With lives threatened, livelihoods wither

In his NYT op-ed, Joel Hafvenstein, who worked on an alternative livelihoods program in Helmand, offers a vivid account of how our counternarcotics strategy (and our development strategy in general) has collapsed in the absence of security:

Afghanistan’s Drug Habit
Sept 20 (NYT):

... By May 2005, we had paid out millions of dollars and had some 14,000 men on the payroll simultaneously. The program buoyed the provincial economy, and would have made a fine launching pad for long-term alternatives to poppy.

Security was our Achilles’ heel. There was a new American military base by the graveyard on the edge of town, but the few score Iowa National Guard members there lacked the manpower and the local knowledge to protect us. We could not afford the professional security companies in Kabul, most run by brash veterans of Western militaries. Then, just before Christmas, some of our engineers were carjacked. We resorted to the only remaining source of protection: the provincial police.

We soon found that at their best, the Helmand police forces were half-organized militias with charismatic leadership and years of combat experience. At their worst, the policemen were bandits, pederasts and hashish addicts. Our local guard captain was one of the better ones, but he was still far from reliable...read Afghanistan’s Drug Habit

His conclusion is particularly apt...

Nothing has cost President Hamid Karzai more popularity in the south than the sense that unscrupulous gunmen are back in control. Security was the Taliban’s main selling point when it took control of the country in the 1990’s; it could be again.