Month: May 2001

The Drug War Is Working … At Least in Afghanistan

Libertarians and others claim that the war on drugs is unwinnable. But it turns out that they were wrong. The drug war can work. In fact, it is working in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan, of course, has been the source of much of the world’s opium. According to the New York Times, last year about 75 percent of the world’s opium resin came from Afghanistan. this year, however, almost all of the opium has disappeared. The reason — an edict from the ruling Islamic fundamentalist Taliban ordering an end to opium growing.

The Times seems surprised that not only have opium farmers apparently gone along without much of a fuss. But of course when you have the reputation that the Taliban has, you don’t need to do a lot to get people to comply.

These are the same folks, after all who hang prostitutes in stadiums full of thousands of cheering people. The other day the BBC reported that a young man and woman each were given 100 lashes in a crowded stadium for the crime of having premarital sex.

This, then, is the way that the drug war can actually succeed. All it needs is a deadly fundamentalist religious movement prepared to torture anyone who gets in the way, and the drug problem will just go away.

The Taliban understands the way the drug war works. Why stop the opium trade now, when it is one of the few sources of hard currency for that nation? Because the Taliban understands what happens to other murderous regimes who crack down on drugs — they tend to receive large aid packages from the United States.

The United States recently gave $43 million to help avert famine in Afghanistan, but that’s going to be administered by the United Nations. What the Taliban really wants is direct aid. As Mullah Muhammad Hassan put it in the language of nations, “A fair reply to what we have done would have been some acknowledgment of the achievement.”

Given the insanity of the drug war, they just might get it.

Taliban ban on drug crops is working, U.S. concludes. Barry Barak, The New York Times, May 24, 2001.

Peter Singer's Last Word on the Bestiality Controversy

After the torrent of criticism that Peter Singer received over his review of Midas Dekkers’ Dearest Pet, which many people viewed as defending bestiality, Singer finally released a clarification of his comments. Unfortunately, they don’t seem to have ended the firestorm, since again Singer seems to imply that non-violent sexual contact between human beings and animals may be morally permissible. Here is the entire text of Singer’s statement which was posted to several animal rights e-mail lists:

I agreed to review Midas Dekkers’ scholarly study of sexual interaction between humans and animals not because I support such practices, but because I wanted to reflect on what such sexual behavior tells us about the way in which we are like animals, and at the same time to seek to draw such sharp lines between ourselves and other species. I also wanted to suggest that, if our concern is for the welfare of animals, it is only too easy to find practices on every modern factory farm that are a great deal worse, for the animal, than some forms of sexual contact between humans and animals. (Sex, I might remind readers, does not only mean “intercourse.”) An objection to all forms of sexual contact between humans and animals, in other words, does not seem to be based on concern for animal welfare, in any obvious sense. Those who wish to sustain such a sweeping objection need to look for other grounds.

I thought my review might provoke some people to think about the issue of why some behavior towards animals is viewed as obviously wrong, while other behavior seems entirely acceptable — killing and eating them, for example, or experimenting on them to test the safety of new cleaning agents. Obviously, sexual acts involving violence or cruelty to animals ought to be prohibited. And there may well be good accounts of why the proscription against all sexual acts with animals — including acts that are neither intrinsically violent or cruel — has outlasted many other prohibitions against non-reproductive sexual acts. But very few people seem to have read the article as raising questions. Many seemed to see no more than the fact that it mentioned sex with animals, and that fact was enough to send them into hysterical abuse, including accusations that I myself was a “zoophile.”

Once again, Singer seems to have raised more questions than he’s answered about his position on this matter.

There’s Oil In Them Thar Kyrgyzstan Hills

Kyrgyz Prime Minister Kurmanbek Bakiyev recently announced a major oil find in Kyrgyzstan that could potentially supply that nation with all the oil it will need for most of the century.

The oil was discovered in the Western Dzhalal-Abad region, and preliminary estimates suggest there could be as many as 70 million barrels within the field. That would be enough to supply Kyrgyzstan with all the oil it will need for the next 70 years or so. The country currently imports 90 percent of the oil it uses from Russia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.

Production on the oil field should begin sometime later this year.

Source:

Kyrgystan finds oil. The BBC, May 23, 2001.

Kyrgistan discovers oil. The BBC, May 20, 2001.

Israel’s Water Shortage

Israel is experiencing severe water shortages at the moment, though most of the shallow media coverage of the problem completely missed the main reason for the shortages — Israel’s massive subsidies that encourage wasteful water use.

The BBC recently reported that Israeli Water Commissioner Shimon Tal will call for a total ban on watering lawns for the next three years and cut available water supplied to Israeli industry by ten percent. The entire issue is a political hot potato since Israel diverts water from the Palestinian territories to provide it to Jewish settlements.

But the shortages are caused because the government underprices water to farmers. Since the 1960s, Israel has sold waters to farmers at a rate that is 35 percent below what it sells to households and industry (and the price it sells to households and industry is also likely below the market cost of water).

Not surprisingly, agricultural use of water is through the roof, with 500 million cubic meters of subsidized water expected to be used for agriculture in 2001 alone. One of the things driving this use is that much of the subsidized water use in settlements is used for nonagricultural purposes.

Israeli National Infrastructure Minister Avigdor Lieberman wants to scrap the water subsidy, which is really the only way to restore a bit of sanity to Israeli water use. Unfortunately it is likely to be politically unpopular.

Sources:

Lieberman seeks end to water subsidy for farmers. Amiram Cohen, Ha’aretz, April 16, 2001.

Israel faces water crisis. Paul Wood, The BBC, May 23, 2001.

More Taliban Atrocities

This month in an Afghanistan sports stadium crowded with thousands of people, soldiers with the hardline Muslim Taliban movement carried out a criminal sentence — they gave a young man and woman accused of having premarital sex 100 lashes.

The man reportedly collapsed during the whipping. This comes on heels of reports that the Taliban plans to force Hindus within Afghanistan to wear yellow so that they may be more easily identified.

Source:

Taliban beat unwed couple accused of having sex. Feminist Daily News Wire, May 23, 2001.