Afghanistan: Blood flowers and greenbacks
Last week, U.S. President Bush promulgated another Executive Order to contain terrorist funding for the Iraq insurgency, the “aid and support” of those who want to bring failure to the new government and reconstruction process. I have a more comprehensive, Iraq-focused post on this issue over at my other blog. Yet this Executive Order is equally relevant for FPA Central Asia–because of its major omission, rather than its commissions.
In no place is Afghanistan mentioned in this order. No attempt is made to interrupt financial aid and dollar comfort to the Taliban, or al-Qaeda, or any other terrorist or insurgent groups that attack Afghanistan’s government officials or Afghanistan’s infrastructure.
Blood flowers
The Afghanistan war is fought in an area which has little in the way of an economy to sustain war: no oil, no timber, no gold, no diamonds or other precious substances. The sole economic self-help in this war occurs through an agricultural crop–the opium poppy. Right now, that crop has reached record-busting levels. Surrounding nations: Pakistan, Iran, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan are all feeling the security breach occasioned by the crime associated with this economy, and the war; they are also daily assaulted by the public health and safety problems occasioned by the use of poppy byproducts. It has become the means for changes of balance of power in the five-state Central Asian area, and its tentacles are felt in Russia, the Caucasus, Europe, the Americas–everywhere.
Money transfer
We need, in some ways, to look at the poppy as if it was a hydrocarbon or a blood diamond–because it is ubiquitous on the ground and it is not going away. Instead of trying to bulldoze every field in Afghanistan, the nexus points of money transfer for arms and aid need to be found and stopped in order to cut off war funding for the insurgency. This more surgical method has the power to take poppy eradication from the small, starving farmer to the international crime and terror advocates who amass money in the name of violence; it cuts off those officials and officers from a corrupt, destabilizing source of income; and it also tamps down on terrorist or criminal efforts in areas beyond Central Asia or the Middle East.
That said, why is Afghanistan being ignored in the new measures for money laundering and bank account interdiction? I plain, flat, have no idea. But it certainly seems like an unfortunate, nay, glaring oversight, and one that is not good for Afghanistan, or for any other part of Central Asia.
Further Reading:
At The Conjecturer, Joshua Foust discusses other major issues of U.S. media inattention to Afghanistan, including women’s rights, opium, and infrastructure. Right now he and I look to be separately covering parts of the same gaps . . .
Peter Marton has been focussing on opium eradication in a series of posts.
July 23rd, 2007 at 3:25 pm
Great points Bonnie!
I think Afghanistan is ignored deliberately. So long as Talibans and Al-Qaeda are alive, the Bush and Dick in the US will use that (and the so-called “war on terror̶
as an excuse to invade other countries.
A movie called Loose Change has done a great deal opening up another dimention to the problems you raise here.
July 23rd, 2007 at 10:24 pm
Yes, thank you 100x over (and not just for linking to me). My constant refrain in my writing on Afghanistan is how damned frustrating it is to see the place ignored, when it is the reason we had 9/11 in the first place. Especially from where I stand, it is hopelessly frustrating to see the political leadership deliberately ignore the place.
July 23rd, 2007 at 10:55 pm
[…] Ms. Boyd takes a look at President Bush’s self-declared power to confiscate the property of anyone who aids the Iraq insurgency. She asks a very cogent question: what about Afghanistan? In fact, one could be forgiven for thinking we’re ignoring Afghanistan at our own peril… a constant worry I have, one painfully evident in all my frustrated writing on the topic. […]
July 23rd, 2007 at 11:01 pm
[…] Ms. Boyd takes a look at President Bush’s self-declared power to confiscate the property of anyone who aids the Iraq insurgency. She asks a very cogent question: what about Afghanistan? In fact, one could be forgiven for thinking we’re ignoring Afghanistan at our own peril… a constant worry I have, one painfully evident in all my frustrated writing on the topic. […]