While there are many Taliban-controlled villages in Afghanistan that do not
cultivate opium; there are few villages cultivating opium that are not under
Taliban control. The concentration of opium production in a handful of southern
provinces has placed Afghanistan's opium economy almost completely under
insurgent control. Insurgent commanders benefit from taxation in kind at the
farm-gate, from direct involvement in trafficking and sales and from protection
money paid by traffickers to smooth exports.
Concentration in the southern provinces
The concentration of production in the southern provinces has
been driven by three factors. First, these provinces have a comparative
advantage in agricultural productivity. Helmand, which produced 70% of
Afghanistan's opium in 2008, has the largest share of the best farmland, with
high opium yields per hectare. [1]
By contrast, low opium productivity discourages poppy cultivation in other
hostile provinces, such as those in eastern Afghanistan. [2] In a broader
context, the ample supply of workers across Afghanistan keeps costs relatively
low for the labor-intensive opium harvest.
Second, opium cultivation is itself a strong indicator that an area is
resistant to law enforcement. The drug-insurgency nexus protects areas of opium
cultivation from government efforts to shape the opium economy. It is difficult
to provide investment in the licit agricultural economy when government and
international officials are considered targets.
Eradication cannot occur if fields are protected by gunmen; even if the gunmen
are not dedicated insurgents per se, the weakness of governmental authority
gives them impunity to confront the law violently. Essentially, resistance to
law enforcement creates a free-market context in which cultivators respond to
economic incentives and can reap the benefits of comparative advantage in
agricultural productivity. From the insurgents' perspective, there is the bonus
that resistance to eradication is blamed on the Taliban even when it is in many
cases the work of local power-holders protecting their illicit incomes, thus
contributing to the image of the Taliban as present and effective everywhere.
The third factor in this equation is the insurgency's encouragement of opium
cultivation. As every taxman knows, more valuable production generates stronger
revenue, and there are few commodities more fungible and valuable for an
insurgent taxman than opium. Taliban-controlled shuras (community
councils) in southern Afghanistan have aimed for an expansion of the opium
economy, and farmers have obliged. These decisions at least provide cover for
villages to become or stay involved in the opium economy; at most they act as a
political incentive to carry out insurgent orders and increase cultivation.
Disrupting the opium industry
These arrangements will be disrupted in 2009. Plans to increase international
and Afghan troop numbers in southern provinces are aimed at breaking the
insurgency's hold, reflecting a belated response to the worsening situation
there. A side effect of these plans will be interference in the drug-insurgency
nexus.
Opiate processing activity will experience the most direct and immediate
disruption. Labs in Helmand in particular seem to have been less mobile than in
other provinces, where the drive for mobility has gone as far as truck-mounted
facilities. [3] In 2008, some facilities in southern Helmand and Kandahar
appear to have relocated quite quickly as a result of counter-insurgency
operations. Even where labs are not targeted directly, their supply lines and
physical security will become more vulnerable with increased military activity
nearby. Trafficking will also face greater pressure, again not necessarily as a
direct target of operations. With the (slightly) stronger emphasis given to
counter-narcotics by NATO at the October informal meeting of defense ministers
in Budapest, there is also more scope to act directly against traffickers. [4]
The effects on cultivation and production will take longer. The reduction of
insurgent influence would remove a source of encouragement for farmers to
cultivate opium. It will also facilitate interventions by government and
international actors. In other words, a stronger troop presence would open an
opportunity to shift the applicable opium economy policy from expansion to
contraction.
However, to understand the trajectory of the drug-insurgency nexus in 2009 and
beyond, it is crucial to note that reductions in opium cultivation will occur
without any action by external forces. The plateau of cultivation in 2007 and
2008 reflected disequilibrium in the opium economy that has driven down the
price of opium and built up stocks held by farmers, traders, traffickers and
the insurgents themselves. [5] Just as manufacturers in the global recession
are doing, participants in the 2009 opium economy will respond to over-supply
by winding back production and running down inventories.
Monitoring by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) of planting
for the 2009 harvest suggests a significant reduction in cultivation
nationally, particularly in the south. There are also recent, credible reports
that the insurgency has reversed its policy in these provinces and is
discouraging cultivation during the present season. [6] This is a strong
indication that the insurgency expects to benefit more from raising the price
than from greater volumes.
Reducing the attractiveness of production
Effects on the drug-insurgency nexus will become more interesting in 2010 and
2011. If government and international influence in the south increases, the
2010 harvest can be subject to non-economic pressures combining incentives and
penalties. The psychological effect of eradication on farmers will grow if
enforcement becomes more credible. A more secure environment for law
enforcement will make it relatively easier to target higher-level traffickers.
The decline in development spending in the south will become reversible,
facilitating greater investment in rural economies and government services with
a view to bolstering options other than opium cultivation while providing
non-economic benefits to offset discontent from lower incomes. [7]
Such developments will reduce the relative attractiveness of the southern
provinces for opium economy activity. In 2010 they will still be the most
welcoming environments for opium cultivation, but a reduction in their
comparative advantage can be expected to result in some displacement of the
opium economy to other parts of Afghanistan.
This is a significant difference between the drug-insurgency connection in
Afghanistan and its counterparts in Colombia and Myanmar: government
effectiveness in areas not presently cultivating opium will generally be too
weak in Afghanistan to resist a degree of displacement of the opium industry
from the south. A decline in the concentration of opium-related activity in
southern provinces is already occurring - for example, some districts in
Nangarhar that were poppy-free in 2008 are expected to harvest opium this year.
However, the trend will become much more noticeable in 2010, if plans for
attacking insurgent control in the south in 2009 have their intended impact.
The Taliban's relationship with the opium economy
For the Taliban and their associates, several changes to their relationship
with the opium economy will follow a counter-insurgency offensive in the
southern provinces:
First, they will move to tax the non-opium economy more heavily. In the major
opium cultivation areas, the insurgency has been in the enviable fiscal
position of being able to ignore or reduce taxes on non-opium activity. [8] A
reduction in cultivation and a contraction in areas under insurgent control
will incline them to broaden their taxation base.
Second, that base will become more reliant on payments for protection of
trafficking, in effect an indirect tax on the opium economy. Even in best-case
scenarios for international forces, the insurgency will continue to enjoy
significant control of key trafficking territories on the Afghanistan-Pakistan
border. [9]
Third, there will be added incentive for insurgents to have even greater
involvement in opiate trafficking. The line between criminal and insurgent is
already quite blurry on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border (itself a blurry
concept). Reduced control of revenues from cultivation will only increase the
attractiveness of trafficking as a fundraising strategy. In this, insurgents
hold some advantages as traffickers in a war-zone, since they can fight for
control of routes and fight their way along those routes if necessary. [10]
Fourth, foreign sources of funding for the insurgency will become more obvious
and receive more attention. These are already sizeable but somewhat obscured by
the focus on drug revenue. The latter is more important for the outer cells of
the insurgency than for its core leadership, who will continue to draw on
external funds.
These four changes imply a fragmentation - or at least a loosening - of the
drug-insurgency nexus. The opium economy will remain a source of funds for
insurgents but it will become more difficult for them to access cultivation
directly. The relatively systematic and secure method of taxing cultivation
will not be so easy to maintain, leading the insurgency to become more like a
confederation of criminal groups in its relationship to the opium economy. A
major challenge is that they will forego revenue to purely criminal
organizations as a result of displacement of cultivation to areas outside of
insurgent control.
In turn, this suggests that criminals' protection of cultivation will become
increasingly important to the functioning of the opium economy. Or, perhaps a
more accurate description is that a recession in insurgent control will unmask
the collusion between local power-holders, opium farmers, and, in many cases,
government officials in Kabul.
Both this possibility and the likelihood of displacement of the opium economy
out of the south in 2009 and 2010 raise the prospect of greater divergence
between counter-insurgency and counter-narcotics efforts in 2010 and 2011.
While NATO's Budapest meeting gave international forces a slightly stronger
mandate for counter-narcotics work, more opium-related activity in
non-insurgent areas would be unlikely to draw much military support for a
counter-narcotics response against local power-holders. Indeed, the growing
importance of provinces such as Nimroz and Herat in processing and trafficking
has occurred in part because they have received less international attention
due to the relative absence of insurgent operations in these provinces.
Conclusion
Geographical divergence will be accompanied by a divergence of timeframes.
Downward price and upward stock trends in the opium economy imply that reduced
production in 2009 will not induce a major rebound in cultivation until at
least 2010 and more probably 2011. International and Afghan politics demand
that counter-insurgency operations show significant progress in the next two
fighting seasons, but the opium price pressures for more widespread cultivation
will not build until the end of that period.
International troop contributors hope to reduce their military commitment to
Afghanistan significantly in 2011. The reliance of the present analysis on the
effectiveness of military action against the insurgency in the south makes it
clear that their subsequent withdrawal will allow the opium economy to
re-establish itself as a more or less free market. If the predictions here are
accurate, the best that can be hoped for is that the insurgency will have
received such a blow that the opium economy becomes an all-criminal affair.
In effect, if the tide of insurgency is rolled back, it will reveal a lot of
government banditry and criminal collusion - some actors presently labelled
insurgents will be re-classified as drug lords. Alternatively, Afghanistan
might aspire to contain the drug-insurgency nexus in a small enough corral - as
in Colombia - that the national addiction to opium cultivation is demolished
and the government's focus can turn more forcefully to demand reduction,
counter-trafficking, and anti-corruption.
Jacob Townsend is a consultant with the United Nations in Afghanistan.
These are his personal views.
Notes
1. For visitors accustomed to small-scale farm-holdings in most parts of
Afghanistan, Helmand's large, developed and landscaped farms are a surprising
sight, including the near-total mechanization of non-opium agriculture. For
opium yields, see UNODC Afghanistan Opium Survey 2008, p.66.
2. There are also differences in social and religious attitudes towards the
opium economy in the east when compared with the south - UNODC, Socio-Economic
and Psychological Assessment of Fluctuations and Variations of Opium Poppy
Cultivation in Key Provinces in Afghanistan: Balkh, Kandahar, Nangarhar and
Central Provinces, Kabul, 2006.
3. Interviews with UNODC and ISAF personnel in Kabul, December 2008.
4. Specifically, ISAF "can act in concert with the Afghans against facilities
and facilitators supporting the insurgency, in the context of counternarcotics,
subject to authorization of respective nations".
5. The highest monthly price recorded for farm-gate dry opium in 2008 was
$108/kg, which was still lower than the lowest monthly price reported in 2006
($125/kg) - UNODC and the Afghan Ministry of Counter Narcotics, Afghanistan
Opium Price Monitoring, December 2008, p1. For the stocks held by farmers and
others, see UNODC Afghanistan Opium Survey 2008, p 71.
6. Interviews with UNODC and ISAF personnel in Kabul, January 2009.
7. All aid agencies have faced a challenge in spending money productively - or
at all - in the southern region. To take one measure, as Helmand's area of
opium cultivation increased substantially from 2005 to 2007, the Afghan
Ministry of Counter Narcotics records a decline in alternative livelihoods
investment from $55.7m in 2005 to $18.3m in 2007.
8. Reports from Ministry of Counter Narcotics/UNODC surveyors in 2008.
9. Note that this allows for extortion of all traders, not just those in opium.
10. A comparison might be made to the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, which
exploited these advantages in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan in the late 1990s to
become a powerful trafficking organisation in Central Asia.
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