Afghanistan’s opium war —Antonio Maria Costa

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Sunday, November 26, 2006

Afghanistan’s opium war —Antonio Maria Costa

Farmers will be weaned off opium over the long term only if they have sustainable livelihoods. At the moment, Afghanistan’s drug lords are prospering, and rural communities are suffering. That situation needs to be reversed. We must punish the traffickers and reward the farmers

When NATO leaders meet for their summit in Riga at the end of this month, there will be a ghost at the feast: Afghanistan’s opium. Afghanistan is in danger of falling back into the hands of terrorists, insurgents, and criminals, and the multi-billion-dollar opium trade is at the heart of the country’s malaise. Indeed, NATO’s top general, James Jones, has called drugs the ‘Achilles heel’ of Afghanistan.

This year’s record harvest of 6,100 tons of opium will generate more than US$3 billion in illicit revenue — equivalent to almost half of Afghanistan’s GDP. Profits for drug traffickers downstream will be almost 20 times that amount.

Opium money is corrupting Afghan society from top to bottom. High-level collusion enables thousands of tons of chemical precursors, needed to produce heroin, to be trucked into the country. Armed convoys transport raw opium around the country unhindered. Sometimes even army and police vehicles are involved. Guns and bribes ensure that the trucks are waved through checkpoints. Opiates flow freely across borders into Iran, Pakistan, and other Central Asian countries.

The opium fields of wealthy landowners are untouched, because local officials are paid off. Major traffickers never come to trial because judges are bribed or intimidated. Senior government officials take their cut of opium revenues or bribes in return for keeping quiet. Perversely, some provincial governors and government officials themselves are major players in the drug trade.

As a result, the Afghan state is at risk of takeover by a malign coalition of extremists, criminals, and opportunists. Opium is choking Afghan society.

Within Afghanistan, drug addiction is rising. Neighbours that used to be transit states for drugs are now major consumers, owing to similar dramatic increases in opium and heroin addiction. Intravenous drug use is spreading HIV/AIDS in Iran, Central Asia, and the former Soviet Union. In traditional Western European markets, health officials should brace for a rise in the number of deaths from drug overdoses, as this year’s bumper opium crop will lead to higher-purity doses of heroin.

What can be done? First, the veil of corruption in Afghanistan must be lifted. Afghans are fed up with arrogant and well-armed tycoons who live in mansions and drive top-of-the range Mercedes limousines — this in a country where barely 13 percent of the population has electricity and most people must survive on less than US$200 a year.

It is time for the Afghan government to name, shame, and sack corrupt officials, arrest major drug traffickers and opium landlords, and seize their assets. Donors have trained police and prosecutors and built courts and detention centres. Now it is up to the government to use the judicial system to impose the rule of law. It will be difficult, but not impossible, to re-establish confidence in the central government. Putting major drug traffickers behind bars at the new maximum-security prison at Pul-i-Charki, near Kabul, would be a good start.

Of course, Afghanistan does not bear sole responsibility for its plight. The heroin trade would not be booming if Western governments were serious about combating drug consumption. It is a bitter irony that the countries whose soldiers’ lives are on the line in Afghanistan are also the biggest markets for Afghan heroin. Furthermore, Afghanistan’s neighbours must do more to stop insurgents, weapons, money, and chemical precursors from flowing across their borders into the country.

Coalition forces should take a more robust approach to the drug problem. Counter-insurgency and counter-narcotics are two sides of the same coin. Improving security and the rule of law must include destroying the opium trade. Allowing opium traffickers to operate with impunity gives them a free hand to raise money to pay for the arms and fighters battling the Afghan army and NATO forces.

The United Nations Security Council has authorised the International Security Assistance Force to take all necessary measures to fulfil its mandate. NATO troops should be given the green light to help the Afghan army fight opium — destroy the heroin labs, disband the opium bazaars, attack the opium convoys, and bring the big traders to justice. And they should be given the tools and manpower to do the job. There is no point in trying to win the hearts and minds of major drug traffickers.

Farmers are a different story. Forced eradication risks pushing farmers into the hands of extremists, and thus will not lead to the sustainable reduction of opium fields. Indeed, as we have seen in some Andean countries, it can be counter-productive. Therefore, security and development must go hand in hand.

To achieve this, Afghanistan needs more development assistance. International support so far has been generous, but it is still well below per capita equivalents for other post-conflict situations — and the need is much greater. Farmers will be weaned off opium over the long term only if they have sustainable livelihoods. At the moment, Afghanistan’s drug lords are prospering, and rural communities are suffering. That situation needs to be reversed. We must punish the traffickers and reward the farmers.

We cannot afford to fail in Afghanistan. Recent history has given us graphic evidence of what would happen if we do. But any solution in Afghanistan depends on eliminating its opium. —DT-PS

Antonio Maria Costa is Executive Director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2006\11\26\story_26-11-2006_pg3_6

 

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Afghanistan Opium Crop Sets Record
2. December 2006
By Karen DeYoung, Washington Post

Opium production in Afghanistan, which provides more than 90 percent of the world's heroin, broke all records in 2006, reaching a historic high despite ongoing U.S.-sponsored eradication efforts, the Bush administration reported yesterday.

In addition to a 26 percent production increase over past year -- for a total of 5,644 metric tons -- the amount of land under cultivation in opium poppies grew by 61 percent. Cultivation in the two main production provinces, Helmand in the southwest and Oruzgan in central Afghanistan, was up by 132 percent.

White House drug policy chief John Walters called the news "disappointing."

The administration has cited resurgent Taliban forces as the main impediment to stabilization and reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan, and the U.S. military investment has far exceeded anti-narcotic and development programs. But U.S. military and intelligence officials have increasingly described the drug trade as a problem that rivals and in some ways exceeds the Taliban, threatening to derail other aspects of U.S. policy.

"It is truly the Achilles' heel of Afghanistan," Gen. James L. Jones, the supreme allied commander for NATO, said in a recent speech at the Council on Foreign Relations. Afghanistan is NATO's biggest operation, with more than 30,000 troops. Drug cartels with their own armies engage in regular combat with NATO forces deployed in Afghanistan, he said. "It would be wrong to say that this is just the Taliban. I think I need to set that record straight," he added.

"They have their own capability to inflict damage, to make sure that the roads and the passages stay open and they get to where they want to go, whether it's through Pakistan, Iran, up through Russia and all the known trade routes. So this is a very violent cartel," Jones said. "They are buying their protection by funding other organizations, from criminal gangs to tribes, to inciting any kind of resistance to keep the government off of their back."

Any disruption of the drug trade has enormous implications for Afghanistan's economic and political stability. Although its relative strength in the overall economy has diminished as other sectors have expanded in recent years, narcotics is a $2.6 billion-a-year industry that this year provided more than a third of the country's gross domestic product. Farmers who cultivate opium poppies receive only a small percentage of the profits, but U.S. officials estimate the crop provides up to 12 times as much income per acre as conventional farming, and there is violent local resistance to eradication.

"It's almost the devil's own problem," CIA Director Michael V. Hayden told Congress last month. "Right now the issue is stability. . . . Going in there in itself and attacking the drug trade actually feeds the instability that you want to overcome."

"Attacking the problem directly in terms of the drug trade . . . would undermine the attempt to gain popular support in the region," agreed Lt. Gen. Michael D. Maples, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. "There's a real conflict, I think."

The Afghan government has prohibited the aerial herbicide spraying used by U.S. anti-narcotic programs in Latin America. Instead, opium poppy plants in Afghanistan are destroyed by tractors dragging heavy bars. But only 38,500 of nearly 430,000 acres under cultivation were eradicated this year.

Because of security concerns and local sensibilities, all eradication is done by Afghan police, and corruption is a major problem at every level from cultivation to international trafficking. Although the drug trade is believed to provide some financing to the Taliban, most experts believe it is largely an organized criminal enterprise. According to a major report on the Afghan drug industry jointly released last week by the World Bank and the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, key narcotics traffickers "work closely with sponsors in top government and political positions."

The report drew specific attention to the Afghan Interior Ministry, saying its officials were increasingly involved in providing protection for and facilitating consolidation of the drug industry in the hands of leading traffickers. "At the lower levels," the report said, "payments to police to avoid eradication or arrest reportedly are very widespread. At higher levels, provincial and district police chief appointments appear to be a tool for key traffickers and sponsors to exercise control and favor their proteges at middle levels in the drug industry."

Opium cultivation was outlawed during Taliban rule in the late 1990s and was nearly eliminated by 2001. After the overthrow of the Taliban government by U.S. forces in the fall of that year, the Bush administration said that keeping a lid on production was among its highest priorities. But corruption and alliances formed by Washington and the Afghan government with anti-Taliban tribal chieftains, some of whom are believed to be deeply involved in the trade, undercut the effort.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai recently noted that "once we thought terrorism was Afghanistan's biggest enemy" but said that now "poppy, its cultivation and drugs are Afghanistan's major enemy."

Eradication and alternative development programs have made little discernible headway. Cultivation -- measured annually with high-resolution satellite imagery that is then parsed by analysts using specialized computer software -- is nearly double its highest pre-Karzai level.

"There is supposed to be a tremendous energy associated with this," Jones said of the counter-narcotics programs, "but it needs a fresh look because . . . we're losing ground.

http://www.afghannews.net/index.php?action=show&type=news&id=1504