The organization may be corrupt, malign and useless, but is it too much to expect that the UN will not set out actively to wreck Afghanistan’s new democracy? It seems that it is.. Read this report from the Independent and consider its implications:
“So alarmed is the UN [by increased opium production in Afghanistan] that it is suggesting a remedy more radical than any that has been put forward before – bringing in US and British forces to fight a drugs war similar to the war on terror. It wants them to destroy farmers’ crops on a massive scale before they can be harvested.”
If there is anything more guaranteed to alienate the locals than that particular bone-headed suggestion, I can’t think what it is. As to the wider point, it is only the ‘war on drugs’ that makes possible the super profits that make opium such a valuable currency for terrorists and other criminals. War against terror or war against drugs? You can’t fight both, and I think that I know which one matters most.