Having served as an infantry officer in four emergencies - in the British Army in the former Malaya, in Borneo and in Ulster - and in Aden and Radfan in the Federal Regular Army (an Arab force with a few officers seconded from the British Army), may I comment on Dr Ronnie Gallagher's letter (The Herald, October 9)?

Afghanistan has a problem that still exists in what is now Yemen - agriculture that depends on a crop of which western and other countries disapprove. There, the only crop that would grow and sell well was a mild alkaloid narcotic known locally as qat (Catha edulis). Although not illegal, this plant had a debilitating effect on the health and household budgets of the many addicts. British Colonial Office district officers upcountry tried crop substitution. Some sceptical qat producers planted and harvested carrots, cabbages, etc, which, when they reached the Aden market, went unsold because of their poor quality. That set back local modern agricultural production by at least a generation.

To seek, throughout Afghanistan, to get the people to abandon poppy production in favour of locally unknown and untested substitute crops for which there is no local demand or adequate marketing outlet is a policy that only outsiders would favour. Only a proper balance between military operations and civil development along the lines advocated by the Senlis Council with its Poppies for Medicine programme has any chance of success in resolving Afghanistan's problems. Alliance air strikes are part of the problem: targeting errors are inevitable: killing and injuring civilians does not win hearts and minds.

Narcotics and insurgency are intertwined and inseparable challenges. The forced eradication of poppy crops is fuelling support for the Taliban and the insurgency, thereby compromising international troops' safety; forced eradication and poppy crop substitution programmes are failing Afghanistan's farming communities, depriving them of the resources and assets necessary to phase out illegal poppy cultivation. A careful reassessment of counter-narcotics strategies in Afghanistan is necessary to address the country's illegal poppy production.

"If these foreigners really care about the people of Afghanistan, then why do they destroy our crops; why do they deprive us of the only source of our livelihood, without providing us with any alternative? Is this fair?" These are the words of a local leader in the Kama District, Nangarhar Province, speaking in May 2006 and quoted on The Senlis Council website.

The Senlis Council, a prestigious international think tank with offices in Kandahar, Kabul, Brussels, Paris, London, Ottawa, Rio de Janeiro and field research programmes in many developing countries, is committed to implementing change at all policy levels, by bridging the gap between people and security, public health and drug control. Any policy maker or other commentator who has not studied Afghanistan through the eyes of the Senlis Council is no friend of Afghanistan.

Major (Retd) Michael Hamilton, KOSB Dounbye, Kelso.

Barack Obama and John McCain clashed in their last debate over whose strategy could "take out" Osama bin Laden. Bin Laden should certainly stand trial for his crimes, but military attempts to kill him would probably end up killing Muslim civilians and getting al Qaeda new supporters. Even if they succeeded, al Qaeda would remain.

There is an al Qaeda organisation around bin Laden, but many more (like the July 7 bombers) share its ideology without any direct contact. Both groups gain and indoctrinate recruits using videos and references to Muslim civilians (including children) killed in the West Bank and Gaza, Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia.

Another recruiting point is western governments' backing for corrupt dictatorships and militaries who jail, torture and kill their people, including the Saudi and Jordanian monarchies, Mubarak in Egypt, Pakistan's ISI military intelligence and (until recently) Musharraf.

So to weaken al Qaeda we should withdraw our troops from Iraq; avoid attacking Iran; end unquestioning political support for and military aid and arms sales to dictatorships. Afghanistan is a harder question, but systematic torture, backing Northern Alliance warlords who are as brutal as the Taliban, and relying on air-strikes that have killed many thousands of civilians can't be the right answers; those practices have to end.

These actions would reduce the flow of recruits to al Qaeda and make the remainder less likely to target our countries. They might also make people on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border more likely to tell our intelligence services where al Qaeda leaders are. None of them involves any kind of "surrender" or "defeat". Iraqis are already fighting al Qaeda in Iraq - even more would do so if the occupying coalition forces left.

Duncan McFarlane, Braidwood, Carluke.