By: Zulmay K. Afzali
Spokesman Ministry of Counter Narcotics Islamic Republic of Afghanistan

We Afghans have always been an inquisitive and open-minded-people, but some of our biggest disasters came from recklessly importing bad ideas.

Communism was one, and the Soviet invasion that tried to install it left a million of us dead and another million permanently disabled, even ignoring the horrible civil war that followed. The twisted version of Islam brought by Al-Qaeda and adopted by the Taliban was another disastrous import, completely alien to Afghanistan’s own open-hearted religious tradition. Now a European Lobby Group has turned up with an equally deadly idea.

The Senlis Council, a new and apparently rich lobbying organization with a large professional staff and offices in Geneva, Paris, and London has sprung up almost overnight, making unsupported claims in favour of legalizing opium at the production end rather than at the point of consumption.

This is decidedly odd. European or North Americans who support the legalization (or decriminalization) of narcotics usually propose to stop spending fortunes filling prisons with drug traffickers and people guilty of possession. They claim that even if addiction increased, the victims would have only themselves to blame, while today’s victims are innocents mugged by junkies. Whatever the merits of this arguments (which I find unconvincing), it recommends that a working democratic system voluntarily relaxes restriction at the end of the process supply and demand. The senlis Council goes it backwards, ignoring whatever heroin is legal or illegal in the west, merely encouraging afghans to grow more and more opium.

We find this irresponsible, for what would happen if the world’s supply of heroin increased exponentially, while remaining illegal in the western countries where most of it is consume? Presumably it would become cheap enough that even schoolchildren could afford it and the growing volume of smuggled drugs would overwhelm the already over-stretched capabilities of your police. As heroin grew ever more abundant and cheaper, presumably there would be more smugglers chasing smaller profits, increasing gang wars and other bloodshed related to Narco-trafficking. Eventually, perhaps, western countries would throw up their hands in despair and make these drugs legal out of sheer impotence, but how far would your countries need to degenerate into chaos and violence before that happened? Here in Afghanistan, where we have seen chaos and bloodshed first hand, this idea from the Senlis Council sounds senseless to us.

This is not the only unconvincing argument from senlis. They Claim, without showing evidence, that world’s pharmaceutical industries face a dire shortage of legal opium, so the Afghans government should let poppy farmers plant as much as they wish. The UN reports that Afghanistan Grows almost 93 % of the world’s totally supply of opium, so afghans production is four times greater than all else combined. Even if the remaining 20 percent was all legal ( it is not, for Indochina grows illegal opium as well), does senlis seriously believe that the world’s hospitals need four times more opium than they use now it seems now? It seems unlikely.

If our planet needs more opium at all, it could be provided by the Turks, the Indians or any other country internationally licensed to grow poppies, as these are peaceful, secure places where the narcotic crop is strictly controlled. Even legalizing a small part of Afghanistan’s opium crop invites disaster, for in a country where government’s grip on law and order is still tenuous, how could we let five percent of our poppy farmers keep growing and stop the remainder? If we wanted a return to civil war, that could do it.

Senlis Also writes that if the world permitted unrestricted opium farming, Afghanistan’s poor poppy farmers would be lifted from poverty. First of all, many of our poppy farmers are not as poor as some people think: a significant amount of opium is grown by rich landlords who pay their landless farm laborers the same pittance that they would earn harvesting carrots. Moreover many middle-ranked poppy farmers--- well-off men with well-irrigated land that can grow two abundant crop a year – declare quite openly that they grow poppy in order to buy a second wife. This does not strike us as good excuse.

Meanwhile opium that is carefully controlled and legally farmed in India fetches about $25 a kilo, while legal Afghans crop sells for 600 percent more or $150 a kilo. If the price of illegal opium fell to legal levels, our farmer would be better off growing onions, so the senlis argument that spreading poppy farming cures us of rural poverty remains unconvincing.

Even as addiction grows and needle-junkies proliferate in our cities, there is a still darker problem that senlis never mentions. Afghanistan’s narco-gangsters are increasingly linked to the terrorists blowing up our soldiers and your peacekeeping forces. Already a sea of illegal Drug money threatens to wash away the fragile afghan democracy that so many of your young people gave their lives to help us build. Already drug money corrupts some of your official and tempts our youth to lose hope for a clean, legal future. If this continues and become enslaved to a her lombian Medelin Cartel, just as we were with the Taliban, will tomorrow’s drug lords be on your side or on Al Qaeda’s? My Government is eradicating poppy and proud of it.

Here in Afghanistan some ideas work fine. Our 3,000-year-old traditions of tribal democracy help us fit comfortably into a newer international model. But legalizing poppy farming and running up the white flag in the war on illegal drugs, is an idea that we afghans can live without –Just as we can live without any more irresponsible policies from organizations such as The Senlis Council or any idea in that Regard.

For any comments or question please contact via email: Zulmay_k@mcn.gov.af    Via Phone: 0093+798-242-837  

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