: Sure, you can make the seeds sprout pretty much wherever, but quality of product is a lot harder to manage.
What makes the GC attractive now as a place to grow opium is, more than anything, the lack of a government capable of even a poor and inadequate eradication program. They can’t compete in either quantity or quality with Laos/Cambodia/Thailand. Hell, not even 10-20 years ago some bright boy in the Golden Triangle of SE Asia got the bright idea to try to grow opium in Mexico. Now Mexico produces better opium than the GC, and they mostly send it to the US, which isn’t a big heroin market anyway.
Basically, GC opium is not an economic engine that would exist but for the market-distorting power of drug enforcement. It’s like the Renault or LeCar or Fiat of drugs: apart from protectionism, even Chevrolet could offer better stuff for less.
(Is anybody besides me offended at the post-9-11 “Every time you hit a joint, you’re funding TERRORISM!” ads? I’m supposed to be a drug warrior and even I felt insulted by those)
Disclaimer:
When I responded above, I expected it would get a reaction. Since Samizdata is, IMHO, the most intelligent (reasonable?) blog currently existing, I also expected wisely thought out counter-responses. I was not disappointed for which I thank you.
I’m more than a little hostile about the whole subject of un-restricted (note: I didn’t say “should be prohibited’) intoxicants. Recently an underage drunken fool threw a firework into my youngest (14) son’s face as he was passing by. He only just escaped losing an eye although he’s had 4 surgurys so far. So, I’m not entirely neutral and rational about the whole subject.
Yes, I do count drugs and alcohol in the same category.
And yes again, it is for my children. That’s some of the obligations I accepted when they were born. Protect and educate them, then hand them a suitcase as a graduation present.
Onward:
I’m not saying that prohibition works. It doesn’t. Never has. Just look at the US in the 30’s.
However, I not sure legalizing all drugs immediately will work. Will there be education for the soon-to-be legal current and first-time users? Are we supposed to wait until the Darwinian solution is achieved and the only ones left are those who can handle it?
Yes, you own your own body and should be able to do anything you want with it – until it adversely affects others around you.
I agree that it’s not the drugs but the addiction. I think one follows the other however.
No, I don’t have a simple solution to the drug problem. Do any of you? If you think buying the Afghani crop will solve it, then you should look at the results of the CIA’s program in the 60’s to buy the same type crop in SE Asia. It just created more corruption etc. I saw it with my own eyes. It failed miserably.
My last line in the original post is still something I fear. The power-hungry are always trying to hand us “enough rope”.
I just don’t know the right answer. All of your responses have swayed me quite a bit toward the legalization side. I’m afraid, however, we’re in for a bumpy ride as someone once said.
I can’t return the rose-colored specs. I threw them away. I’m trying to see the world without them but it’s difficult. Hopefully, with good information such as you all have provided, there will be clarity.
Thanks,
Winger
PS – I only read one article by Chomsky, years ago and that was enough. As I said, I’m looking for clarity not, err, well, OK -Bull Stuffing.
Winger:
My heart goes out to you and your son. And you earn a lot of respect in my book for being rational enough in the face of such grief to recognize that you may not be perfectly rational about it. You know best what happened to your son, but my guess is the keywords are “underage” (or young, to be specific), and “fool.” Liberty should come with A LOT of responsibility – and since the incident does not sound like an accident, and the punk actually threw an explosive at someone else, he should serve time and pay through the nose. Only when you make it clear that using an intoxicant is no excuse for anti-social behavior, and enforce stiff penalties against the behavior in question (and not against the substance use) can legalization work. As I am sure you realize, all the current bans and limitations failed to protect your son, and the perp probably got off with a slap on the wrist only to learn no lesson from this whole thing and maybe do something like that again.
Do I have an answer? No, but I know enough to stop digging when I find myself in a hole. What is being done currently is clearly not working. However, when something of the other flavor has been tried (think the Netherlands, Switzerland), the result has generally not been raving maniacs in SUVs on LSD or speed plowing into crowds of people, unlike what alarmists would have you believe. So while a final solution and a road map to get there may not be available, a direction may still be.
Once again, apologies for the snappy tone above, and the best of luck (under the tragic circumstances) to you and your son.
As a matter of course, one should assume that much if not most of the money spent on Afghani opium ends up in the hands of the terrorist network (whether the Taliban or AQ actually gets the money is a moot point). That’s why the West hasn’t bought their opium, and tried to eradicate it instead. Is it a good idea? No. Should we buy their opium? No.
What we need to do is eliminate the international bad guys from the region, THEN start buying their crop and/or give them some other cash crop to grow and/or [insert solution here]. That way, the worst that happens is that the money ends up with some regional bad guy – a problem we can contain peacefully. But as long as Afghanistan remains the financial base of AQ, no purely economic solution can be tenable.
It feels a little like I’m advocating a chicken-and-egg solution here – it’s tough to eliminate AQ as long as they have that financial base, and it’s tough to do anything about that financial base as long as AQ is there. But I can’t see much else that would be helpful. Anyone else got a suggestion?
Winger: I have been having the same concerns as you are about the transition period. But think about it: do you really think that the situation can get significantly worse than it is right now? If you do, maybe you are not aware of the current extent of the problem? Think about prohibition and what happened after it was abolished. Alcoholism has always been a significant problem for many people, but did it get significantly worse past prohibition? (Or, for that matter, did it get significantly better thanks to prohibition?) There will always be people with addiction problems, not just drugs and alcohol: one can potentially become addicted to anything, including food, sex, internet (it is in the “news” right now), power… There also will aways be people who behave unsocially, including causing damage to others. (This, BTW, has nothing to do with addiction: the guy that hurt your son is a sociopath, and not because of alcohol). I can see only two real social problems that are directly related to drugs, and that is “driving under influence” (or “operating heavy machinery”, as they like to print on antihistamines’ bottles). But as someone pointed out above, so is doing the same while extremely tired. The other one is children to addicts, but then again, what about children who are neglected, with no addiction involved?
During prohibition Raymond Chandler claimed that some club owners paid the LAPD to work the doors. Not only was their business unimpeded but they had some hard lads at front of house to keep rowdies, drunks and undesirables away. Worked brilliantly. Anyone who believes prohibition works should read Chandler. The Marlowe books are set in the aftermath but contain many references to the previous era.
Winger,
Sorry to hear that and all my best wishes to your lad. Having lived in many British inner cities the time around November 5th is a nightmare. I was almost taken out once by a volley of rockets fired horizontally across the A-11 in Stepney. I don’t know what should be done. I like fireworks but for a whole month it turns into Beirut. I really have no idea. It’s mainly kids so maybe rigorously enforcing an 18 age limit for fireworks might help but God knows. Anyway, all the best to your son.
Oh, and there’s some disturbingly clever and well-read folk around Samizdata.
I do: they should be slapped silly by their parents, and their parents should receive the same treatment (adjusted accordingly for adults) if they fail to do so.
Um…that might work, too.
Alisa,
Much though the slapping appeals to me… I once saw a barney in a pub because the parents of some 14 year old kids objected to the landlord banning the kids. Their line was that it was unfair because they’d also been banned from every other boozer in the area… There is nothing that can be done without aggressive policing. The level of moral disconnection displayed by some of this country’s parents is mind-blowing. Would you be happy with your son hanging round a pub at 14? Would you remonstrate because the bar-tender refused to blatently break the law by serving him?
Well, this is waaaay OT already, but: seeing as you were working up a girl in a pub at 16…Seriously though, I don’t think that there should be laws that regulate kids’ behavior, but i do think that parents should be made accountable for that behavior (or misbehavior, as the case is likely to be). I have no problem with my son going to a pub with me and my husband (well, husband would mind, and my son as well, as he hates people smoking next to him). Of course, if the pub owner objects, that’s his business and all that. BTW, I always had the impression that that is how things
arewere in England: older kids going down the pub with their parents?Oh, and unfortunately, I don’t go to pubs either, because of the smoking, but that is beside the point, of course.
I wasn’t “working up” a girl. A kiss would have been a result. Anyway… You should visit English pubs, no smoking at all. Of course parents should regulate their kids. And pubs in the UK almost all split two ways – family ones that do food and other ones. And I don’t believe there is a general moral crisis – I just think there’s a small minority of people who for whatever reasons are utterly beyond the pale of normal society. And a 16 year old in a pub was normal in my day.
But you’re right Alisa, this thread is way OT. It’s been that way from the start.
Thanks to all for the kind comments.
Regarding drug/alcohol control:
I lived and worked in Western Europe, mostly the UK, (yes, I’m a Yank) in the mid-70’s when Rotterdam, among other places, was wide-open drug-wise and I have to say that I never felt threatened by drug-related crime when I was there. So it is easy for me to accept the validity of the legalization argument.
Most of my friends at the time smoked hash (grass didin’t seem to be available) and they were OK. And yes, I “experimented” in my youth. Perhaps having to pull myself out of alcoholism exacerbated (is that the right word?)by Vietnam war service has made me sensative to the dangers of addiction. I know I could have easily done a whole lot of more of that good stuff we got in Rotterdam and so I avoided it. Now that was hard.
Coming from an authoritarian background (I’m a service brat and retired soldier), it is difficult to discard my past prejudices. I’m trying as I am beginning to see the problems more clearly.
One big reason I would like to see a major change in drug laws/legalization is that I think it might break up the cycle of crime and poverty that exists in disadvantaged areas. That’s all cliches, I know, but I’m trying to not point of specfics as the problem exits in many (surprising) places.
Plamus is right. The bottom of this hole is nowhere in sight. I think, though, that if logical arguments continue to be presented as they are here, there may be hope for the future.
BTW: Recent consultations with the doctors (I have excellent medical insurance) give great hope. Eventually my son will see out of the damaged eye again. Unfortunately, the punk got away.
I blame it all on George Washington (it happened on the 4th of July) and the Guy (who had to have influenced the fireworks aspect), not to mention he Chinese.
Like drugs and alcohol, restricting fireworks to adults didn’t work where I live so the law was changed to allow all types of fireworks a couple days either side of the holiday. This, of course, means that kids are blowing things up in the park across the street (after 11 PM) from the middle of June until August. Oh, well.
Nick: a kiss is still a kiss:-) (Wasn’t “working up” the expression you used? I seem to be separated by an uncommon language yet again…)
Winger: I wish your son a speedy recovery. Although, unlike you, I blame it all on the other GW.