Afghanistan and the war against drugs

Last week the US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld called on Russia and Europe to do more to stem drug trafficking from Afghanistan warning that it is fuelling a Taliban resurgence and threatens to undermine Afghanistan.

"I'm concerned about the role that narcotics are playing in this sense: when there's that much money involved, you have to worry that it is going to be attractive," he told reporters.

The United States currently has 23,000 troops in Afghanistan. Rumsfeld put the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) at about another 15,000 to 20,000 and Afghan security forces at about 70,000.


Some facts you might NOT know:

Afghanistan is the world’s largest grower of opium poppies. This tiny country produces nearly three quarters of the world’s opium supply.

When the Taliban came into power in 1997 they began cracking down on the opium growers. We may have detested the Taliban and their (so called) oppressive regime but at least they did something positive!

Poppy fields were burned and the heroin processing plants were shut down. Within a few years opium production in Afghanistan had plummeted from CIA estimated 4,042 tons per year to only 81.3 tons per year

In 2001 The United States provided $43 million worth of supplies (primarily wheat) to humanitarian relief organizations in Afghanistan. This was widely reported by critics of U.S. policy to be a $43 million reward to the Taliban for reducing poppy production.

Global Oil companies also had an interest in Afghanistan to build pipelines through Afghanistan to link Caspian Sea oil and gas reserves to Central and South Asia. Members of the Taliban had visited the US to look at the plans for this operation.

All was going well…. until 9/11. The group that was bankrolled by the United States to fight off the Russians (as part of group of Mujahideen) did the unthinkable and attacked America (well Al-Qaeda to be specific who were protected bt the Taliban in Afghanistan).

The United States decided to find the culprits and occupied Afghanistan later in 2001. Poppy production hit a record high since the fall of the Taliban government. In 2004, under the U.S. occupation, an estimated 4,950 metric tons of opium gum potentially producing 582 metric tons of heroin were harvested. Most of these opium would be sold in Europe and not the United States.


Why didn’t the Americans destroy the poppy fields and the heroin processing plants?

In order to minimize American casualties during the invasion, U.S. forces allied themselves with a group known as the Northern Alliance. The Northern Alliance was a band of warlords who, in addition to controlling their own private armies, also controlled much of the drug trade in Afghanistan. The Northern Alliance is also supported and funded by several countries, including Russia, Iran and India.

Many warlords joined the Northern Alliance in order to defend their poppy fields against the Taliban’s crackdown. In exchange for their help against the Taliban, America allowed Northern Alliance members to continue growing poppies with relative impunity. Not only had the drug trade blossomed since the American invasion, it also had become far more profitable.

The current Afghan government has promised to crack down on drug trafficking, but their efforts have yielded few tangible results. The poppy growers have simply moved their fields away from government controlled areas and into the wild hinterlands controlled by the warlords.


So what should be done - What are the solutions?

Donald Rumsfeld is right in saying that Europe needs to do more in stopping the drug trafficking but so do the Americans.

With so many troops in Afghanistan I find it hard to understand why the Afghan government & the US find it difficult to destroy poppy crops. Maybe it is not in their best interest to do so? Maybe it would be better to reintroduce the Taliban? At least when they were in power they controlled the drug trade and stabilised the country.

Secondly, we need to get a better understanding why farmers grow Opium. Opium is not just a crop in Afghanistan; it is a way of life. It is used for trading with other goods, a form or barter. Farmers need to be introduced to alternative crops as a means of income. The Afghan government needs to subsidize these farmers, ensure proper infrastructure is in place to help the farmers and have stronger law enforcement in place.

Finally, the Americans (and United Nations) clearly need to do more. Now that they have established a correlation between the farming of opium and funding of terrorist (what took them so long?) Will they be going after the Northern Alliance (and its Warlords) rather than the Taliban? Do they know the difference? Have they realised that they “themselves” are responsible for the situation? Do they care? If they do maybe they will take it seriously and prioritised the war against drugs in this region.