OPIUM. Josh Meyer has a good article in the LA Times about resource battles between the Pentagon and the DEA over opium. I suppose that I'm of two minds on using military assets for opium eradication in Afghanistan. On the one hand, it's clear that the Taliban is using the opium industry to fund its resurgence, so the traffic is a military problem. On the other, the idea of U.S. forces diverting time and resources to supporting DEA anti-opium operations seems like a hell of a waste, especially since I suspect that, while the DEA has chosen to talk up its eradication efforts as being part of the counter-insurgency campaign, that it's really interested in the destruction of the trade for its own sake. As a policy problem on its own merits, I could really care less about Afghan poppies and the effect that their destruction has on the price of heroin in Seattle or Amsterdam. Obviously, poppy destruction also has a negative political effect, since many Afghans rely on production for their livelihoods. Still, as long as the poppy trade remains illicit it's going to be easy for groups like the Taliban to take financial advantage. Pentagon claims that the poppy trade is "a law enforcement problem" leave me cold. The best solution would, of course, be legalization and regulation, but that's impossible for obvious and idiotic reasons. The next best option might be a look-the-other-way policy, unofficially recognizing the trade and not intervening in it too overtly, while at the same time trying to undercut Taliban efforts. Nevertheless, a difficult problem.
--Robert Farley
