Development and Security: Two Sides of One Coin?
In his recent address to the United Nations Millennium Development Goals summit, US President Barack Obama referred to development as a "strategic and economic imperative". Speaking at the same summit, German Chancellor Angela Merkel repeated the mantra "no development without security and no security without development."
The common point made is that development aid programs are not purely altruistic and humanitarian, but also carry a real benefit for the donor nations. Poverty, mass (especially youth) unemployment, and hunger are prime breeding grounds for radical ideologies. Extremist organizations, criminal cartels and even terrorist groups can buy themselves safe havens and loyalty by providing basic services where local (and foreign) governments fail to step in. The rise of Hezbollah in Lebanon is but one example. And undemocratic nations can coopt or undermine poor neighbors in the same way.
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Afghan drug war to be won with crops, not jails: judge: "NATO's military might will never win the war against Afghanistan's heroin trade alone, an Afghan judge said, urging the alliance to put more energy into weaning farmers off opium poppy crops.
Afghanistan's primary court of counter narcotics in Kabul has handled more than 2,000 cases in the past four years, said Hayatullah Ahadyar, one of the six judges who sit on the court that oversees big drug busts.
'We do not have to always use force, capture people, put them in jail. We have to have alternatives for farmers,' he said.
'How many people should we capture and put in jail? Maybe nobody will be left in Afghanistan, everyone will be in jail,' he told AFP in an interview ahead of a meeting with NATO officials in Brussels on Monday."
