Strange Bedfellows

["Henry C.K. Liu" <hliu@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Bush's Faustian Deal With the Taliban

By ROBERT SCHEER
Tuesday, May 22, 2001
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.

From:
http://www.desertdemocrats.com/may_2001_columns.htm