Bush's Faustian Deal With the Taliban
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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.
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Robert Scheer Is a Syndicated Columnist.