Bush's Faustian Deal With the Taliban --May 22, 2001 (fwd)

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Bush's Faustian Deal With the Taliban

By Robert Scheer

Published May 22, 2001 in the Los Angeles Times

 

Enslave your girls and women, harbor anti-U.S. terrorists, destroy

every vestige of civilization in your homeland, and the Bush

administration will embrace you. All that matters is that you line up

as an ally in the drug war, the only international cause that this

nation still takes seriously.

 

That's the message sent with the recent gift of $43 million to the

Taliban rulers of Afghanistan, the most virulent anti-American

violators of human rights in the world today. The gift, announced last

Thursday by Secretary of State Colin Powell, in addition to other

recent aid, makes the U.S. the main sponsor of the Taliban and rewards

that " rogue regime " for declaring that opium growing is against the

will of God. So, too, by the Taliban's estimation, are most human

activities, but it's the ban on drugs that catches this

administration's attention.

 

Never mind that Osama bin Laden still operates the leading

anti-American terror operation from his base in Afghanistan, from

which, among other crimes, he launched two bloody attacks on American

embassies in Africa in 1998.

 

Sadly, the Bush administration is cozying up to the Taliban regime at

a time when the United Nations, at U.S. insistence, imposes sanctions

on Afghanistan because the Kabul government will not turn over Bin

Laden.

 

The war on drugs has become our own fanatics' obsession and easily

trumps all other concerns. How else could we come to reward the

Taliban, who has subjected the female half of the Afghan population to

a continual reign of terror in a country once considered enlightened

in its treatment of women?

 

At no point in modern history have women and girls been more

systematically abused than in Afghanistan where, in the name of

madness masquerading as Islam, the government in Kabul obliterates

their fundamental human rights. Women may not appear in public without

being covered from head to toe with the oppressive shroud called the

burkha , and they may not leave the house without being accompanied by

a male family member. They've not been permitted to attend school or

be treated by male doctors, yet women have been banned from practicing

medicine or any profession for that matter.

 

The lot of males is better if they blindly accept the laws of an

extreme religious theocracy that prescribes strict rules governing all

behavior, from a ban on shaving to what crops may be grown. It is this

last power that has captured the enthusiasm of the Bush White House.

 

The Taliban fanatics, economically and diplomatically isolated, are at

the breaking point, and so, in return for a pittance of legitimacy and

cash from the Bush administration, they have been willing to appear to

reverse themselves on the growing of opium. That a totalitarian

country can effectively crack down on its farmers is not surprising.

But it is grotesque for a U.S. official, James P. Callahan, director

of the State Department's Asian anti-drug program, to describe the

Taliban's special methods in the language of representative democracy:

" The Taliban used a system of consensus-building, " Callahan said after

a visit with the Taliban, adding that the Taliban justified the ban on

drugs " in very religious terms. "

 

Of course, Callahan also reported, those who didn't obey the

theocratic edict would be sent to prison.

 

In a country where those who break minor rules are simply beaten on

the spot by religious police and others are stoned to death, it's

understandable that the government's " religious " argument might be

compelling. Even if it means, as Callahan concedes, that most of the

farmers who grew the poppies will now confront starvation. That's

because the Afghan economy has been ruined by the religious extremism

of the Taliban, making the attraction of opium as a previously

tolerated quick cash crop overwhelming.

 

For that reason, the opium ban will not last unless the U.S. is

willing to pour far larger amounts of money into underwriting the

Afghan economy.

 

As the Drug Enforcement Administration's Steven Casteel admitted, " The

bad side of the ban is that it's bringing their country--or certain

regions of their country--to economic ruin. " Nor did he hold out much

hope for Afghan farmers growing other crops such as wheat, which

require a vast infrastructure to supply water and fertilizer that no

longer exists in that devastated country. There's little doubt that

the Taliban will turn once again to the easily taxed cash crop of

opium in order to stay in power.

 

The Taliban may suddenly be the dream regime of our own war drug war

zealots, but in the end this alliance will prove a costly failure. Our

long sad history of signing up dictators in the war on drugs

demonstrates the futility of building a foreign policy on a domestic

obsession.

 

- - -

 

Robert Scheer Is a Syndicated Columnist.

 

2001 Robert Scheer

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References

 

1. http://www.robertscheer.com/

2. http://www.robertscheer.com/1_natcolumn

3. http://www.robertscheer.com/2_localla

4. http://www.robertscheer.com/3_scheerbytes

5. http://www.robertscheer.com/4_books

6. http://www.welfarewatch.org/

7. http://www.robertscheer.com/6_biography

8. http://www.robertscheer.com/2_localla

9. http://www.robertscheer.com/3_scheerbytes

10. http://www.robertscheer.com/4_books

11. http://www.welfarewatch.org/

12. http://www.robertscheer.com/6_biography