Which war?

by | Mar 20, 2007


Tory MP, Douglas Carswell has been in Afghanistan. He’s come back optimistic, but believes the war-on-drugs is interfering with the war-on-terror:

We are winning precisely because we are fighting the Taliban with “hearts and minds”, not just militarily might. Success hinges on not driving the locals into supporting the enemy. Yet this is precisely what poppy eradication is starting to do.

Farmers grow poppies in Helmand for the same reason farmers decide what to grow the world over – because it is the rational thing to do. It is not part of a cunning scheme to flood the infidel West with cheap heroin. To a Pashtun farmer, poppies mean an instant cash-crop.

Advocates of poppy eradication like to argue that narcotics fuel the insurgency. The truth is the precise opposite… Fear of poppy eradication is mobilising local farmers to side with the Taliban. In the poppy growing Sanjin valley, the locals have teamed up with the Taliban and so that is now where our troops face the fiercest fighting.

Author

  • David Steven is a senior fellow at the UN Foundation and at New York University, where he founded the Global Partnership to End Violence against Children and the Pathfinders for Peaceful, Just and Inclusive Societies, a multi-stakeholder partnership to deliver the SDG targets for preventing all forms of violence, strengthening governance, and promoting justice and inclusion. He was lead author for the ministerial Task Force on Justice for All and senior external adviser for the UN-World Bank flagship study on prevention, Pathways for Peace. He is a former senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and co-author of The Risk Pivot: Great Powers, International Security, and the Energy Revolution (Brookings Institution Press, 2014). In 2001, he helped develop and launch the UK’s network of climate diplomats. David lives in and works from Pisa, Italy.

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