Poppy cultivation, Badakhshan. Getty Images / Paula Bronstein. All rights reserved.Since 2001, the United
States has spent over $700 billion on the war in
Afghanistan. In contrast, it has spent only $7 billion on counternarcotics operations
there. What should we conclude from the fact that the ‘drug war’ in Afghanistan
accounts for a mere 1% of total expenses? We should conclude that drugs are not
a priority for US foreign policy, and never have been. The US government has no
serious interest in tackling drug problems. In fact, if it did, its strategy
would be the exact opposite of what it has been doing for several decades now.
There has not been a
real drug war in Afghanistan, and therefore, although drug production has not
been reduced, this is not really a failure, as the drug war’s function is more
about representing enemies like the Taliban in a negative way to reinforce support
for the war in the west.
It is a well established fact that the most effective
solutions to reduce drug consumption and its related problems are the provision
of treatment services for addicts as well as prevention programmes. Tough
solutions like police work and capturing traffickers and narcotics shipments
have limited effectiveness because as soon as one drug lord or small dealer is arrested,
others will replace them, as long as there is demand for the drugs globally. Moreover,
military operations overseas are the least effective approach to drugs. No
matter what military officers, politicians and enforcement agents say, it does
not work and never has.
It is therefore no
surprise that US counternarcotics operations in Afghanistan over the last 15
years have been a total failure. Nearly everything has been tried, from doing
nothing to eradicating poppy fields to arresting traffickers and confiscating
their shipments to rural development to provide ‘alternative livelihoods’.
But nothing has worked.
John Sopko, the special inspectors general who assesses American programmes in
Afghanistan, recently summarised it: “By every
conceivable metric, we’ve failed. Production and cultivation are up,
interdiction and eradication are down, financial support to the insurgency is
up, and addiction and abuse are at unprecedented levels in Afghanistan”.
The 2015 World Drug Report notes that Afghanistan still accounts for about
80% of global opiate and heroin production. Profits from drugs amount to about 10-15% of the country’s GDP.
Source: World Drug Report 2015 (UNODC).The chart demonstrates
the complete failure of the ‘war on drugs’ and counternarcotics operations in
Afghanistan and globally. As the US attacked Afghanistan in 2001, that year’s
opium production was a mere 180 tons (the result of a production ban
implemented by the Taliban regime). Since then, it has reached record harvests
of over 7,000 tons in 2007 and over 6,000 tons in 2014 (in 2015, production
dropped to 3,300 tons, but this appears to be the result of a fungus and drought conditions that have nothing to do
with policy). The situation is the same globally as production has not shrunk while
peaking in 2007 and 2014.
The fundamental problem
is that even if production is reduced in one country, farmers elsewhere will
increase production to meet global demand. This phenomenon is known as the
‘balloon effect’, by analogy to a balloon pressed at one end that would
automatically increase in size at its other end. In short, it is global demand
for drugs that must be reduced in order to address the problem, following the
overwhelming consensus among researchers and the scholarly literature on
substance abuse.
However, treatment and
prevention in Afghanistan have received little support from the United States.
As a result, drug consumption in Afghanistan has “increased sharply” in recent
years, according to UNODC reports. For example, the consumption of
heroin and other opiates doubled between 2005 and 2009. The number of heroin
users in the country is now estimated at 120,000.
Why do the US government
and military refuse to employ effective methods to deal with drugs and continue
to prioritise the strategies that are known not to work? The short answer is
that reducing drug problems is not a strategic objective of the US
establishment. However, the drug war provides a useful tool to arrest or keep
on their toes whoever is not considered to be an ally of the United States, or
whoever challenges US hegemony. Conversely, in Afghanistan and historically, US
allies have repeatedly been involved in drug trafficking in order to support
themselves financially. This has been useful to Washington, which has therefore
often turned a blind eye to their trafficking activities. To be sure, this interpretation
is not a conspiracy view that alleges that the US government, military or the
CIA actively support the drug trade as an end in itself – they don’t. But the
fact is that US authorities merely look the other way because it provides
indirect benefits to some allies. The drug trade fulfills an instrumental
function in US foreign policy.
And this is indeed what has
happened in Afghanistan since 2001. Allies of the US, including Afghan
government officials, have benefitted from drug trafficking. The Obama
administration has even made it somewhat of an official policy to target drug
production only when and where the
Taliban are involved in it. Obama has sought to target the ‘drug-insurgency
nexus’ while remaining soft on the ‘drug-government nexus’. The war on drugs’
double standards could not be clearer.
According to the latest
reports, it appears that government involvement in drugs has gotten even worse
than in the years immediately after 2001. An insightful recent New York Times investigation found that “more than
ever, Afghan government officials have become directly involved in the opium
trade, expanding their competition with the Taliban beyond politics and into a
struggle for control of the drug traffic and revenue”. A former police chief in
Helmand province, the centre of drug production, described the situation: “over the years, I
have seen the central government, the local government and the foreigners all talk
very seriously about poppy”. But in “practice, they do nothing,” he said, “and
behind the scenes, the government makes secret deals to enrich themselves”.
Impunity and
support for drug lords and warlords has been the norm since 2001. NATO’s
mission has been to support the Afghan government, but at one point 17 drug traffickers could be counted in the
Afghan parliament. Ahmed Wali Karzai, the
brother of former president Karzai who was assassinated in 2011, had received regular payments from
the CIA since 2001,
even though his involvement in narcotics was widely suspected. A New York University
report documented the use
by NATO and US forces of private security companies and militias that are often run by strongmen responsible for
human rights abuses or involved in narcotics. For example, the report noted
that in
Badakhshan Province, General Nazri Mahmad, a warlord who “control[s] a
significant portion of the province’s lucrative opium industry”, held the
contract to provide security for the German Provincial Reconstruction Team.
Afghanistan
expert Barnett Rubin described the US attitude well when he wrote in 2004 that when “he visits
Afghanistan, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld meets military commanders whom
Afghans know as the godfathers of drug trafficking. The message has been clear:
Help fight the Taliban and no one will interfere with your trafficking”.
Similarly, the Taliban have
now also deepened their involvement in the drug trade.
They raise up to $155 million from narcotics annually, more than one quarter of
their total funding. Insurgents are taking more direct roles in trafficking and
control operations at a higher level. The Taliban have become more reliant
financially on drug money, due to decreases in donations from the Persian Gulf
which are now directed to other conflicts. Also, their presence in the country
is now the most extensive since 2001: the threat
level in half the country’s districts is ‘extreme’ or ‘high’, according to the
United Nations, the worst situation since 2001. Their increased geographical
reach allows the Taliban to control drug networks to a greater extent.
The size of the Afghan
drugs trade has not been reduced at all since 2001. And this should not be
surprising, given that it was never a priority. On the contrary, key
traffickers and power brokers have been supported by the west, with disastrous
results.
This article is published as part of an editorial partnership between openDemocracy and CELS, an Argentine human rights organisation with a broad agenda that includes advocating for drug policies respectful of human rights. The partnership coincides with the United Nations General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS) on drugs.