The United Nations and the Taliban: An Unholy Alliance in the Name of Drug Control

Pino Arlacchi has a plan, and it is quite ambitious. Arlacchi, the director of the new United Nations Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention, believes that the worldwide supply of poppy and coca plants can be wiped out -- in the next 10 years. Arlacchi, formerly a federal prosecutor in Italy known for going after organized crime, may have picked a more difficult and more resilient opponent than the Mafia. But Arlacchi, as the United Nation's new drug czar, has made a deal that he hopes will make the impossible possible.

Last October, Arlacchi announced that he had cut a deal with the Taliban, the extremist Islamic militia that has seized control of two-thirds of Afghanistan, to eradicate that country's poppy crop. Afghanistan is the world's second largest producer of opium behind Myanmar and accounts for an estimated one-third of the world's supply of heroin. In the proposed arrangement, the Taliban has agreed to eliminate the production of the opium poppy in the lands under its control, in return for an estimated $25 million dollars per year over the next decade. If the deal is approved, the money will be spent on a combination of crop eradication and substitution, police training, and economic development.

Spending millions on source country eradication programs is nothing new -- the United States has spent billions on such programs in Latin America in recent years with limited success. Nor is it unheard of to funnel anti-drug money into countries with unstable governments and a record of human rights abuses -- witness the current U.S. plan to distribute money and military equipment in Colombia, which the Clinton administration conditionally certified in early 1998. But, the Taliban, who have only recently declared themselves rulers of a country that has been devastated by two decades of civil war, are not recognized as a legitimate government by the United Nations nor by any other country, save Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. The United States has not in recent years certified Afghanistan as a cooperating nation in global anti-drug policy, primarily because of poor returns on the country's drug policies.

And the Taliban's record on human rights is egregious, particularly as it concerns women. In their effort to gain control of the country and to impose their interpretation of Shari'a, or Islamic law, the Taliban have violated virtually every U.N. agreement on human rights.

Afghanistan's constitution, which guaranteed equal rights for women, was officially suspended in 1992. A succession of armed political factions citing adherence to Shari'a has, like the Taliban, restricted women's access to health care and barred them from employment and education. Reports of violence against women, including public beatings and rapes by soldiers and police, have been frequent since the late-1980s. Women's rights leaders have occasionally been targeted for abduction and assassination.

What makes the Taliban different is both the extreme degree of its discrimination against women and the fact that it has effectively institutionalized its policy. Initially, the policy held that women in public places must wear the burqua, a tent-like garment covering the body from head to toe. While this requirement may sound outrageous to many Westerners, it is not unusual in the context of a strict interpretation of Shari'a in Afghanistan. Indeed, it was already the standard of modesty for a majority of rural Afghan women. But the Taliban proceeded to bar women from appearing in public without a male relative to escort them. Then they were forbidden from speaking in public. Today, their father, brother, or husband must speak for them. Finally, the Taliban has forbidden women from walking in shoes that click against the pavement fearing that the sound would incite lustful thoughts in men. Women who violate these laws are commonly beaten or imprisoned or both.

The Taliban's policy of strict segregation of the sexes has also inhibited foreign aid workers from carrying out their missions. Male health care workers, for instance, are prohibited from providing services to female patients, and female workers who do not abide by the restrictions assigned to their sex have been subject to reprisals ranging from harassment to deportation. In some instances, aid agencies have persuaded the Taliban to look the other way. But, in the capital city of Kabul, women have been barred from hospitals -- even for emergency services -- until a new women-only facility can be opened.

Arlacchi is aware of the human rights concerns, although in an October interview with the New York Times he said they were beyond the scope of his mission. Nevertheless, one of the conditions of his proposed eradication plan is that the Taliban relax its restrictions on women's education and employment.

However, some experts warn that expecting the Taliban to comply with these conditions might be asking too much. A 1997 report from the U.N. Department of Humanitarian Affairs' mission to Afghanistan notes that the Taliban appears to have "no capacity to be flexible or amenable on substantive issues" and warned that "the Taliban's will to engage in cooperation is far from being the central issue. Its limited capacity to engage in substantial processes of policymaking or in the implementation of governmental programs remains the main obstacle to a meaningful cooperation." In December 1997, Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar rejected a U.N. demand for the restoration of education for women, calling it an "infidel policy" that grants "obscene freedom to women."

Even if Arlacchi is able to overlook the human rights abuses, it may prove to be more difficult than he supposes to separate the Taliban from Afghanistan's most lucrative natural resource. A 1997 report from the U.S. State Department's Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor called the opium poppy the "mainstay" of the Taliban economy, accounting for perhaps $100 million in annual revenues for Afghan growers and traffickers. Indeed, with virtually no infrastructure to support manufacturing and little in the way of licit international trade, it is perhaps the only basis of the Taliban's economy apart from the military aid from Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.

Here again, Under-Secretary-General Arlacchi shrugs off the naysayers. Victories in international drug control are downplayed in the world press, he has complained, citing Pakistan as an example of successful crop eradication. According to the UNDCP's 1997 World Drug Report, poppy cultivation in Pakistan dropped by 75 percent between 1993 and 1996. Perhaps not coincidentally, however, cultivation increased during the same period in Afghanistan; particularly, it should be noted, in the region controlled by the Taliban.

Nevertheless, Arlacchi's plan is likely to go forward. The U.N. secretary-general recently praised Arlacchi's efforts in Afghanistan, and the Clinton administration has expressed its support "in principle." Women's organizations such as NOW and the Feminist Majority have yet to weigh in on the poppy eradication plan, as they have on other matters dealing with the Taliban. One thing is clear, however: Human rights concerns are too often ignored when they conflict with the imperatives of the crusade against drugs.

About the author

Karynn Fish is a writer and policy analyst living in New York City