Poppy cultivation, Badakhshan. Getty Images \/ Paula Bronstein. All rights reserved.Since 2001, the United
\nStates has spent over $700 billion on the war in
\nAfghanistan. In contrast, it has spent only $7 billion on counternarcotics operations
\nthere. What should we conclude from the fact that the \u2018drug war\u2019 in Afghanistan
\naccounts for a mere 1% of total expenses? We should conclude that drugs are not
\na priority for US foreign policy, and never have been. The US government has no
\nserious interest in tackling drug problems. In fact, if it did, its strategy
\nwould be the exact opposite of what it has been doing for several decades now. <\/i><\/p>\n
There has not been a
\nreal drug war in Afghanistan, and therefore, although drug production has not
\nbeen reduced, this is not really a failure, as the drug war\u2019s function is more
\nabout representing enemies like the Taliban in a negative way to reinforce support
\nfor the war in the west.<\/p>\n
It is a well established fact that the most effective
\nsolutions to reduce drug consumption and its related problems are the provision
\nof treatment services for addicts as well as prevention programmes. Tough
\nsolutions like police work and capturing traffickers and narcotics shipments
\nhave limited effectiveness because as soon as one drug lord or small dealer is arrested,
\nothers will replace them, as long as there is demand for the drugs globally. Moreover,
\nmilitary operations overseas are the least effective approach to drugs. No
\nmatter what military officers, politicians and enforcement agents say, it does
\nnot work and never has.<\/p>\n
It is therefore no
\nsurprise that US counternarcotics operations in Afghanistan over the last 15
\nyears have been a total failure. Nearly everything has been tried, from doing
\nnothing to eradicating poppy fields to arresting traffickers and confiscating
\ntheir shipments to rural development to provide \u2018alternative livelihoods\u2019.<\/p>\n
But nothing has worked.
\nJohn Sopko, the special inspectors general who assesses American programmes in
\nAfghanistan, recently summarised it: \u201cBy every
\nconceivable metric, we\u2019ve failed. Production and cultivation are up,
\ninterdiction and eradication are down, financial support to the insurgency is
\nup, and addiction and abuse are at unprecedented levels in Afghanistan\u201d.<\/p>\n
The 2015 World Drug Report notes that Afghanistan still accounts for about
\n80% of global opiate and heroin production. Profits from drugs amount to about 10-15% of the country\u2019s GDP.<\/p>\n
Source: World Drug Report 2015 (UNODC).The chart demonstrates
\nthe complete failure of the \u2018war on drugs\u2019 and counternarcotics operations in
\nAfghanistan and globally. As the US attacked Afghanistan in 2001, that year\u2019s
\nopium production was a mere 180 tons (the result of a production ban
\nimplemented by the Taliban regime). Since then, it has reached record harvests
\nof over 7,000 tons in 2007 and over 6,000 tons in 2014 (in 2015, production
\ndropped to 3,300 tons, but this appears to be the result of a fungus and drought conditions that have nothing to do
\nwith policy). The situation is the same globally as production has not shrunk while
\npeaking in 2007 and 2014.\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n
The fundamental problem
\nis that even if production is reduced in one country, farmers elsewhere will
\nincrease production to meet global demand. This phenomenon is known as the
\n\u2018balloon effect\u2019, by analogy to a balloon pressed at one end that would
\nautomatically increase in size at its other end. In short, it is global demand
\nfor drugs that must be reduced in order to address the problem, following the
\noverwhelming consensus among researchers and the scholarly literature on
\nsubstance abuse.<\/p>\n
However, treatment and
\nprevention in Afghanistan have received little support from the United States.
\nAs a result, drug consumption in Afghanistan has \u201cincreased sharply\u201d in recent
\nyears, according to UNODC reports. For example, the consumption of
\nheroin and other opiates doubled between 2005 and 2009. The number of heroin
\nusers in the country is now estimated at 120,000.<\/p>\n
Why do the US government
\nand military refuse to employ effective methods to deal with drugs and continue
\nto prioritise the strategies that are known not to work? The short answer is
\nthat reducing drug problems is not a strategic objective of the US
\nestablishment. However, the drug war provides a useful tool to arrest or keep
\non their toes whoever is not considered to be an ally of the United States, or
\nwhoever challenges US hegemony. Conversely, in Afghanistan and historically, US
\nallies have repeatedly been involved in drug trafficking in order to support
\nthemselves financially. This has been useful to Washington, which has therefore
\noften turned a blind eye to their trafficking activities. To be sure, this interpretation
\nis not a conspiracy view that alleges that the US government, military or the
\nCIA actively support the drug trade as an end in itself \u2013 they don\u2019t. But the
\nfact is that US authorities merely look the other way because it provides
\nindirect benefits to some allies. The drug trade fulfills an instrumental
\nfunction in US foreign policy.<\/p>\n
And this is indeed what has According to the latest Impunity and Afghanistan Similarly, the Taliban have The size of the Afghan 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.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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 \u2018drug war\u2019 in Afghanistan accounts for a mere 1%…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1254","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1254"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1254\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nhappened in Afghanistan since 2001. Allies of the US, including Afghan
\ngovernment officials, have benefitted from drug trafficking. The Obama
\nadministration has even made it somewhat of an official policy to target drug
\nproduction only when and where the
\nTaliban are involved in it<\/em>. Obama has sought to target the \u2018drug-insurgency
\nnexus\u2019 while remaining soft on the \u2018drug-government nexus\u2019. The war on drugs\u2019
\ndouble standards could not be clearer.<\/p>\n
\nreports, it appears that government involvement in drugs has gotten even worse
\nthan in the years immediately after 2001. An insightful recent New York Times investigation found that \u201cmore than
\never, Afghan government officials have become directly involved in the opium
\ntrade, expanding their competition with the Taliban beyond politics and into a
\nstruggle for control of the drug traffic and revenue\u201d. A former police chief in
\nHelmand province, the centre of drug production, described the situation: \u201cover the years, I
\nhave seen the central government, the local government and the foreigners all talk
\nvery seriously about poppy\u201d. But in \u201cpractice, they do nothing,\u201d he said, \u201cand
\nbehind the scenes, the government makes secret deals to enrich themselves\u201d.<\/p>\n
\nsupport for drug lords and warlords has been the norm since 2001. NATO\u2019s
\nmission has been to support the Afghan government, but at one point 17 drug traffickers could be counted in the
\nAfghan parliament. Ahmed Wali Karzai, the
\nbrother of former president Karzai who was assassinated in 2011, had received regular payments from
\nthe CIA since 2001,
\neven though his involvement in narcotics was widely suspected. A New York University
\nreport documented the use
\nby NATO and US forces of private security companies and militias that are often run by strongmen responsible for
\nhuman rights abuses or involved in narcotics. For example, the report noted
\nthat in
\nBadakhshan Province, General Nazri Mahmad, a warlord who \u201ccontrol[s] a
\nsignificant portion of the province\u2019s lucrative opium industry\u201d, held the
\ncontract to provide security for the German Provincial Reconstruction Team.<\/p>\n
\nexpert Barnett Rubin described the US attitude well when he wrote in 2004 that when \u201che visits
\nAfghanistan, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld meets military commanders whom
\nAfghans know as the godfathers of drug trafficking. The message has been clear:
\nHelp fight the Taliban and no one will interfere with your trafficking\u201d.<\/p>\n
\nnow also deepened their involvement in the drug trade.
\nThey raise up to $155 million from narcotics annually, more than one quarter of
\ntheir total funding. Insurgents are taking more direct roles in trafficking and
\ncontrol operations at a higher level. The Taliban have become more reliant
\nfinancially on drug money, due to decreases in donations from the Persian Gulf
\nwhich are now directed to other conflicts. Also, their presence in the country
\nis now the most extensive since 2001: the threat
\nlevel in half the country\u2019s districts is \u2018extreme\u2019 or \u2018high\u2019, according to the
\nUnited Nations, the worst situation since 2001. Their increased geographical
\nreach allows the Taliban to control drug networks to a greater extent.<\/p>\n
\ndrugs trade has not been reduced at all since 2001. And this should not be
\nsurprising, given that it was never a priority. On the contrary, key
\ntraffickers and power brokers have been supported by the west, with disastrous
\nresults.\u00a0<\/p>\n