[R-G] Afghans Pressed By U.S. on Plan To Spray Poppies

[Anthony Fenton]

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
The New York Times

October 8, 2007 Monday
Late Edition - Final

SECTION: Section A; Column 0; Foreign Desk; Pg. 1

LENGTH: 1693 words

HEADLINE: Afghans Pressed By U.S. on Plan To Spray Poppies

BYLINE: By KIRK SEMPLE and TIM GOLDEN; Kirk Semple reported from  
Kabul, and Tim Golden from Washington.

DATELINE: KABUL, Afghanistan, Oct. 7

BODY:


After the biggest opium harvest in Afghanistan's history, American  
officials have renewed efforts to persuade the government here to  
begin spraying herbicide on opium poppies, and they have found some  
supporters within President Hamid Karzai's administration, officials  
of both countries said.

Since early this year, Mr. Karzai has repeatedly declared his  
opposition to spraying the poppy fields, whether by crop-dusting  
airplanes or by eradication teams on the ground.

But Afghan officials said the Karzai administration is now re- 
evaluating that stance. Some proponents within the government are  
pushing a trial program of ground spraying that could begin before  
the harvest next spring.

The issue has created sharp divisions within the Afghan government,  
among its Western allies and even American officials of different  
agencies. The matter is fraught with political danger for Mr. Karzai,  
whose hold on power is weak.

Many spraying advocates, including officials at the White House and  
the State Department, view herbicides as critical to curbing  
Afghanistan's poppy crop, officials said. That crop and the opium and  
heroin it produces have become a major source of revenue for the  
Taliban insurgency.

But officials said the skeptics -- who include American military and  
intelligence officials and European diplomats in Afghanistan -- fear  
that any spraying of American-made chemicals over Afghan farms would  
be a boon to Taliban propagandists. Some of those officials say that  
the political cost could be especially high if the herbicide destroys  
food crops that farmers often plant alongside their poppies.

''There has always been a need to balance the obvious greater  
effectiveness of spray against the potential for losing hearts and  
minds,'' Thomas A. Schweich, the assistant secretary of state for  
international narcotics issues, said in an interview last week in  
Washington. ''The question is whether that's manageable. I think that  
it is.''

Bush administration officials say they will respect whatever decision  
the Afghan government makes. Crop-eradication efforts, they insist,  
are only part of a new counternarcotics strategy that will include  
increased efforts against traffickers, more aid for legal agriculture  
and development, and greater military support for the drug fight.

Behind the scenes, however, Bush administration officials have been  
pressing the Afghan government to at least allow the trial spray of  
glyphosate, a commonly used weed-killer, current and former American  
officials said. Ground spraying would likely bring only a modest  
improvement over the manual destruction of poppy plants, but  
officials who support the strategy hope it would reassure Afghans  
about the safety of the herbicide and make eradication possible.

Aerial spraying, they add, may be the only way to make a serious  
impact on opium production while the Taliban continues to dominate  
parts of southern Afghanistan.

On Sunday, officials said, a State Department crop-eradication expert  
briefed key members of Mr. Karzai's cabinet about the effectiveness  
and safety of glyphosate. The expert, Charles S. Helling, a senior  
scientific adviser to the department's Bureau of International  
Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, met with, among others, the  
ministers of public health and agriculture, both of whom have opposed  
the use of herbicides, an Afghan official said.

For all the controversy over herbicide use, there is no debate that  
Afghanistan's drug problem is out of control. The country now  
produces 93 percent of the world's opiates, according to United  
Nations estimates. Its traffickers are also processing more opium  
into heroin base there, a shift that has helped to increase  
Afghanistan's drug revenues exponentially since the American-led  
invasion in 2001.

A United Nations report in August documented a 17 percent rise in  
poppy cultivation from 2006 to 2007, and a 34 percent rise in opium  
production. Perhaps more important for the effort to stabilize  
Afghanistan, officials said, the Taliban has been reaping a windfall  
from taxes on the growers and traffickers.

The problem is most acute in the southern province of Helmand, a  
Taliban stronghold. It produced nearly 4,400 metric tons of opium  
this year, almost half the country's total output, United Nations  
statistics show.

Moreover, as Afghanistan's opium production has soared, the  
government's eradication efforts have faltered. Federal and  
provincial eradication teams -- using sticks, sickles and animal- 
drawn plows -- cut down about 47,000 acres of poppy fields this year,  
24 percent more than last year but still less than 9 percent of the  
country's total poppy crop.

And even that effort had to be negotiated plot by plot with growers.  
Powerful and politically connected landowners were able to protect  
their crops while smaller, weaker farmers were made the targets. The  
eradication program was so spotty that it did little to discourage  
farmers from cultivating the crop, American and European officials said.

''The eradication process over the past five years has not worked,''  
Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the United Nations Office  
on Drugs and Crime, said in an interview. ''This year, it was a farce.''

The Americans have been pushing the Afghan government to eradicate  
with glyphosate for at least two years. According to current and  
former American officials, the subject has been raised with President  
Karzai by President Bush; Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice;  
Stephen J. Hadley, the national security adviser; and John P.  
Walters, the director of national drug-control policy.

American officials thought they had the Karzai administration's  
support late last year to begin a small-scale pilot program for  
ground spraying in several provinces. But that plan was derailed in  
January after an American-educated deputy minister of public health  
presented health and environmental concerns about glyphosate at a  
meeting of the Karzai cabinet, Afghan and American officials said.

Since then, Mr. Karzai has said he opposes spraying of any kind.

''President Karzai has categorically rejected that spraying will  
happen,'' Farooq Wardak, Afghanistan's minister of state for  
parliamentary affairs, said in a recent interview. ''The collateral  
damage of that will be huge.''

Yet in the weeks since the latest United Nations drug report, the  
Bush administration's lobbying appears to have made new headway. It  
has already won the backing of several members of Mr. Karzai's  
government and the spray advocates here are now trying to swing other  
key Afghan officials and Mr. Karzai himself, one high-level Afghan  
official said

''We are working to convince the key ministers and President Karzai  
to accept this strategy,'' said the official, who supports spraying  
but asked not to be identified because of the issue's political  
delicacy. ''We want to convince them to show some power. The  
government has to show its power in the remote provinces.''

General Khodaidad, Afghanistan's acting minister of counternarcotics  
(who, like many Afghans, goes by only one name), said in an interview  
last week that ground spraying is under careful consideration by the  
Afghan government. A high-level official of the Karzai administration  
said he believed some spraying might take place during this growing  
season, which begins in several weeks.

The American government contends that glyphosate is one of the  
world's safest herbicides -- ''less toxic than common salt, aspirin,  
caffeine, nicotine and even vitamin A,'' according to a State  
Department fact sheet.

One well known supporter of glyphosate as a counternarcotics tool is  
the American ambassador in Kabul, William B. Wood, who arrived in  
April after a four-year posting as ambassador to Colombia. There, Mr.  
Wood oversaw the American-financed counternarcotics program, Plan  
Colombia, which relies heavily on the aerial spraying of coca, the  
raw material for cocaine.

Mr. Wood has even offered to have himself sprayed with glyphosate, as  
one of his predecessors in Colombia once did, to prove its safety, a  
United States Embassy official in Kabul said.

But among European diplomats here, a far greater concern than any  
environmental or health dangers of chemical eradication is the  
potential for political fallout that could lead to more violence and  
instability.

Those diplomats worry particularly that aerial spraying would kill  
food crops that some farmers plant with their poppies. European  
officials add that any form of spraying could be cast by the Taliban  
as American chemical warfare against the Afghan peasantry.

The British have been so concerned that on the eve of Mr. Karzai's  
trip to Camp David in August, Prime Minister Gordon Brown called  
President Bush and asked him not to pressure the Afghan premier to  
use herbicides, according to several diplomats here.

In something of a reversal of traditional roles, officials at the  
Pentagon and Central Intelligence Agency have also challenged the  
White House and State Department support for spraying, raising  
concerns about its potential to destabilize the Karzai government,  
current and former American officials said.

American officials who support herbicide use do not dismiss such  
concerns. They say an extensive public-information campaign would  
have to be carried out in conjunction with any spraying effort to  
dispel fears about the chemical's impacts.

Mr. Schweich, the assistant secretary of state, emphasized that a new  
American counter-narcotics strategy for Afghanistan, introduced in  
August, went far beyond eradication. He noted that it would increase  
punishments and rewards, including large amounts of development aid,  
to move farmers away from poppy cultivation. It also calls for more  
forceful eradication, interdiction and law enforcement efforts, and  
closer coordination of counternarcotics and counterinsurgency  
efforts, which until now have been pursued separately.

''We will do what the Afghan government wants to do,'' Mr. Schweich  
said, referring to the use of herbicides. The Bush administration, he  
added, simply wants to ensure that the Afghans ''have all the facts  
on the table.''

URL: http://www.nytimes.com

GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: Above, a farmer in southern Afghanistan walks  
between a poppy field on his left and grass to feed animals on his  
right.(PHOTOGRAPH BY TYLER HICKS/THE NEW YORK TIMES)
President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, left, has opposed spraying but  
his administration is re-evaluating that stance. A United Nations  
report estimates that the country's cultivation of poppy buds like  
those at right has risen 17 percent in the last year.(PHOTOGRAPH BY  
MASSOUD HOSSAINI/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE -- GETTY IMAGES)(PHOTOGRAPH BY  
HUMAYOUN SHIAB/EUROPEAN PRESSPHOTO AGENCY)(pg. A12)