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2 Opium in Afghanistan: A bad
trip By Hayder Mili and Jacob
Townsend
The opium economy in Afghanistan
is a key component of the counterinsurgency
campaign, yet remains one of the most difficult
issues to tackle. It is a critical problem facing
international efforts to create a functional
government in Kabul that can prosecute
counter-terrorism on its own territory.
A
successful counter-narcotics intervention would
have the added benefit of undermining an important
terrorist funding source in
arenas as diverse as
Chechnya, Xinjiang and Central Asia.
While
coalition and Afghan officials regularly
acknowledge the power that the narco-economy has
over their ambitions, it has proved exceptionally
challenging to turn this into a national strategy
that incorporates counter-narcotics into
counterinsurgency and provides the resources for
its execution. According to the United Nations
Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), opium
production had a boom year in 2006, rising to
6,100 tonnes.
This marked a 49% increase
over 2005, yielding an estimated US$755 million to
farmers on the basis of a slightly decreased
farm-gate price of $125 per kilogram of dry opium.
With the national government's revenues at less
than $350 million for 2006, the opium economy is a
formidable financial power base beyond the state's
control. Good weather conditions are expected in
2007, suggesting another huge harvest.
Any
national counter-narcotics strategy for
Afghanistan must begin with a preface noting the
geographical variations of the country. In 2006,
the southern province of Helmand accounted for 46%
of Afghanistan's opium production. To the east of
Helmand, Kandahar produced 8%. In other words, the
majority of Afghanistan's opium economy is built
on production in two southern provinces. Of the
remainder, 25% is produced in the northern belt
close to the borders with Tajikistan, Uzbekistan
and Turkmenistan, with lighter concentrations in
the eastern and western provinces.
Based
on the UNODC's observations of recent opium
planting, southern pre-eminence is likely to
intensify further in 2007. [1] The distribution of
production correlates strongly with areas of
ongoing insurgency/terrorism and coalition
fatalities. Using the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization's divisions of Afghanistan, Regional
Command South, which includes Helmand and Kandahar
provinces, is where 62% of the country's opium is
produced and where the coalition has suffered
close to two-thirds of its combat deaths. [2]
Basically, people are dying where poppies are
thriving.
The difference between the
relatively calm north and west and the militarized
south and east should be reflected in approaches
to counter-narcotics. Opium is undoubtedly a
governance problem across the country. In the
south and east, however, it is also strongly
related to the Kabul government's most immediate
existential threat - the Taliban-led insurgency -
as well as to the funding of 139 suicide attacks
in 2006. [3]
Farmers and
fighters Out of Afghanistan's total opium
production, 21% is trafficked northward through
Central Asia. About 31% travels directly to Iran,
which has suffered considerable human and
financial costs in responding to both the direct
drug traffic and the substantial opiate shipments
arriving via Pakistan. The remaining majority of
opiates leave Afghanistan across its
2,430-kilometer border with Pakistan. Harsh
terrain, corruption and insecurity make it
difficult or impossible to interdict opiate flows
in most places.
In practice, it is
challenging to differentiate among criminality,
farmers' economic needs, insurgency fundraising
and state complicity. Separating these factors
conceptually, however, helps to formulate
effective counterinsurgency tactics, highlighting
the interactions between the drug trade and the
Taliban.
According to officials from the
United Nations who interviewed Afghan
law-enforcement and coalition agencies this year,
a symbiosis between the opiate trade and the
Taliban continues, to the extent that some Taliban
units simultaneously organize drug production and
insurgent activities.
In some regions,
there has been a methodical process of fighting
for territory while establishing relationships
with opium cultivators that vary from symbiotic to
despotic. Insecurity reinforces these
relationships, and this in turn makes the
territory easier to penetrate by insurgents.
The feedback loops are evident in southern
labor markets. A survey by the Senlis Council, a
drug-policy advisory forum, suggested that
$200-600 per month was offered to work for the
Taliban. [4] Law-enforcement officials
corroborated this in their report, stating that
the Taliban successfully recruit young locals to
fight for $20 a day. These are not hardcore,
dedicated and ideological fighters - they are
unemployed men, some of whom are accustomed to a
mercenary life.
Although generally
inferior to coalition troops and seemingly
deployed in many circumstances as cannon fodder,
they can be effective in ambushes and arranging
improvised explosive devices (IEDs).
Taliban commanders have also used these
"Tier 2" fighters to assist opium harvesting.
Harvest time raises the stakes for insurgents in
terms of maintaining territorial control.
Traditional migrations for seasonal employment
supply itinerant laborers who can be employed
simultaneously as harvesters and protectors of
opium. The Taliban can then take credit for
providing local security and ensuring control of
opium production.
With the government and
coalition unwelcome and subject to active (ambush)
and passive (IED) attacks, areas of intense opium
cultivation are the most difficult in which to
demonstrate any reconstruction and development
benefits. Alternative employment for mercenaries
and alternative livelihoods for farmer-fighters
cannot be delivered, and those who might be
attracted to such alternatives fear Taliban
retribution. For example, the Pajhwok News Agency
reported on October 30, 2005, that farmers in the
Khan Nishin district in Helmand province were
being forced by the Taliban to cultivate poppies
under threat of death.
Addicted to
poppy-dollars Law-enforcement officers and
UNODC officials interviewed by the authors last
month believe that the Taliban are completely
dependent on the narco-economy for their
financing. Where the Taliban are able to enforce
it - mostly in the south and some eastern
districts - they are said to levy a 40% tax on
opium cultivation and trafficking. A low estimate
of the amount that the Taliban earn from the opium
economy is $10 million, but considering the
tradition of imposing tithes on cultivation and
activities further up the value chain, the total
is likely to be at least $20 million. [5]
There are also regular reports of
cooperation between political insurgents and
profit-driven criminal groups. One example is
their collusion to throw small farmers off their
land or to indenture them under debts and threats
to maintain opium production. More detailed
information provided to the authors describes
arrangements whereby drug traffickers provide
money, vehicles and subsistence to Taliban units
in return for protection. [6]
The synergy
between politically motivated warfare and economic
logic is starkly visible and should drive the
integration of counter-narcotics and
counterinsurgency strategies. Of course, not all
violence is linked to transnational jihadis.
Across Afghanistan, profit-driven criminality is
more pervasive than sympathy for or cooperation
with insurgents, even if both benefit from and
contribute to general lawlessness.
When it
comes to the Taliban, however, the centrality of
the opium economy in their funding model is both a
strength and a weakness. Reducing their financial
power would undermine an important component of
their recruitment model. It suggests a potential
for turning the vicious circle of insecurity and
economic stagnation into a virtuous one of
coalition military superiority and job creation.
Dimensions of
counter-narcotics The failure to reduce
opium cultivation in the early post-invasion years
has directly augmented the Taliban's military
strength. They have harvested the opium into
weapons. The opiate trade and terrorism activity
currently overlap to such an extent that some
law-enforcement actions fall under
counter-narcotics and counter-terrorism
simultaneously.
So far, despite the
millions of dollars spent and the various schemes
that the coalition has attempted, opium production
has
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