WASHINGTON — Deferring to Afghan President Hamid Karzai, the Bush administration has backed off its plans to use aerial spraying to destroy Afghanistan's poppy crop, at least for the time being, administration officials and lawmakers said.
Instead, the United States will help develop alternative livelihoods for poor farmers, build up the police and counter-narcotics forces and pay teams of Afghans to cut and burn poppy fields by hand this spring to demonstrate that opium production will be a risky business in the new Afghanistan.
The State Department had asked Congress to earmark $780 million in aid to Afghanistan for counter-narcotics programs, of which $152 million had been earmarked for aerial eradication beginning this month.
There was division within the department and the National Security Council over the wisdom of spraying and whether the United States should use its powerful influence to overcome Karzai's opposition.
Supporters of spraying have argued that opium profits are swelling the coffers of warlords and enriching Taliban and possibly Al Qaeda elements as well. Critics, including senior U.S. diplomats and military officers in Afghanistan, warned that spraying would alienate the voters Karzai desperately needs in the parliamentary elections scheduled for this spring.
"Everybody supports an aggressive program on drugs including manual eradication, interdiction and alternative livelihoods," said a congressional source who asked to remain anonymous.
"But the idea of U.S. military helicopters swooping down on villagers ... stirred up memories of what the Russians did in the '80s," when Soviet helicopter gunships strafed villages.
Secretary of State-designate Condoleezza Rice, during her confirmation hearing last week, left the door open to spraying at some other time.
"At this point, manual [eradication] is all we can do, but we'll see whether aerial is needed,'' she said.
Rep. Mark Steven Kirk (R-Ill.), who met with Karzai during a recent trip to Afghanistan, said the United States had no choice but to back off because of the Afghan leader's objection to spraying before other anti-drug programs had been mounted.
But Kirk expressed some doubt that Karzai's public relations campaign to convince the public that opium production was a blight on the fledgling democracy would be sufficient. The United Nations has estimated that drug trafficking equals 60% of Afghanistan's legitimate gross domestic product.
