[Imc] USA's relationship with the Taliban in May

[8am]

http://www.robertscheer.com/1_natcolumn/01_columns/052201.htm


Apart from the CIA's training of Osama bin Laden, it would seem we were 
encouraging the Taliban as recently as May, giving them millions in the 
anti-drug "war".

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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.
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Robert Scheer Is a Syndicated Columnist.

Copyright © 2001 Robert Scheer