NEW DELHI -- In the name of nation-building, a new great game is unfolding in Afghanistan even before the retreating Taliban militia's capacity to hold on to the southeastern provinces has been crushed. The new game is premised on the supposed need to keep that landlocked country united through a broad-based, multiethnic, stable government.
The outside interests that have set that goal for Afghanistan are busily trying to establish ground assets and influence in that war-battered country. Foreign aid, troops and advisers are the tools of this new game. In the scramble to influence the new political set-up in Afghanistan, two things are being forgotten:
(1) Narcotics and terrorism are linked. Without a war on narcotics, the war on terrorism cannot be won, as terrorists and others in the Afghanistan-Pakistan belt profanely draw their sustenance for "jihad" (holy war) from drug trafficking.