'Legalise the poppy trade'
2007-02-14 23:30
London - Counter-narcotics policies in Afghanistan need to be overhauled urgently before they push the people of southern Afghanistan into the arms of the Taliban insurgency, a security think tank said in a report published on Wednesday.
A poppy eradication programme that began last month has already sparked a new wave of violence, said Norine MacDonald, the president of the Senlis Council, a European security think tank.
She said the programme was costing Nato the popular support it needed to counter a looming Taliban offensive.
"We are losing all the friends that we gained when we liberated Afghanistan from the clutches of the Taliban in 2001 and we are transforming them into our enemies," she said.
"We ourselves have turned southern Afghanistan into a recruitment camp for the Taliban."
The Senlis report said the counter-narcotics effort was undermining Nato's counter-insurgency effort, depriving the alliance of support just as the Taliban was gearing up for a spring offensive.
It proposed pilot programs to license the poppy trade to produce legal drugs such as codeine and morphine.
Afghan, UN and Western anti-narcotics officials have dismissed the notion of licensed opium production.
They say there is inadequate international demand for the drug for pharmaceutical uses and it would only fuel further poppy growing.
- AP