Â鶹ӰÊÓ

A think tank suggests that Afghan farmers could grow a new anti-malarial crop as a way to move them away from growing opium.

"This would kickstart a legitimate Afghan pharmaceutical economy," Norine MacDonald of the Senlis Council told Â鶹ӰÊÓnet on Wednesday.

Senlis believes Afghanistan would provide good growing conditions for artemisinia, a shrub that can be used to make artemisinin. That medicine is used to treat drug-resistant strains of malaria.

"Not only would the extraction of artemisinin help diversify the economy of Afghanistan's rural communities ... it would go a long way towards addressing the 500 million cases of clinical malaria each year around the world," Senlis said in a news release.

In previous reports, Senlis has called for Afghan farmers to be allowed to legitimately grow opium for use as medical morphine for poor countries.

"At the moment, Afghan farmers have no other way to feed their families," MacDonald said.

Southern Afghanistan's economy is primarily based on agriculture and people are desperately poor and short of food, she said.

This puts them in an economic relationship with the Taliban. Legitimizing poppy production would put them in a relationship with the Afghan government, she said.

Opium production could be regulated by issuing licences to villages. If one villager sells his opium crop illegally, the entire village loses its licence, she said.

Right now, illegal poppy-growing is helping fund the Taliban and al Qaeda, MacDonald said.

With the deteriorating situation in southern Afghanistan, a de facto Taliban-al Qaeda state could emerge, straddling the Afghan-Pakistan border, she said.

"Emergency action has to be taken," said MacDonald, who is based in southern Afghanistan.

Senlis will be meeting with the Manley Commission on the Afghanistan mission, but MacDonald said her group will be asking the commission to step outside its mandate and call for an emergency NATO meeting.

Senlis -- an international policy group with offices in Kabul, London, Paris and Brussels -- has previously called for the NATO force to be expanded to 80,000 troops.

It also wants to see NATO forces work inside Pakistan with Pakistani troops to root out al Qaeda and Taliban fighters there.

MacDonald also wants to see Canadian troops stay in a combat role past February 2009, noting a withdrawal could lead to a Rwanda-like situation, referring to the 1994 genocide in the central African country.