David Mansfield, a Senior Fellow at the London School of Economics, leads the hysteria over the Taliban’s successful destruction of the opium trade. He is featured in the Aug. 30 “VICE News” article, “The Taliban’s Opium Ban Has Become an Existential Problem for the West,” by Max Daly. (https://www.vice.com/en/article/7kxw3b/the-talibans-opium-ban-has-become-an-existential-problem-for-the-west)
The argument there is quintessentially British imperial, standing upon two legs: Investments to develop Afghanistan properly will never be done, and the world will always have a massive population of drug addicts. Therefore, Afghanistan’s wiping out of the heroin crop will only be temporary and, meanwhile, it will only cause an increase in fentanyl abuse.
Elise Blanchard and Mansfield in various coverage had predicted that the Taliban’s April 2022 declaration of a war on opium would fail. Now, after seeing that over 80% of the crop has been eliminated in the first year, they resort to sophistical arguments why the opium needs to return. A previous Mansfield study is cited to explain: “As things currently stand, Western governments may need to calibrate their response to the Taliban ban based on the outcomes they consider least undesirable. It is not possible to provide sufficient development assistance to stem the eventual return of poppy cultivation, but to press the Taliban to continue the ban could prompt a dramatic increase in outmigration and destabilize the regime in Kabul. Some may well decide that a continued flow of drugs from Afghanistan may be the least worst outcome.”
Blanchard herself had written in May 2022 that the “U.K. government knows the illegal drug trade and its artificially inflated profits have assisted some poor communities not just in making a living, but escaping poverty. Research funded by the U.K. involving field work in Afghanistan, Colombia and Myanmar, concluded that while destructive and dangerous, the drug trade can help poor communities survive and prosper in some of the world’s most unstable and war-torn countries.” She then quotes Jonathan Goodhand, Professor of Conflict Studies at SOAS University of London, from a 2020 interview with VICE: “Simplistic narratives of drugs as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ for poverty alleviation are to be cautioned against.” He described “the assumption that the drug trade is always counter to peace, social advancement and survival in these regions as ‘deeply flawed.’”
There is something deeply flawed here. Peace, social advancement and prosperity began to arrive in Afghanistan with the TVA/hydroelectric project of King Mohammad Zahir Shah. Electricity and irrigation proved that the country could flourish and that major investments in such infrastructure worked and was financially sound. Deny that reality and condemn oneself to the psychotic world of such as Daly, Mansfield and Blanchard.
