OxBlog

# Posted 7:30 PM by Ariel David Adesnik

OPIATE OF THE MASSES: A few days back, Josh declared that there are some definite reasons for optimism about the future of Afghanistan. While it is most definitely unfair (and perhaps even snarky) to take cheapshots at those who are on vacation, I can't help but wonder whether Josh's optimism reflects his possible consumption of Afghanistan's leading export.

Yesterday, the WaPo published an in-depth, front-page report on the pervasiveness of opium cultivation in Afghanistan. In part, this trend reflects pure desperation. Growing poppies is the only way to earn a secure living. The situation is so bad, in fact, that Muslim clerics are disregarding the tenets of the faith and entering the drug trade themselves.

On its own, however, desperation was not enough to fuel the massive spread of opium growth. Far more important is the impotence of the Afghan central government. The WaPo reports that

In the eastern province of Logar, convoys of trucks loaded with drugs and guarded by men armed with semiautomatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenade launchers travel toward the Pakistani border at least two or three times a week. The police chief says that his men don't have the firepower to stop them and that some well-armed militiamen are in league with the smugglers...

Police across the country not only do not have the might to confront well-armed drug smugglers, they also lack such basics as cars, telephones and radios.

In mountainous Badakhshan, the police have just one vehicle, a pickup truck. When police at headquarters in the provincial capital, Faizabad, receive a tip about a smuggling operation in a far-flung district, Nazari often has to send an officer on foot. A round trip can take a month and leave an officer in trouble with no way to call for help.

While all that is bad enough, the real impact of the opium crisis may not be felt until Afghanistan holds its first elections. In the same WaPo report,

Finance Minister Ashraf Ghani called the drug trade "a threat to democracy" as Afghanistan tries to prepare for elections next year. "Elections are expensive propositions," he said in an interview last week in the capital, Kabul. "The liquid funds from drugs, in the absence of solid institutions, could corrupt voting practices and turn them into a nightmare instead of a realization of the public will."

Bad as that sounds, it is an accurate description of exactly what happened to democracy in Colombia. Given that Afghanistan is far more impoverished than Colombia, the influence of drug money will be even greater. Moreover, the Colombian military is fundamentally committed to preserving the constitutional order, something that cannot be said of either the (non-existent) Afghan army or the provincial warlords and their militias.

So, yes, things are better than they were under the Taliban. And they always will be, because you can't put a price on the right to vote or speak your mind. But if the warlords and the drug barons aren't brought under control, corruption and violence will soon rob most Afghans of the personal freedoms that democratic citizens are supposed to enjoy.

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