Reporters Without Ideas

the UN Office and Drugs and Crime and the World Bank presented today in Washington D.C. a report entitled "Afghanistan's Drug Industry: Structure, Functioning, Dynamics, and Implications for Counter-Narcotics Policy, efforts to combat opium have achieved only limited success and have lacked sustainability".

Time, money and efforts continue to be invested by the "international community" in the production of documents that reaffirm, time and again, the same proposals and failing policies oftentimes in contradictions with each other (some examples can be found in the quotes below).

Not a single "reporter" (reporting seems to be the only activity of international organizations) proposes original or creative solutions to policies that have triggered the same outcomes for over four decades. Is it because they are not able, or because they are not allowed?

"History teaches us that it will take a generation to render Afghanistan opium-free," said Antonio Maria Costa, Executive Director of UNODC. "But we need concrete results now, for example by doubling the number of opium-free provinces from the current six in 2007. I therefore propose that development support to farmers, the arrest of corrupt officials and eradication measures be concentrated in half a dozen provinces with low cultivation in 2006 so as to free them from the scourge of opium. Those driving the drug industry must be brought to justice and officials who support it sacked."

"Efforts to discourage farmers from planting opium poppy should be concentrated in localities where land, water, and access to markets are such that alternative livelihoods are already available." said Alastair McKechnie, World Bank Country Director for Afghanistan. "Rural development programs are needed throughout the country and should not be focused primarily on opium areas, to help prevent cultivation from further spreading."

"Development aid organizations need to be more diligent in their use of the hawala system to prevent their funds from becoming intermingled with illicit transfers," said Doris Buddenberg, UNODC Country Representative for Afghanistan and co-editor of the report. "Evidence suggests that banks in industrialized countries as well as in the region play an important role in transferring money used to purchase illicit drugs."

"The critical adverse development impact of actions against drugs is on poor farmers and rural wage labourers," said William Byrd, World Bank Economist and co-editor of the report. " Any counter-narcotics strategy needs to keep short-run expectations modest, avoid worsening the situation of the poor, and adequately focus on longer term rural development. "