Isabel Hilton (Guardian Utd): Just poppycock

[Jack Rabbit]

From the Guardian Unlimited (UK)
Dated Thursday December 4

Just poppycock
In Afghanistan and Colombia, America's allies in the war on terror should be its enemies in the war on drugs
By Isabel Hilton

In early November 2001, as the war in Afghanistan was getting under way, the United Nations held a press conference in Islamabad to announce the latest scores in the global drug eradication effort. Those journalists who bothered to attend were surprised to learn that the previous year the Taliban had all but eradicated the opium poppy from the areas it controlled.
At the time, it was the crimes of the Taliban regime - from its treatment of women and its love for Osama bin Laden to its promotion of heroin addiction among western youth - that were of interest. To discover that the Taliban had eradicated the opium poppy did not fit the picture of unhallowed evil that the moment demanded. The story made little impact. Even if it was true - as it undoubtedly was - there was a feeling that the Taliban did not really mean it: they probably had their fingers crossed. Praise was politically impossible.
Besides, if the story had been given more play it might have been noticed that in those parts of Afghanistan controlled by the Northern Alliance - who had successfully auditioned for the parts of noble heroes in the melodrama of the war against evil - opium production had risen sharply. Had too much attention been paid to that, it might have raised the question of what would happen if our new friends, the warlords, had the whole country in which to plant their favourite crop.
We know the answer to that now. After the fall of the Taliban, Afghanistan swiftly recovered its position as producer of two-thirds of the world's heroin and main supplier to Europe, including the UK.

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