If at First You Don’t Succeed Fail, Fail Again

[Daveparts]

On July 27, US Ambassador Thomas A. Schweich, Acting Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, discussed upcoming changes in the Bush administration’s counternarcotics policies in Afghanistan before a select group of Washington analysts.

The administration has been frustrated by the reemergence of the Afghan opium production, which has surged since the removal of the Taliban led government.
The crop yields have risen from virtually zero to 6,700 metric tons of opium with a value of over 3 billion dollars. This amount equals almost a third of Afghanistan’s total Gross Domestic Product.

Ambassador Schweich estimated it would take at least 5 years to get the problem “under control” Yeah right, this won’t hurt the checks in the mail and it will only take 5 years to get this drug problem under control. The ambassador continued that success would not mean and end to local production, which he termed impossible.

So if we start with the premise that the job is impossible and it’s going to take a minimum of 5 years we’ve effectively built failure into the structure of any program.Imagine NASA in 1962 starting with the premise of we can’t possibly reach the moon.But just like the moon missions success or not I bet this is going to be expensive. Plan Columbia, which has cost the US taxpayers 5 billion dollars a year since 2000 and has only succeeded in arming the Colombian military and paramilitaries.

Schweich’s plans mirrors plan Columbia almost exactly, it was as if they took the position papers and scratched off Plan Columbia and penciled in Plan Afghanistan. The plan is as follows.

1. Waging an effective public information campaign;

2. Providing opium farmers with alternative and legal opportunities for earning their
Livelihood;

3. Enhancing the capacity of Afghan law enforcement agencies to prosecute major narco- traffickers through their imprisonment or extradition;

4. Eradicating opium crops; and interdicting the flow of narcotics within and beyond
Afghanistan
A public information campaign? The message being, farmers growing opium is bad! Choose starvation for the good of the country. Maybe a DARE program Don’t Allow Relatives to Eat. That’s the ticket after all it’s worked so well in America.

Provide opium farmers with alternative and legal opportunities to earn a living. “Hello I’m your neighbor from the next village over near Kabul and I’d like to talk with you today about Amway products.” Plan Columbia encourages farmers to grow vegetables and coffee ignoring that these rural people have no means to transport the produce to market. In Afghanistan as well farmers have no transport the opium purchasers come to them and pay them in cash.

Enhance the capacity of Afghan law enforcement agencies meaning as in Plan Columbia attack helicopters, assault rifles and storm troopers. Wiping out entire villages for the crime of selling their crops and just trying to stay alive. Ignoring the corruption that permeates both societies, causing not an improvement in the situation but creating a roaring twenties mentality of rival gangs killing off rival gangs for control of the drug trade.

And finally in the ultimate example of if at first you don’t succeed fail fail again the ambassador calls for the eradication of the crops. Never having heard of Agent Orange the administration insists Dow does indeed let you do great things. Like spraying of herbicides on rural people denying them a crop to feed their families. But even more the ambassador calls for “interdicting the flow of narcotics within and beyond the borders of Afghanistan” that sounds like and open ended commitment to do anything we please even across borders.

Ambassador Schweich continues, “Since no alternative crop can match the income earned from opium production, it was essential to increase the potential costs of participating in narcotics trafficking by increasing the financial and legal costs for potential traffickers. To help achieve this goal, the United States will enhance its training and equipping programs and fund an increase in the size of Afghanistan’s counternarcotics police force so that the authorities can step up the arrest, prosecution, and incarceration of leading drug traffickers.”

It’s hard to imagine the room not bursting into laughing at this absurd proposal. To take the same programs that have failed every where they’ve been tried and calling for them yet again. To spend billions of dollars to bring about suffering and hardship for the weakest members of the society without changing the eventual outcome one bit. Without offering any reasonable alternative except guns and death and then to package it as promoting democracy.

Then when the peasants begin to shoot at the helicopters or join an insurgent group because he’s lost his farm, or family or means to earn a living to explain it away as, why he hates our freedom.


Nonetheless, the ambassador warned that there are no "silver bullets" for solving the Afghan drug problem. Success, in his words, will only come when the cultivation and distribution of Afghan opium has declined to such an extent that it no longer presents a major threat to the security of Afghanistan and to the rest of the international community.

Or we may cause the problems but we have no silver bullets to solve them and are not required to as long as we have plenty of the steel-jacketed variety.


Does anyone think this plan will work? Of course not, it’s not supposed to work. Failure is built in and success is measured by whatever metrics that the plan's administrators choose to use to evaluate it by. In five years the plan will be hailed as a success just as Plan Columbia has been hailed a success yet our streets are still awash in cocaine and the Colombians hate us more than ever. Our streets are already beginning to fill with potent Afghan heroin and the administration will insist that what is needed is just more of the same and they will promote more of the same, If at first you don’t succeed fail fail again.

[TomInTib]

1. I HAVE A GREAT IDEA!!!!

We could tell our people to just say "No".

I really think it will work.

Save a lot of money, too.


Great post, Daveparts.

[BridgeTheGap]

2. So the Taliban nearly erradicated poppy/opium production

in Afghanistan, with the exception of the area controlled by the Northern alliance, our erstwhile allies in the war on terra. The Taliban is given the boot and, imagine that, opium production soars!
Who'd a thunk it!?!
Leave it to those drug runn'n Bushs!

[Daveparts]

3. Ever notice?

Every where the CIA goes drug traffic grows. As in Vietnam and we took out Noriega in Panama because? Was it because he was selling drugs or was he competing in selling drugs. The Contras were, selling drugs the Colombians were selling drugs during a civil war making it difficult for multi national oil companies to protect their pipeline. The answer was of course send in the Marines.You can sell your drugs and you can fight your silly little civil war but if you interfere with this pipeline you are toast.

But now Hugo Chavez refuses to work with American officials on drug interdiction because he claims US officials are in cahoots with the traffickers, now where could he get a wild idea like that from?

[eridani]

4. A really obvious solution

Just buy the stuff from the farmers for more than the gangs pay them and cut out the middlemen. Process it and make it available to addicts at doctors' offices like they do in Switzerland.