The perils of liberating Afghanistan: A new flood of opium/heroin worldwide

Vice President Teofisto Guingona will resent, I’m sure, the report that he was "snubbed" by US Secretary of State Colin Powell. Sorry to say – Tito led with his chin on that one.

Instead of speaking directly with Guingona, who’s concurrently Secretary of Foreign Affairs, Powell referred him to Asst. State Secretary James Kelly, whom Tito, incidentally, personally knows since Kelly visited him last September on a trip here to Manila.

Tito Guingona’s mistake was to try to make too big a publicity fuss over his seeking "clarification" of the terms of US troops being here to join our Armed Forces in Balikatan Kalayaan-Agila or 2002. If diplomatic consultations are going on and questions seeking clarification are being raised between states, they are normally conducted discreetly not in the full glare of media hype and grandstanding. Sure, he’s got the right to ask – but why attempt to garner headlines and milk applause from the oppositors and Leftists. It’s time Mr. Guingona decided whether he wants to remain on the GMA "team" or he wants out.

Parading himself as a "maverick" won’t help his image at this critical juncture. We’re not playing fun and games here: national interest and national security are involved.

If Vice President cum DFA Secretary Guingona continues to disagree with what President Macapagal-Arroyo and the National Security Council have already mapped out as our policy, then he should resign both his positions. That’s the only way of honor and delicadeza. After all, he was designated Vice President and Foreign Affairs Secretary by La Gloria, in a personal decision. The least he owes her is discretion, if he can’t give her loyalty.

In short, either stop rocking the boat – or get out of the boat.

* * *

It’s final: US President George W. Bush won’t have the time to made a side-trip to Manila after the conclusion of his three-nation visit to north Asia – namely to Japan, South Korea and the People’s Republic of China.

That he can’t come is best. A visit here these days of the American President would merely stir up more controversy, with Bush providing not just our own media but more than a hundred foreign correspondents, camped out in Manila, Basilan and Zamboanga, looking for a "war", with a target of opportunity.

Incidentally, with our Armed Forces launching an offensive in Sulu against the Abu Sayyaf, the usual critics and carpers are now grumbling that the US military personnel already in place here will also get involved in Sulu, not just in Basilan. And why not? If they’re here to "train" and assist our soldiers in the fight against the Abu Sayyaf, even as "trainors" they’re supposed to go along with our boys wherever that fight is conducted. And, after all, it’s never been a secret that the Sulu archipelago and Basilan are the main strongholds of the Abu Sayyaf.

This is a weird situation. When we’re waging war, and a war it is, it endangers our officers and men on the battle-line to have to explain to the public and the media every tactical decision and every anticipated move our military (and now the US troops) make. It reminds me of what some of my friends in the old Soviet KGB used to tell me. As one of them quipped: "Admittedly we spy on the Americans, as everybody knows, but it’s also ridiculously easy to find out about their plans, their latest technology, and their secrets. We have entire sections just scanning American newspapers, reportorial and technical magazines, popular mechanics journals, published analyses and reports, and film documentaries. It’s convenient to be spying on a free society – no sweat."

But of course. When the military clams up, fearing disclosure would imperil lives or compromise ongoing or future operations, we in the media condemn it as "a news black-out." We’re just doing our job. On the other hand, it may even be more important, at this crucial stage, to help our government and our Armed Forces and PNP do their job.

The Abus have been riding high for too long, disrupting the lives of peaceful folk in Mindanao, inflicting life and death nightmares on their victims, and giving us an international black-eye as a land plagued by kidnapping, murder (by beheading, too) and mounting instability.

As recent polls have clearly established, what the Filipino people want is that the Abus be crushed, pulverized and "finished" once and for all. The polls also show that the vast majority of Filipino feel that if the Americans want to help – what the hell, they’re welcome.

* * *

According to a report in the Financial Times of London (Monday, Feb. 11), Afghanistan’s search for a national figure to lead that country through the difficult period of transition could result in the return of its former king, Mohammad Zahir Shah, as head of state next June, when the interim term of its current leader, Hamid Karzai, and his 21-member committee expires.

The idea is that ex-King Zahir Shah (who’s in his mid-80s) may return from exile – where he’s lived near Rome after being ousted by his own cousin in 1973 – to become "head of state." The plan sees the King returning to Kabul in March to convene a loya jirga, or grand council of the tribes. The loya, then, could elect him as head of state. Then, according to a proposed script, Zahir Shah would name Hamid Karzai acting Prime Minister.

Under this new brief, the internationally-popular Karzai would run the government while preparing for general elections 18 months later.

Sounds like a good scenario, but in Afghanistan anybody who tries to make any prediction usually ends up with egg all over his face. The former king and Karzai have going for them that they’re both Pushtuns, belonging to the majority tribe which has dominated Afghanistan for generations. Pushtuns (also called "Pathans" by the Brits) comprise 40 percent of the 26 million "Afghans." On the other hand, Afghanistan – since its liberation from the cruel Taliban – has been lapsing back into lawlessness and anarchy, with warlords, tribal chieftains, and bandits fighting to control their own chosen fiefdoms.

No wonder Karzai begged the United Nations, the Americans and Europeans to help mobilize an Afghan army and expand their present Multilnational Force (now confined to peacekeeping in Kabul, the capital) to sufficient numbers to enforce "peace and order" in the rest of his country. If the UN and the Europeans get sucked into such a situation, I fear that their "security" troops may shortly find themselves battling warlords and tribal chiefs – in a new "Afghan War."

Poor Karzai. He’s an admirable, eloquent and earnest leader. The problem is that the more acclaimed he becomes abroad (and he travels overseas so frequently), the less effective he becomes at home. He has already attracted the "evil eye" of jealousy, envy, and rivalry. The dream of a united Afghanistan has always been elusive – even more now in a nation scarred by 23 years of incessant war and civil war, starving, bedeviled by drought, cowering before banditry and endemic feuds.

Afghanistan has never, in reality, been one nation. There are the Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazzaras, who comprised the victorious "Northern Alliance" which spearheaded the triumphant rebound – with US "bombing" and on-the-ground support – that swept the Taliban out of Kabul and rolled up the last Taliban and al-Qaeda strongholds. They’re demanding their share of leadership – or, perhaps even more likely, they’ll break away from "Afghanistan" into regional seats of power.

Even the Pushtuns have already begun fragmenting anew into their own clans, by tradition suspicious of and hostile to each other. There are tribes, and sub-tribes – the Afirids, Waziris, Mahsuds, Orakzais, Mohamands, and even so-called "powindahs", who are the nomadic Pushtuns.

* * *

In 1971 during the Indian-Pakistani war (which led to the breakaway of East Pakistan from West Pakistan and the creation of "Bangladesh"), I was able to spend much time, from a base in Lahore, in Pakistan’s northwest and southern Afghanistan. Having been a Rudyard Kipling fan, I stayed in Rawalpindi and later Peshawar, roving the Tribal Areas.

With the help of a Pakistani Air Force officer, a friend of mine, I was even able to go (my boyhood ambition) to the fabled Khyber Pass. The Pass has always been a "restricted" area on the frontier between Pakistan and Afghanistan, and the settlement there is actually named Landi Kotal (controlled by the Afridis).

To the casual eye, Landi Kotal was a disappointment. Here was no fabled caravanserai, but a squalid scatter of small buildings, although bustling as an Oriental market. One could find local handicrafts, curved Khyber knives, home-made Enfield rifles and other exotic makes of weaponry – but nothing spectacular. How was I to know that within the 10-kilometer stretch of Landi Kotal and the Khyber Pass, there were already opium-processing and heroin-refining cave laboratories run by the Afridis – which were supplying a growing market in Europe, the subcontinent, and even Asia.

* * *

This is what we’ll have to admit to be the next source of danger from liberated Afghanistan. It’s not the "Golden Triangle" of Thailand, Laos and Burma, but the "Muslim Crescent", which includes the Tribal Areas of Northwest Pakistan, Afghanistan, and southern Iran, which provide the bulk of the world’s opium.

It’s true that a few weeks ago, a consortium of 40 or more aid-donor countries pledged Afghanistan, through Karzai, assistance amounting to an initial $4.5 billion (out of $15 billion needed over the next decade) to rebuild Afghanistan and help feed its starving and refugee millions. The fact is that, with the four-year drought being lifted with the first snows and rainfalls, the Afghans will now return to their original cash crop – the cultivation of poppies and other narcotic plants.

USA Today (Jan. 20) warned that "when the poppies bloom in three to four months, (poppy growers) will milk the hardened capsule within each blossom. The white liquid will be rendered into opium, which some distant laboratory will process into heroin for addicts, primarily in Europe.

"Over the years . . . small-scale backyard cultivation has multiplied a thousandfold in Afghanistan, producing as much as 5,000 metric tons of opium in peak years."

The newspaper, whose correspondent Gregg Zoroya interviewed an elderly farmer in Kandahar, once a stronghold of the Taliban, elicited from Abdul Ghafer, 70, the information that he hopes to earn as much as $16,000 from his crop. Notes Zaroya: "In a country where the per capita gross domestic product is $800" that’s a tempting proposition.

The US daily revealed that the US used to bribe the Taliban to halt cultivation of poppies. As late as May last year, the US government gave the Taliban $43 million in aid as a "reward" for banning poppy-growing. (Up to a year ago, Afghanistan had supplied three-quarters of the world’s opium – including 90 percent of all opium and heroin peddled in Europe!)

Now, let’s brace ourselves for a return by Afghan growers – in their desperation – to this lucrative cash crop.

* * *

ERRATUM . . . In yesterday’s column (my own typographical error), the age of Vietnam’s legendary General Vo Nguyen Giap was given as 98. He’s 92, having been born in the year 1910. It was Giap, a former school teacher, who started out as an agitator for freedom from the French (spending a term of imprisonment for "sedition"), then went to China after being released to learn military tactics from the Chinese communist People’s Liberation Army. In 1945, under orders from Ho Chi Minh, Giap organized his own liberation army, the Vietnam Doc Lap Dong Minh Hoi (hence, Vietminh), a guerrilla force which, despite many military setbacks, finally defeated the French in Indo-China. After successfully masterminding the battle against the South Vietnamese and the Americans, culminating in the capitulation of Saigon in April 1975. Giap served as Minister of Defense of the People’s Republic of Vietnam, until his retirement from the ruling politburo. He never wrote about his own strategy or penned his memoirs, including his deviation in tactics from that of Mao Zedong, so Giap – while a military leader of the first rank – remains a shadowy figure. But his influence on concepts of guerrilla warfare and subversive war – although he spoke little about them – will continue to be for years to come the subject of study and analysis by a generation of military students.