CJS 231---Week 4 Assignment

1. Drug Control in Central Asia

While the U.S. may be winning the war on terror,we may be losing the war on drugs. How many of you in this group, by raising your hand, are growing poppy as of now?

(narrator) The poppies are blooming again in Afghanistan, producing a bitter harvest. Major funding for this program has been provided by:Additional funding has been provided by: This program has also been made possible by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you.

[man speaking French]

[siren wailing]

[intense percussive music] * Welcome to Wide Angle. I'm Daljit Dhaliwal. Tonight we report from Afghanistan and Central Asia. With the war on terror continuing, the war on drugs has faded from view. Afghanistan produces more than 70% of the world's opium and heroin. Despite the fall of the Taliban, this year's poppy crop is larger than ever.Poverty forces farmers to grow crops that make money, and some Afghan warlords are also drug lords. Central Asian nations, including our new allies in the region, are also deep in the drug trafficking business. The opium trade is a powerful source of corruption and instability that now directly threatens our interests. It's a grim but thriving business that draws us back to an ancient trading route, the Silk Road.

(narrator) Afghanistan. These men were soldiers in the Northern Alliance, America's allies in overthrowing the Taliban. Now they are the bodyguards of Tareq Amin Said, the governor of Badakhshan province in the far north of the country. He once fought for the Mudjahadeedagainst Soviet occupation. Now he controls one of the largest opium poppy growing areas in Afghanistan. But he claims to be trying to end the opium trade.

[Said speaking in native language]

(male translator) Let's give our farmers seeds and fertilizers for other crops. Let's create jobs for people. If we could employ people in public projects to provide electricity, health clinics, or primary schools, then keeping people from growing opium would be easy.

(narrator) It isn't proving easy. In the last two years, the Northern Alliance, the West's new ally,presided over a planting spree that has more than tripled the region's opium production. After a brief halt in poppy growing during the Taliban's final year in power, Afghan heroin production is now flowing freely into neighboring Asian countries, Russia, and Europe.

[gun blasting] Afghanistan is a country devastatedby almost 30 years of instability and war.

[guns blasting] Bankrupt from years of fighting,there is just one currency of enduring value: the opium poppy. It grows well in Central Asia. For years, the opium trade helped fund the military campaigns of both the Northern Alliance and their Taliban enemies. Today opium still dominates the shattered economy of the region, providing a reliable source of employment for many.Unemployed teacher Ahmad Said found himself forced to grow opium to support his large family.

[Said speaking in native language]

(male translator) My name is Ahmad Said. I was a teacher. Then the war began, and the schools began to fall apart. Life was destroyed. War is the reason for our country's suffering. War has become the fate of our country. In the end, the gates of the schools were closed. I could no longer make a living as a teacher. I had no choice.I had to plant opium on my small piece of land. By growing opium, I was able to make enough money to feed my children, but the people who make a lot of money this way are the smugglers. The farmers make only a small profit, just enough to feed a family.

(narrator) A good yield of opium, ten kilograms,may bring the farmer between $2,000 and $3,000 before costs. But the big profits go to the traderswho spirit the raw opium away to remote mountain laboratories and turn it into heroin. The street value of this year's harvest is projected to be over $50 billion. A heroin laboratory is a simple operation: crude sheds with oil drums to convert opium to morphine base, then heroin. According to neighboring officials, Afghanistan has over 200 heroin laboratories, most of them massed along the northern border with Tajikistan. This border is rapidly becoming the new heroin highway to Europe, following the ancient Silk Road. Like silk, from which fabulous profits were made, heroin is light, portable, and supplies hungry markets in the West. But unlike silk, heroin is illegal and addictive.It destroys thousands of lives in the countries it passes through and sews the seeds of instability.The five Central Asian nations on the Old Silk Road-- Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan,Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan-- are ill-equipped to fight a war on drugs that even wealthy Western nations can't win. Tashkent in Uzbekistan... the regional office of the United Nations Drug Control and Crime Program in Central Asia. What about the security of the trip? You think that everything will be all right?

(narrator) Antonella Deledda, an Italian civil servant, has been the head of the UN program here for two years. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

(narrator) She's embarking on an expeditionthrough three countries. He goal is to strengthen regional cooperation to cut the flow of drugs.Okay, what's next?

(narrator) Dr. Ustina Markus has spent ten yearsclosely observing Central Asia as a political analyst. She believes the flood of heroin from Afghanistan is having a devastating effect on its near neighbors.

(Marcos) There's a strong feeling now that the countries surrounding Afghanistan have the highest per-capita levels of heroin addicts, Iran coming in number one, Pakistan number two, and the numbers are very high. In Iran, they think that it's about 1 in 42 people is probably an abuser of opiates or heroin, in Pakistan, 1 in 47. In Tajikistan, they think it's 1 in 50. That's 2% of the population. You're talking about an awful lot of people of working age who could be productive in reconstructing that country who aren't.

(narrator) Even the most conservative estimatesput the number of addicts in the Old Silk Road nations at nearly half a million and rising at an alarming rate. There are treatment centers in a few of the major cities, but most serve only those who can pay. Tajikistan, high in the Pamir Mountains, shares a long border with Afghanistan.Antonella Deledda leads the UN convoy that will travel more than 1,200 miles along the drug routesto assess border controls and gather intelligence.Escorting Deledda is General Rustam Nazarov, a man with one of the most dangerous jobs in the region. He's the founding head of the Tajikistan Drug Control Agency, established in 1999.

[Nazarov speaking in native language]

(male translator) Today the fight against narcotics is a war, a war against evil, a war against crime,and a war against terrorism. And I think that the future of Tajikistan and the future of our children depend on its results.

(narrator) The Drug Control Agency is largely financed by the United Nations, not the Tajik government. Operating in one of the poorest countries in the former Soviet Union, the Drug Control Agency is an experiment in fighting deep-seated corruption. They pay their officers more than three times the salary of a local policeman,hoping they'll resist the temptation to pocket drugsor take bribes.

(narrator) Antonella Deledda's UN program and General Nazarov's agency have an almost impossible task: stopping drugs at the rugged northern border with Afghanistan.

[speaking native language]

(translator) This is a harsh place full of high mountains, and the terrain doesn't allow us to put barbed wire or fences along the border. The mountains also make it hard for our guards to keep the area under surveillance.

(narrator) This journey is taking the UN mission through nations whose authoritarian regimes have done little to stave off wide-spread destitution.Here an average of 60% of the population lives below the poverty line. The Tajik border with Afghanistan: 800 miles long. Running the whole length of the border is the Pyanj River, which separates Afghanistan, recovering from 30 years of chaos and war, from Tajikistan, still struggling to come to terms with its post-Soviet independence. The few isolated border bridges across the Pyanj are well-guarded. And most of the traffic across them is food aid headed south into Afghanistan. The traffickers take their chances by crossing the river. The topography is the main enforcement problem on this section of the border. The terrain makes it impossible for our guards to perform a visual check of certain sectors. The main deterrent for the drug smugglers, aside from the guards and customs officers, is the River Pyanj itself.

(narrator) The River Pyanj is a formidable barrier.Most drugs are floated across on inner tubes at night. With 80% unemployment in this border area,there's no shortage of people willing to act as couriers in exchange for a tiny share of the profits.

[Makushin speaking native language]

(male translator) There's a huge difference in the price of heroin from one side of the river to the other. That's why drug smugglers are willing to brave the river and risk their lives crossing over to our side.

(narrator) Colonel Vladimir Makushin is Russian.Despite a decade of independence, Tajikistan's frontier is still patrolled by 25,000 Russian border guards. They stayed to guard against multiple threats, Afghan warlords and later the Taliban and Islamic militants. Today drug interdiction is also part of the job. Here's how it usually happens. Our frontier guards are stationed along the border and in the places where smugglers are most likely to cross. When they cross the river, our guards try to catch them. If they use weapons to resist, we'll fight them and call for backup.

(narrator) In 2001, Russian border guards were involved in 80 armed clashes in which 60 smugglers were killed and 300 arrested. Wounded in a shoot-out, this Afghan smuggler was left behind by his comrades.

[man speaking native language]

(male translator) Listen, where did you get these drugs?

[speaking native language]

(male translator) I don't know.

(man) How much did they give you to carry it from one place to another? $30.

(narrator) For over a century, the Old Silk Road nations were part of the Russian and then the Soviet empire. Since September 11th, they now provide military bases for the U.S. and its allies.There are currently U.S. military bases in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, accommodating 4,000 troops, with plans for two more facilities in the works. While the U.S. operates its war on terrorism from nearby bases, the United Nations anti-drug mission travels across the Pamir Mountains to the border between Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan.

(narrator) Here the UN team meets a demoralized detachment stationed high in the mountains,where temperatures in the winter can fall to 40 degrees below zero.

[speaking native language]

(narrator) Their conditions are primitive. They have no electricity. They can't afford fuel for their diesel generator, and for most of the year, it's simply too cold to use an inspection pit that the UN paid for.

[man speaking native language] We've been provided with hand-held X-ray equipment, but we don't have the electricity to use it to X-ray the vehicles.

(narrator) The guards demonstrate their search methods for their UN visitors. But they told us they rarely find anything, unless they've been previously warned. As this footage shows, the traffickers can hide their contraband almost anywhere. This truck passed straight through the border post. It was stopped later at a checkpoint in Kyrgyzstan with Afghan heroin in its fuel tanks...total value on the streets of Europe: over $25 million. The truck driver, a Russian, declined to give his name. Married with two sons, he has yet to come to trial but admits his involvement.

[speaking Russian]

(male translator) I think that somebody tipped them off, and they stopped me at a checkpoint.They knew I was carrying drugs, and they knew where to look, and they found them. That's how it happened.

(narrator) The drug agents who arrested him say they'd had an anonymous tip. In this business,both the risks and rewards are great.

(man) Well, how can I explain this? I already said it: poverty. That was big money for me. What else can I say?

(narrator) He faces a 13-year sentence here in the city of Osh. Now notorious as a transit point for Afghan heroin, it's long been a stop on the Old Silk Road. A traditional meal being prepared in a chaikhana, or tea house. When they have a little money to spare, Elmurad Kasym and his friends come here to relax. Elmurad is 21 years old. He's studying English at a university. He isn't optimisticabout his prospects for employment when he graduates. People are frustrated with the current situation, economical, social, political, whatever situation, want to forget this world, want to forget their land, want to forget where they are. So the way to forget that is either drinking alcohol or using drugs.

(narrator) Since independence from the Soviets,unemployment has risen sharply. This silk factory used to be a mainstay of local employment. Once, thousands poured out of these gates. Now it's just a trickle. According to the UN Drug Control Program, the heroin trade is a major growth industry. Elmurad sees the human costs.

(Kasym) I know families that lost their children,that lost their sons at early 20s. They died overdosing. We're losing these young people in all aspects, in all understandings of the word "losing."We're losing them as human beings. We're losing them as good labor. We're losing them as good neighbors. We're just losing them. They're becoming nothing.

(narrator) Osh is seeing a dramatic rise in addiction among its young. Even more alarming are the beginnings of an HIV outbreak. Needle-exchange programs are finding that many of the returned needles test HIV positive.

(Kasym) We're now going to this place where one can see a lot of houses, two or three-story houses that are incomparably expensive, and compared to the normal income, it is insane to consider that one has built this house for his salary. It would be impossible to build these kind of houses unless you have some illegal income.

(narrator) One of those caught running a heroine syndicate here was Colonel Abulaev, the head of a military drug squad in Osh, now serving a five-year sentence. Elmurad Kasym is part of a new generation at risk from heroin on the drug route from Afghanistan. The silk route was never just one road. It's a network of foot tracks, trails, roads, and highways forged by traders over centuries and all exploited today by narco traffickers. So we are around here now and going into there.

(narrator) One week into their journey, at the Tajik town of Khorug, the UN team witnesses the destruction of seized drugs. The UN says the Tajikistan Drug Control Agency seized more than 17,000 pounds of opiates in 2001, half of it raw opium and the rest heroin.

[man speaking native language]

(male translator) The drugs are confiscated from cars at the border, and the other drugs are taken from apartments. But more than half were seized at the border.

[men speaking native language]

(male translator) How much is it?

(male translator) One kilo.

(narrator) For every pound they destroy, about nine pounds get through. It's the best they can do.Of course, I'm satisfied that confiscated narcotics are destroyed and that criminals who are involved in the drug trade are prosecuted.

(narrator) By the most conservative estimate,over 40 tons of heroin a year passes through Tajikistan undetected.

(narrator) Many senior officials have been accused in the Russian press of colluding with traffickers. Widespread corruption further complicates General Nazarov's job.

(Nazarov) There is some degree of corruption in any state. It's possible we have corruption hererelated to drugs, but on the other hand, we're actively working to uncover the criminals in uniform. We don't hide it. We arrest our coworkers, I mean, even within the law enforcement departments of Tajikistan. We hold them responsible for their crimes, no matter what their title, rank, or status.

(narrator) Nazarov is one of the few Central Asian officials willing to speak openly about corruption,but openness has its dangers, and his life is constantly at risk.

(Deledda)

(narrator) Integrity can be in short supply. A senior official of the Tajik Customs Agencyrecently admitted that as many as 50% of its officers are involved in the drug trade. This customs official was afraid to show her face on camera.

[speaking native language]

(female translator) You know, being a customs official is a prestigious job, but you have to be honest to be proud of your profession. But on the other hand, when you're surrounded by peoplewho take bribes, who look the other way,somehow, I feel sorry for those people.

(narrator) Antonella Deledda and General Nazarov visit a regional Drug Control Agency office in Tajikistan to find out how the flow of drugsfrom Afghanistan has changed since the fall of the Taliban.

(Deledda)

[speaking native language]

(male translator) As a matter of fact, our data shows that it's not decreasing but actually increasing. A large percentage of the narcotics coming into our republic are transported to other countries.

(Deledda)

(man)

(narrator) While the price of a beer and a fix of heroin in Central Asia may be comparable, it's the profits from transporting heroin to Western Europe that are enticing. This is the market in Dushanbe.In Tajikistan's capital city, the jails are overflowing with small-time couriers, 1/3 of them women. One of those caught in 1998 was this woman, Zahrina.Back in Soviet times, she was a librarian at a university. Now she's trying to support two children on the few dollars she makes each weekselling discarded clothing.

[speaking native language]

(female translator) It's good that I still have friendswho help me so much. When I tell them, "That's it.I don't have anything at home," they come. They help. They give money. It's been four days since my kids had a hot meal.

(narrator) She tried to adapt to post-Soviet capitalism, borrowing money to start importing Russian goods here. The economy collapsed, and so did her business. The money lenders moved in and took everything. As she went down the economic spiral, she saw others climbing up. I could see that people were suddenly getting richer. When I started asking around, I found out they'd started to transport drugs. After that, someone made me an offer, knowing I needed the money. They said, "We'll buy you a round-trip ticket. "All you have to do is carry the drugs there and come back, and you'll get $200." I thought, "$200 for three days' work? It's a decent amount of money."

(narrator) With 200 grams of heroin sealed in a condom and hidden in her body, Zahrina went to catch the plane to Moscow. I went to the airport.When I was going through customs, they politely asked me to go through a check. 250 people were flying on that plane. Why on earth would they single me out?

(narrator) Zahrina spent three years in this jail.She claims that customs officials offered to release her for a $5,000 bribe. Here 3/4 of the inmates are petty traffickers, and tuberculosis is rife.

[rain pattering] Zahrina was lucky. She was released early. But a year later, she remains as impoverished as ever. Despite occasional arrests, the barriers to smuggling in Central Asiaare porous at best. This is Kulyab Airport in Tajikistan. The UN team is shown broken equipment, 30 years old, and are told how the police lack even basic communications.

[speaking native language]

(male translator) We get information that drugs are coming to Kulyab. We want to immediately alert our colleagues so they can make the arrest.But in order to call from here, you have to wait two hours for the telephone connection, but the flight only lasts 45 minutes, so it's too late. By the time you've reached them, the plane has landed and the person's gone.

(narrator) The result, this customs official told the team, is that they failed to seize any drugs at the airport during the last year, and plans for weekly flights from Moscow and Tehran may only make matters worse.

(Deledda)

[dog barking]

[brakes screech]

[gunshots]

(narrator) Uzbekistan: a training exercise for drug-sniffing dogs. But these dogs are also trained to be deployed against political enemies of the state. The U.S. State Department has reported that Uzbekistan is run by an authoritarian regime with only limited civil rights. In February 1999, terrorism first emerged when 16 people were killed by car bombs that exploded here in the capital, Tashkent. The government blamed the Islamic movement of Uzbekistan, which was designated as a terrorist group by the U.S. in 2000.

[speaking native language]

(male translator) Well, drug money is one of the major sources of funds for the so-called Islamic movement of Uzbekistan.

(narrator) In Uzbekistan, a war on drugs is combined with the repression of all Islamic opposition, moderate or radical. Officers from the National Security Service defend their efforts by claiming that drug trafficking and Islamic militancyare closely linked.

(Islamov) Well, of course, money from the illegal drug trade is a major source of support for international terrorists and extremist organizations. As the data shows, under the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, people were allowed and even encouraged to grow plants containing narcotics and to produce and sell illegal drugs.

(narrator) Only state-registered mosques, like this one, can now remain open, and religious services are tightly monitored. Hundreds of independent mosques have been closed, and a man can be arrested for attending an independent religious service. At this courthouse, a local doctor who asked not to be named is being prosecuted for possessing banned Islamic literature. Her husband, a schoolteacher and devout Muslim, is already in jail. She claims he was imprisoned on the false pretext of drug trafficking.

[speaking native language]

(female translator) They searched every inch of our house. They were there for three hours, from 7:30 to 10:30 in the morning. They found no evidence. They took away our table knives, two souvenir swords that used to hang on our wall,and some videotapes. Then they took my husband and said he'd be back in two hours.

(narrator) Her story is given credence by Matilda Bogner, a researcher with Human Rights Watch in Tashkent. She's an Australian lawyer married to an Afghan who's lived in the region for many years.

(Bogner) The authorities have used drugs to crack down on opponents, basically, by planting narcotics in the pockets of people that they want to arrest. It provides a reason to arrest peopleand then to put them in prison for long periods.They questioned my husband but found no real reason to detain him. So they accused him of violating Article 273 of the criminal code, which is for buying and selling drugs. Later, they added Article 159 on state sabotage and sentenced him to 12 years in prison.

(Bogner) It's so clear that these people are being imprisoned for their religious beliefs rather than for the narcotics, but it provides an initial excuse for the arrest, and it's often during that initial periodthat people will be tortured and a confession extracted. A recent U.S. State Department human rights report accuses the Uzbekistan Security Service of planting narcotic, weapons, and banned Islamic literature on citizens to justify arrest. There is concern in the West that these abuses generate further opposition to the government and are radicalizing even moderate Muslims. Antonella Deledda returns from two weeks traveling the new drug routes of the ancient Silk Road with grave concerns.

(Deledda)

(narrator) In Afghanistan, where the poppies grow, local programs are starting to rebuild the nation with the $4.5 billion of international aid that has been pledged. But aid experts warn of dire consequences if donor nations fail, as they have before, to stay the distance.

(Panjwani) If the process of rebuilding Afghanistan fails as a result of lack of support from the international community, then it will have serious consequences on the country. There's a dangerthat Afghanistan will revert back to the era of warlords, the drug lords, and feudal lords and a disaster waiting to happen. The instability in Afghanistan will also create instability in the region,and instability in the region will have serious consequences on the rest of the world.

(narrator) This is a scene that many would like to see repeated across Afghanistan: the eradication of poppy fields. This man, Abdul Qadir, was appointed vice president in the new regime. He was a major player in the opium business, until he staked a claim for Western aid by offering to eradicate the poppy in his home region.

[speaking native language]

(male translator) We've destroyed our crops. We obey the orders. Whatever the government orders us to do, we accept straightaway.

[speaking native language]

(male translator) Okay, now there's no more in the surrounding areas, God willing?

(man) God willing, there's none.

(Qadir) We told the farmers that this year, we want to prove to the whole world that we know how to eliminate the opium. If we get enough financial support from outside, then by next year, it'll be 100% gone. If not, we won't be able to tell them not to plant again next year, and they might be so upset about losing this year's crop that they'll plant the poppies everywhere-- on the rooftops, in the streets, and even in the walkways.

(narrator) Afghan farmers like Ahmad Said knowthat planting the poppy can produce a bitter harvest, but they'll go on planting until they have another way to support their families.

(Said) Opium is the enemy of mankind. If the international community were to get involved and reconstruction projects were begun sooner rather than later, many people could be saved from the suffering they're now experiencing. For now, our dream is to find work and rebuild our country. We have no electricity. We have no gas. Our lives are filled with difficulties. That's why we grow opium.It's poison. Opium is the enemy, not us.

(narrator) In 2002, foreign aid workers investigated the extent of local poppy cultivation.

(Panjwani) Because of the reasons that you have justified for growing poppy, can you tell me how many of you in this group, by raising your hands,are growing poppy as of now?

[all muttering] So you're not growing poppy?

[speaking native language] Yeah, no, he's not.He's the only one. Anybody else who's not growing?

(narrator) They've been promised peace. It's coming slowly. They've been promised billions of dollars in aid. They've yet to see the benefits of it.Without both, they'll go on producing opium.

[speaking native language]

(male translator) We're so desperate for money.We have to sell our opium to middlemen. Suppose that one stick of opium is worth 200,000 Afghans in the city. When the middlemen buy it from us here in the village, they only give us 25,000 or 50,000 for it. In the West, your children are interested in the internet, in cars, in airplanes.Well, our children need to work in the opium fieldsto make enough money to buy a cookie.

(narrator) Vice President Qadir was assassinated in July 2002. He was killed in front of ten bodyguards within weeks of his appointment to the new Afghan government. No one has been charged with his murder, but in an Afghanistan where the poppy is power, few Afghans doubt that his death was tied to the opium trade. The UN estimates that some 2,600 tons of opium will be produced in Afghanistan this year. Wide Angle continues with Daljit Dhaliwal. Mark Malloch Brown, connect the dots. How does the booming opium trade in Afghanistan affect us here in the United States? Well, I think there are big dots and somewhat littler dots, and the big dots are just this recognition, since September the 11th, that issues such as narcotics but, equally, terrorism and even very different issues, public health issues such as HIV-AIDS, which thrive in situations of failed government and in places where countries can't, on their own, respond to them and contain them,that if we, the rest of the world, particularly the United States, leave these problems unattended to, they have a horrible habit of coming and stinging us in our own backyard. And that leads into the United Nations efforts that you're involved in in Afghanistan to try and rebuild the country, I mean, a mind-boggling task. Where does drugs, in particular, figure in the bigger picture? You've got to understand that, until last year, there were two sources of income for an aspiring young man or woman in Afghanistan. One was carrying a gun,and the second was narcotics production.Hopefully, the carrying a gun option has been made significantly less attractive by the establishment of a national government in Kabul,determined to establish the peace. But with the source of income from gunrunning and being an armed soldier in the employ of a warlord having declined, it's put ever more emphasis on the alternative source of illegal income, narcotics production. How do you get a poor farmer to try and give up growing opium and substitute that for other crops, like wheat, where they're not going to make the same kind of money? You try and get the price right. You give them as large a subsidy as possible for not growing. But given the relative returns on poppy cultivation versus, as you say,something like wheat, it's hard to do it by that means alone. So you have to have a broader rural-development strategy, where it's not just that you're encouraging alternative crops, but you're building a whole way of life which is within the lawand allows farmers to create a decent life of schools and education for their kids, health care for them and their families, and to try and draw a boundary round that and say, "To participate, to enjoy these benefits "for yourself and your kids,you have to be part of a non-poppy economy."We've seen a shift in development over the past 20, 40 years, and it's become a lot more important now to foster democratic institutions. You can build bridges. You can dig wells or put up schoolhouses, but unless a people are committedto democratic institutions which keep their governments accountable for the education they provide or the way they manage the public infrastructure of a country, you will never get the development results you want. We feel very, very profoundly that democracy, not necessarily American-style democracy, but democracy in the sense of government and institutions being responsible to their citizens is the absolute bedrock relationship for successful development of a country. In terms of Afghanistan's democratic and political institutions, how successful have they been? Well, you know, first, these are very early days, but having said that, on early results, Afghanistan's doing quite well. Just walking through the streets of Kabul last December, you stopped and asked men, women, as they started to come out on the streets again, and kids what they wanted, and you know, it was like a great sort of moving festival of a focus group. And the answers came through very clearly. Kids, little boys out on the street wanted education, not just for themselves but for their sisters, who were not yet back on the streets, let alone in school. And the government, when the March school year began, got more than 2 million kids into school.Then people were complaining about the famine,and a lot of food has gotten into the country and a lot of seeds, now that the drought is broken. How successful, though, has the interim government been? I mean, there have been accusations that they haven't been trying to eradicate the poppy crop with the kind of gusto that they should be employing. Frankly, not that successful, not, I think, because of an absence of gusto. This is a government with a lot of gusto, but its gusto doesn't always carry much further than Kabul, the capital. This is a government which has not established its writ and its authority throughout the country. So in areas where there is a strong local warlord dimension, they have difficulty in establishing their authority, and that's what we're confronting. There's also a problem with the narco societies of Central Asia, where the drugs are actually passing through. The U.S. now has a newfound role and clout in that region. How should it be using that more effectively so that we don't end up getting more mini Afghanistans? Well, you know, this is a region which-- generally, Central Asia has a development crisis. The governments don't meet a very high standard of democratic participation in general. They still have strongman rule. They have persisted in running their economies in a way which is not really restructured or modernized so that they've not enjoyed high rates of economic growth, and in a perverse way, the fact the U.S. needs these countries now, as bases, means that, in some ways, the U.S. influence is less, not more.Because in the past, there was much more of a big-stick argument. You know, "Either reform your economies, stop the drug trafficking, or we're not going to help you." Now, with bases there, there's a requirement to help anyway, so the U.S. has got to be very careful about this. We cannot allow this to come down to the support of corrupt status quos which allow no democratic expression and voice for their people, because, indeed, it was precisely those kinds of conditions that, arguably,were the breeding ground for Al-Qaeda in the first place. These states, these five Central Asian republics all have problems, to varying degrees,with Islamic fundamentalism. How much of a threat do you think that could become to the United States? Well, managed properly, it needn't be in that the U.S., through large parts of its history, has always been the ally and champion of democratic expression and human rights around the world, and it must not get its compass points distorted here. These are countries for whomIslamic culture is going to be a critical part of a stable political culture. Mark Malloch Brown,thanks very much for joining us here on Wide Angle. Thank you.