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BOOK
REVIEW
The curse of the
poppy
The Opium Economy in
Afghanistan. An International Problem by the
United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime
Reviewed by Sreeram Chaulia
 It is no
cliche that opium has ruined many an individual, family,
society and nation. The history of modern China bears
graphic testimony. More recently, Myanmar and Colombia
have suffered profusely from the proliferation of opium
cultivation and trafficking that fills the pockets of
military factions. But the most definitive test case of
our times for proof of narco-terrorism and its power of
destroying a country is Afghanistan, producer of 75
percent of global opium stocks and not coincidentally
the victim of the worst kind of warlordism, religious
fundamentalism and civil society devastation.
This comprehensive new book by the UN Office on
Drugs and Crime (UNODC) methodically delves into the
various components of Afghanistan's opium economy -
cultivation, production, finance, trade and consumption
- and explains its obnoxious impact both at home and in
neighboring countries. It argues that dismantling the
opium economy must be done with the instruments of
democracy, rule of law and development. "National
efforts will not be enough. The problem is
international." (p 1) Severe negative externalities of
Afghan opium have converted it into a world problem
soluble only through concerted international action to
stem both supply and demand sides.
Afghanistan
never had an "opium culture" per se before 1980
(although Badakshan province is known in legend for
tipsy spirits). Lack of effective central government,
widespread loss of life, infrastructure decimation and
forced displacement of people in the last 22 years
created conditions in which the only crop that promises
a decent income is opium. "The more the overall economic
situation deteriorated, the more farmers opted as a
strategy for survival for growing opium poppy." (p 90)
Opium is weather-resistant, reliable, easy to transport
and sell compared to other crops. Involvement of cheap
family labor (women and girls are expected to work free
without wages or in-kind compensation) saves on costs of
production and boosts profitability. In 1999, the
average income per opium producing farmer was $1,075,
which went up to $7,400 in 2001. These are extraordinary
revenues in a country where the average wage does not
exceed $2 per day. "Opium is an insurance against
poverty and hunger." (p 10)
The mujahideen use
the production and sale of opium to finance weapons
needs. Islam prohibits intoxicating drugs, but weakening
social and legal constraints increase tolerance for
opium as one of the few commodities that can generate
enough income for buying sophisticated Western arms.
Opium and arms are often smuggled along the same routes
- "arms into Afghanistan and opium out of Afghanistan".
(p 127) Since 1996, warlords already involved in opium
trade surrendered to the Taliban in exchange for the
permit to continue their lucrative contraband trade. The
Taliban, who did not disturb the opium economy as long
as taxes could be levied on production, transit and
trade, reaped the largest profits out of opium. Strong
criticism from the international community and the
threat of even stronger UN sanctions forced the Taliban
to decree a temporary ban on opium production in July
2000, but massive re-planting of the poppy began as soon
as the Taliban were deposed in late 2001.
Lack
of a functioning financial system in Afghanistan has
raised the importance of opium in the informal capital
markets. Opium is "the only form of credit available",
especially as the Taliban implemented a narrow
interpretation of interest-free Islamic banking. Advance
sales to "narco-usurers" based on collateral of the
future poppy crop (salaam payments) comprise 60
percent of all loans taken out in Nangarhar and Kandahar
provinces. So deep is indebtedness in rural Afghanistan
that "the frequent solution to a household's debt
problem is to expand opium poppy cultivation". (p 123)
Like the military entrepreneurs, greed and
desire for social status motivate opium traders. UN
interviews reveal that 85 percent of southern Afghan
opium traders perform the expensive hajj pilgrimage and
enjoy access to power, reputation and respect in their
localities. Fifty percent of the traders have two to
three wives, the number of wives a man can afford is a
status symbol in Afghanistan. Hundred percent of the
traders own at least a car, a motorcycle or a tractor
and have larger than average land holdings. In eastern
Afghanistan, an average opium trader involved in rapid
turnover trade (purchase from farmers and immediate sale
in nearby markets) can make an annual profit of $1,000
per year, a figure much smaller than the profits from
smuggling opium to border regions or across into
Pakistan, Iran and Central Asia.
From the
mid-1990s, massive heroin manufacture (obtained by
purifying morphine, an opium extract) has taken off in
Afghanistan, with the prospect of even greater profits
than opium. The high morphine content of Afghan opium
gives it a comparative advantage in illicit heroin
trade. Pure heroin prices rise sevenfold once smugglers
get it across Afghanistan into Iran. "Smuggling of one
kilogram of opium to Tehran is equivalent to two years
of income in Afghanistan while smuggling one kilogram of
heroin is equivalent to four years of income." (p 141)
The magnitude of profits in the opium economy means that
legitimate income alternatives can never replace the
windfalls associated with drugs.
Drug
consumption in Afghanistan has increased strongly in
recent years owing to cheap and universal availability
of illicit opium, the mass return of refugees who
developed addiction in Pakistan and Iran, and the use of
opiates as painkillers in the absence of basic
medication and health care facilities. Opium is abused
by 0.5 percent and heroin by 0.1 percent of the adult
population, proportionately lower than in Pakistan (0.9
percent), Central Asia (0.9 percent) or Iran (1.7 to 2.8
percent). Abuse of hashish (9.1 percent) and
pyschotropic substances (1.8 percent) is also rising in
Afghanistan.
Various studies show that countries
around Afghanistan that are the primary recipients of
illegal opium exports have paid a heavy toll in economic
development. Neighboring countries are responsible for
61 percent of global seizures of opiates, but taken
together with Europe, Near and Middle East and Central
Asia, they contribute just 1 percent of the aggregated
GDP of these three regions, clearly indicating the
economic burden imposed by drug trafficking.
Iran, which spends the most against drug
trafficking, has the highest per capita income growth
rate among Afghanistan's neighbors. It has paid a big
price for drug interdiction in human and monetary terms,
losing 3,000 law enforcement personnel in two decades
and $250-$300 million in the year 2000 alone as direct
costs of drug control. Total profits made by Iranian
trafficking gangs in 2001 may have amounted to $1.3
billion, equivalent to 1.3 percent of the national
income. Criminal Pakistani groups earn roughly $400
million per annum from opium trafficking, equivalent to
0.7 percent of GDP. Their Central Asian counterparts
earn in excess of $2 billion a year, a gross trafficking
sum equivalent to 7 percent of the region's aggregate
GDP.
Black money from drug trafficking has an
inherent potential to destabilize the state and
socio-economic paraphernalia. Corruption, violence and
slush money have negative repercussions on legitimate
investment and thus compromise economic growth in the
long run. Full-scale electoral frauds perpetrated to
install administrations that are acceptable to major
trafficking networks (a la Russia today) are
possibilities. Acquisitive crime, gang warfare,
extortion and kidnapping, already features of
Afghanistan and its neighboring parts, can become
institutionalized if the opium economy is not tamed.
Capital formation (domestic investment) in the region
averages 15 percent of GDP, ie lower than that for low
and middle-income countries. Economic growth rates of
Afghanistan's neighbors declined by 4 percent per annum
between 1990 and 2000, drug trafficking undoubtedly
acting as a contributing factor.
The human
losses in Afghanistan's neighborhood have also been
acute. Iran has 1.2 million chronic opiate abusers (2.8
percent of adult population), with Central Asia and
Pakistan having addiction prevalence rates of 0.9
percent of respective populations above the age of 15.
Overall health budgets in these countries are hardly
sufficient to deal with ordinary ailments, let alone
provide the additional expenses for dealing with opiate
abuse. The opium-generated health crisis is particularly
acute in an undeveloped country like Tajikistan, which
has undergone a seven-fold increase in drug abuse in the
decade of the 1990s (annual addiction growth rate of 17
percent).
Heroin abuse is now more common than
opium consumption across Pakistan and as many as 15
percent of heroin users report using injecting needles
as administration routes. UNAIDS finds "no data to
indicate that, aside from injecting drug use (IDU)
transmission, there is any other significant
transmission of HIV occurring in Pakistan at present".
(p195) Central Asian Republics are witnessing increasing
rates of IDU, carrying high risks of blood-borne
diseases. Eight-eight percent of newly recorded HIV
cases in Central Asia are related to IDU. Iran's
HIV/AIDS epidemic is "driven by its drug problem".
(p196) Afghanistan's surroundings face significant risks
of sexual transmission of HIV from IDU to the general
population. IDU-related HIV rates in the Russian
Federation and other parts of the former USSR that
import Afghan opiates are the highest in the world.
As long as opium production exists in
Afghanistan, the threat to security of neighboring
countries will remain. Afghanistan's large poppy harvest
in 2002 implies that they "will suffer some time to come
from the consequences". (p 192)
What is the way
out of this web of debauchery, decline and
criminalization? UNODC has several recommendations.
Supporting central institutions of the state within
Afghanistan to establish effective government control
over poppy cultivating areas is a pre-requisite.
Non-extension of the International Security Assistance
Force (ISAF) beyond Kabul, tortoise-paced headway on a
new national army, and parceling of authority to
regional warlords are not helping to acheive this
objective. A sustainable rural economy has to be
developed, encompassing credit schemes for farmers,
sources of income for the landless, commodity markets
free of the perverse incentives of opium, functioning
banking systems, stable currency and firm enforcement of
bans on opium markets.
The image of opium
traders needs transmuting from Robin Hood heroes to
criminals who bring misery to many people across the
world. Labor-intensive public work programs and school
exams should be timed in the April-May period to
correspond with the opium harvesting season. Costing the
labor of girls and women is essential to disrupt the
structural advantages of opium production. The principal
lesson is that "an integrated drug control approach will
have to be linked to the mainstream of all other
development efforts to rebuild Afghanistan". (p 210)
The book concludes by noting that interventions
to reduce the supply-push of opiates depend on measures
to reduce the demand-pull, especially in European
markets. This is akin to the well-documented need to
attenuate demand of "conflict diamonds" from Angola,
Sierra Leone and the Congo in European and North
American markets if African civil wars are to be
suffocated.
The UNODC should be praised for this
encyclopedic reference report loaded with empirical
tables, graphs and maps. It serves to remind policy
makers and researchers that the Afghan tragedy will
never be over unless the sinister nexus of drugs and
thugs is busted.
The Opium Economy in
Afghanistan. An International Problem by the United
Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Vienna. 2003. ISBN:
92-1-148157-0. Price: US $25, 226 pages.
(©2003
Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
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