Congressional staffers and policy professionals packed a room on Capitol Hill last week for a DPA-hosted forum called "Afghanistan, Plan Colombia and Drug Eradication: Problems and Solutions."

Bill Piper, director of DPA's office of national affairs, introduced the topic, explaining that Afghanistan's crime networks are becoming more organized and opium production is increasing, despite attempts by the U.S. and U.K. to eradicate the drug.

Four experts offered their insights into the flaws of current policy and possible alternatives: Vanda Felbab-Brown of the Brookings Institution; Ted Galen Carpenter of the Cato Institute; Sanho Tree of the Institute for Policy Studies, and Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of DPA.

All the speakers agreed that current U.S. policy in Afghanistan is not working. Felbab-Brown explained that eradication, the practice of destroying opium crops, has served to alienate citizens from the government and pushed them to the Taliban as economic refugees.

Efforts to provide alternative crops to farmers have similarly failed, because farmers are only able to secure essential micro-credit from local creditors by growing opium crops. This micro-credit allows farmers to buy food, clothing and seed in exchange for pledging to grow a certain amount of opium.

Felbab-Brown and Carpenter both said that current policy has strengthened the Taliban. Efforts by Britain in 2004 to eradicate opium successfully got rid of small growers, which paved the way for large cartels to form. The Taliban was able to find an entrée into Afghanistan's economy in the role of protecting the drug trade.

Carpenter contended that the U.S. objective of ending the opium trade actually makes the goals of defeating the Taliban and nurturing democracy nearly impossible. He explained that a serious U.S. anti-opium campaign could lead warlords who are currently allies to switch sides.

Such a campaign could also destabilize Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan's president, who is largely backed by Afghanistan’s farmers.

Carpenter called for a pragmatic strategy--for example, looking the other way when friendly warlords engage in drug trafficking. He argued that the number one priority now should be anti-terrorism efforts, not anti-drug efforts.

Sanho Tree, director of the drug policy project for the Institute for Policy Studies, talked in depth about the failure of eradication in South America, which holds important lessons for U.S. policy in Afghanistan. He noted that coca eradication efforts in South America have served only to move the production from one place to another--an ineffective strategy considering how much suitable coca-growing land there is in South America and other parts of the world.

Tree also cautioned that fumigating, which destroys not only targeted crops but the food crops of subsistence farmers, makes winning hearts and minds impossible.

With all the speakers agreeing that the current strategy falls short, Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of DPA, concluded the forum by calling for a renewal of debate on U.S. drug policy. He advocated framing drug policy questions in terms of public health and harm reduction, calling for policies that seek to reduce both the harms of drug use and the harms of drug policies.

To learn more, check these resources:

Afghanistan: Drug Industry and Counter-Narcotics Policy (United Nations report)

How the Drug War in Afghanistan Undermines America's War on Terror (Cato Institute policy briefing)