Russia’s war on drugs begins at home

Russia's improving relations with the US could hit a roadblock amid growing differences over Afghanistan - one area of foreign policy where the two countries appeared to be working closer together.
At issue for Moscow is not the US-led occupation, as Russia has offered to allow NATO forces' transit rights across its territory, but the tactics used to combat Afghan opium production, which provides 90 per cent of the heroin used in Russia.
Russia, it is widely acknowledged, is facing a worsening drugs crisis of nightmare proportions.
The Federal Drug Control Service put the number of frequent drug users in the country at 5 million last year, up from 3 million in 2002. This in turn is fuelling a growing HIV/AIDS epidemic, with about 1 million adults and children now HIV-positive.
The head of the drug control service, Viktor Ivanov, a senior member of the siloviki, has urged US President Barack Obama to revert to a controversial policy adopted by the Bush administration of so-called "aerial crop eradication" - where planes spray chemicals onto poppy fields to destroy the crop at source.
Since the Western invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, the country has doubled its production of opium, and some Russian officials see the outlines of a Western plot behind this. They accuse the US of doing nothing to halt the flood of Afghan drugs into Russia, which Ivanov (a veteran of the 1980s Soviet occupation of Afghanistan) has dubbed "the second edition of the opium wars".
But the argument that an external answer is the best way to solve Russia's drug problem doesn't really wash.
Firstly, the practice of aerial crop eradication has been shown not to work.
In Colombia, the US financed such a programme as part of its "war on drugs", yet from 2000 to 2006 it led to 15 per cent more coca in cultivation and 4 per cent more cocaine being produced there, as farmers had few cash crop alternatives. The country still produces 90 per cent of cocaine used in the US.
The chemicals used can also be dangerous to human health and the environment. In Colombia, the crop spray was manufactured by none other than Monsanto, the corporation that also produced the deadly Agent Orange used in the Vietnam War, which caused millions of birth defects.
In 2007, US officials, led by a former ambassador to Colombia, William Wood (dubbed "Chemical Bill" by his critics) started promoting aerial crop eradication in Afghanistan, but the practice has similarly failed to curb opium production, and has only driven Afghan farmers into the hands of the Taliban as they lose their livelihoods.
The new policy being pursued by Obama's administration, of going after drug barons and opium warehouses rather than poor farmers' crops, could yield better results. But this is hampered by the widespread corruption and involvement in the drugs trade of allies of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, whom Washington increasingly sees as a liability.
Secondly, the instability caused by the war is mainly what drives Afghans to the drug trade. With few roads, little electricity and no chance of getting alternative cash crops to market with the threat of violence in the air, farmers are easy prey for the drugs mafia.
And evidence is building that the US is losing the war, just as the Soviet Union did in Afghanstan, with Obama being drawn into a Vietnam-like scenario and a number of US commentators now calling for a pullout.
Taliban or no Taliban, leaving the people of Afghanistan to decide their own future, without bombing or foreign occupation, is the only way to rebuild the country and move away from its dependency on the drug trade.
Instead of looking for answers abroad, Russia's war on drugs should begin at home.
Like in Afghanistan, the Russian drugs industry thrives on corruption, with the police, border guards and customs often turning a blind eye in return for offering protection to the criminal gangs who run the trade. Only by stamping out such extortion can Russia hope to win this war.
And the best protection against a drugs epidemic is something more basic - decent jobs and salaries for young people living in Russia's cities, so they have a better future to look forward to.