(written before
the attack)
URL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v01/n922/a09.html
Newshawk: Terry Liittschwager
Pubdate: Tue, 22 May 2001
Source: Los Angeles Times (CA)
Copyright: 2001 Los Angeles Times
Contact: letters@latimes.com
Website: http://www.latimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/248
Author: Robert Scheer
Enslave your girls and women, harbor anti-U.S. terrorists, destroy every vestige of
civilization in your homeland, and the Bush administration will embrace
you. All that matters is that you line
up as an ally in the drug war, the only international cause that this nation
still takes seriously.
That's the message sent with the recent gift of $43
million to the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan, the most virulent anti-American
violators of human rights in the world today.
The gift, announced last Thursday by Secretary of State Colin Powell, in
addition to other recent aid, makes the U.S.
the main sponsor of the Taliban and rewards that "rogue regime"
for declaring that opium growing is against the will of God. So, too, by the Taliban's
estimation, are most human activities, but it's the
ban on drugs that catches this administration's attention.
Never mind that Osama bin Laden still operates the leading
anti-American terror operation from his base in Afghanistan, from which, among
other crimes, he launched two bloody attacks on American embassies in Africa in
1998.
Sadly, the Bush administration is cozying up to the
Taliban regime at a time when the United Nations, at U.S. insistence, imposes sanctions on Afghanistan
because the Kabul government will not turn over Bin Laden.
The war on drugs has become our own fanatics'
obsession and easily trumps all other concerns. How else could we come to reward the Taliban, who has subjected
the female half of the Afghan population to a continual reign of terror in a
country once considered enlightened in its treatment of women.
At no point in modern history have women and girls
been more systematically abused than in Afghanistan where, in the name of
madness masquerading as Islam, the government in Kabul obliterates their
fundamental human rights. Women may not
appear in public without being covered from head to toe with the oppressive
shroud called the burkha , and they may not leave the house without being
accompanied by a male family member.
They've not been permitted to attend school or be treated by male
doctors, yet women have been banned from practicing medicine or any profession
for that matter.
The lot of males is better if they blindly accept the
laws of an extreme religious theocracy that prescribes strict rules governing
all behavior, from a ban on shaving to what crops may be grown. It is this last power that has captured the
enthusiasm of the Bush White House.
The Taliban fanatics, economically and diplomatically
isolated, are at the breaking point, and so, in return for a pittance of
legitimacy and cash from the Bush administration, they have been willing to
appear to reverse themselves on the growing of opium. That a totalitarian country can effectively crack down on its
farmers is not surprising. But it is
grotesque for a U.S. official, James
P. Callahan, director of the State
Department's Asian anti-drug program, to describe the Taliban's special methods
in the language of representative democracy: "The Taliban used a system of
consensus-building," Callahan said after a visit with the Taliban, adding
that the Taliban justified the ban on drugs "in very religious terms."
Of course, Callahan also reported, those who didn't
obey the theocratic edict would be sent to prison.
In a country where those who break minor rules are
simply beaten on the spot by religious police and others are stoned to death,
it's understandable that the government's "religious" argument might
be compelling. Even if it means, as
Callahan concedes, that most of the farmers who grew the poppies will now
confront starvation. That's because the
Afghan economy has been ruined by the religious extremism of the Taliban,
making the attraction of opium as a previously tolerated quick cash crop
overwhelming.
For that reason, the opium ban will not last unless
the U.S. is willing to pour far larger
amounts of money into underwriting the Afghan economy.
As the Drug Enforcement Administration's Steven
Casteel admitted, "The bad side of the ban is that it's bringing their
country--or certain regions of their country--to economic ruin." Nor did
he hold out much hope for Afghan farmers growing other crops such as wheat, which
require a vast infrastructure to supply water and fertilizer that no longer
exists in that devastated country.
There's little doubt that the Taliban will turn once again to the easily
taxed cash crop of opium in order to stay in power.
The Taliban may suddenly be the dream regime of our
own war drug war zealots, but in the end this alliance will prove a costly
failure. Our long sad history of
signing up dictators in the war on drugs demonstrates the futility of building
a foreign policy on a domestic obsession.