This diary started as a comment on markthshark's diary Haight-Ashbury Afghanistan.
Just a side note-- I'm not sure I buy the Haight-Ashbury analogy. Sure, there were a lot of people with drug problems there, but I'm not sure that's the first image that would come to everyone's mind. Afghanistan seem more like a modern-day "crack house." But I digress.
To the meat of it, then!
These are terribly black times in Afghanistan. Between the Soviets, the Taliban, and the current state of the American-allied regime, these people have been through hell.
Opium and opium farming are ingrained in Afghani culture. (See an excellent Slate article on the topic here.) It is surely not new that opium is used in Afghanistan, although I do not doubt that there has been an increase in chronic dependence.
The problem is not simply that Afghans have access to opium. Indeed, they always have had. Nor is it just the dangerous mix of easy drug access paired with brutal social upheaval. A significant problem is the fact that opium is severely criminalized under all recent regimes, and this one is no exception. Indeed, the US and NATO have strongly led an effort to "crack down" on the Afghani opium poppy "problem."
A public policy group called the Selis Council, which focuses on Afghanistan, has proposed a different approach. For believe me, ours isn't winning many hearts and minds. From the Senlis Council:
The situation in Afghanistan is a crisis. Putting the opium market in the hands of Afghan businessmen and farmers instead of in the warlords [sic] can only help build the Afghan state...
... this year’s 64% increase in Afghan opium production as illustrates a massive failure of the U.S.-led ‘war’ approach to drug control, and that the current strategy for drug control endangers the future of Afghanistan.
...
Treating the drug issue as a ‘war’ creates nothing more than a vicious circle of illegal trade, violence and the seriously endangers the future of the rule of law in Afghanistan. We need to redirect the policy response to this extremely lucrative illicit market if there is to be any chance of democracy winning the fight over corruption. If you continue this war approach, you will have the military domination of the country. What Afghanistan needs is more democracy and less war.
These guys sound smart. Let's listen to them.