Easier Said Than Done

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11 Dec 2008 05:42 pm

By Patrick Appel

Joe Klein reports on Afghanistan:

...the first step toward resolving the war in Afghanistan is to lay down the law in both Islamabad and Kabul. The message should be the same in both cases: The unsupervised splurge of American aid is over. The Pakistanis will have to stop giving tacit support and protection to terrorists, especially the Afghan Taliban. The Karzai government will have to end its corruption and close down the drug trade. There are plenty of other reforms necessary — the international humanitarian effort is a shabby, self-righteous mess; some of our NATO allies aren't carrying their share of the military burden — but the war will remain a bloody stalemate at best as long as jihadis come across the border from Pakistan and the drug trade flourishes.

To sum up: tell Pakistan to stop supporting terrorists; tell Afghanistan to stop growing opium; win war.

How do you stop the drug trade in Afghanistan without destroying its economy? Opium accounts for half of the country's licit GDP. And why are we likely to be any more successful in curtailing drug trafficking in Afghanistan than we have been in Latin America? The WaPo reported in September that: "Across the Andean region, the size of the coca crop has increased 18 percent in the past five years, a period during which the United States has spent $4 billion on anti-drug programs." We don't have the same sort of military presence in Bolivia that we have in Afghanistan, but I'm unconvinced that we can stop enough drug growing in Afghanistan to hinder terrorism. And even if we were able to destroy every opium plant in Afghanistan, that would likely mean more poverty and therefore more instability.

As for Pakistan, I'm all for cracking down on terrorist elements, but Pakistan is dangerously unstable and nearly bankrupted as a nation; the instability brought about by rooting out malfeasance could very well push it over the brink.

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