Opium cultivation in Afghanistan is at an all time high. The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction has sent a report to the administration, highlighting the failure of U.S. counternarcotics efforts, and the money spent.
I am writing to provide the results of SIGAR’s analysis of recent trends in opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan. As you know, the narcotics trade poisons the Afghan financial sector and undermines the Afghan state’s legitimacy by stoking corruption, sustaining criminal networks, and providing significant financial support to the Taliban and other insurgent groups. Despite spending over $7 billion to combat opium poppy cultivation and to develop the Afghan government’s counternarcotics capacity, opium poppy cultivation levels in Afghanistan hit an all-time high in 2013.
According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Afghan farmers grew an unprecedented 209,000 hectares of opium poppy in 2013, surpassing the previous peak of 193,000 hectares in 2007. With deteriorating security in many parts of rural Afghanistan and low levels of eradication of poppy fields, further increases in cultivation are likely in 2014.
Special Report: Poppy Cultivation in Afghanistan, 2012 and 2013, SIGAR
The issue is being picked up by the media.
Over the last dozen years, the United States has poured $7.6 billion into combating Afghanistan’s opium production, and the results are now clear: The program failed.
This effectively leaves the Afghan economy heavily dependent on criminal enterprises, rising corruption that undermines efforts to promote democracy, and increased drug addiction among the Afghan people. The uncontrolled opium trade also provides the Taliban with up to $155 million annually, or more than one-quarter of the total funding for its antigovernment insurgency.
Afghanistan’s Unending Addiction, New York Times
If you spent 13 years pounding money down a rathole with little to show for it, you might wake up one morning and say: “Hey, I’m going to stop pounding money down this rathole.”
Unfortunately, the U.S. government does not think this way.
The U.S. government wakes up every morning and says: “The rathole is looking a little empty today. Let’s pound a few more billion dollars down there.”
And when that rathole is Afghanistan, the billions are essentially without end.
Down the opium rathole, Politico
In the early years of the occupation, the Bush administration had taken a hands-off policy on opium growing, needing the cooperation of Afghan warlords.
The initial objective of the U.S. intervention in 2001 was to degrade al-Qaida’s capabilities and institute regime change in Afghanistan. Dealing with the illicit economy was not considered to be integral to the military objectives. Thus, until 2003, U.S. counternarcotics policy in Afghanistan was essentially laissez-faire. The U.S. military understood that it would not be able to obtain intelligence on the Taliban and al-Qaida if it tried to eradicate poppy. Meanwhile, it relied on key warlords, who were often deeply involved in the drug economy since the 1980s, not simply to provide intelligence on the Taliban, but also to carry out direct military operations against them and al-Qaida.
War and Drugs in Afghanistan, World Politics Review
By 2004, with the Taliban seemingly defeated, eradication efforts grew.
Alarmed by the spread of opium poppy cultivation, some public officials in the United States in 2004 and 2005 also started calling for a stronger poppy eradication campaign, including aerial spraying (.pdf). Thus, between 2004 and 2009, manual eradication was carried out by central Afghan units trained by the U.S. contractor Dyncorp as well as by regional governors and their forces. Immediately, the efforts were met with violent strikes and social protests. Another wave of eradication that took place in 2005 successfully reduced poppy cultivation, with most of the gains due to cultivation suppression in Nangarhar province, where production was slashed by 90 percent (.pdf) through promises of alternative development and threats of imprisonment.
War and Drugs in Afghanistan, World Politics Review
In 2009, the Obama administration recognized opium eradication as a counterproductive failure, and shifted course.
The Obama administration’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan told allies on Saturday that the United States was shifting its drug policy in Afghanistan away from eradicating opium poppy fields and toward interdicting drug supplies and cultivating alternative crops.
“The Western policies against the opium crop, the poppy crop, have been a failure,” the representative, Richard C. Holbrooke, told reporters on the margins of the Group of 8 conference in the northern Italian city of Trieste, Reuters reported. “They did not result in any damage to the Taliban, but they put farmers out of work and they alienated people and drove people into the arms of the Taliban.”
New Course for Antidrug Efforts in Afghanistan, New York Times
"It might destroy some acreage, but it didn't reduce the amount of money the Taliban got by one dollar. It just helped the Taliban. So we're going to phase out eradication," he [Holbrooke] said.
Eradication efforts were seen as inefficient because too little was being destroyed at too high a cost, Antonio Maria Costa, the UN drug chief, said.
The old policy was unpopular among powerless small-scale farmers, who often were targeted in the eradication efforts.
US to reverse Afghan opium strategy, Al-Jazeera
There is no decrease in corruption; in fact, there is a huge amount of corruption associated with eradication. It’s not bankrupting the Taliban; there is more poppy than there was a few years back, and it’s losing the hearts and minds of the population, and making counterinsurgency really difficult. So we are going to change policy.
The U.S. government decided to defund the centrally led eradication force, which was the main unit that was eradicating. But the Obama administration wanted to compromise somewhat, and they said if the Afghan government, local governors, wants to do some eradication, that’s their choice. If the local provincial governors decide the want to eradicate, we will provide them assistance, both equipment and technical assistance.
Why Eradication Won’t Solve Afghanistan’s Poppy Problem, PBS
The administration having mostly given up on and defunded eradication, as a failure and a waste of money, and which drives rather than prevents corruption, is background to the SIGAR report telling the administration that anti-opium efforts have been a failure and a waste of money, and that opium in Afghanistan drives corruption.
In 2007, the British had tried to eradicate opium in Helmand province. This stirred up a war.
A final cause of local resistance was the attempt by the British to eradicate opium production. It would appear that this triggered a popular revolt against the British in Nad-e Ali in 2007:
In fact the fighting started because of opium. They started destroying the opium fields of the people, that’s why they became angry ... The rich people had land and they grew opium, so it was good for them. For the poor farmers without land who worked the land, it was good, because they got 20 or 30 or some percentage of the opium, so for the poor workers it was also a very good job. When they started destroying the opium fields, the people—landowners, farmers, poor people—everyone became angry. And they started fighting.40
The Taliban at war: inside the Helmand insurgency, 2004–2012, International Affairs
In 2008, the British targeted warlords rather than small farmers. This made matters worse.
In 2008 the British attempted to target the poppy fields of warlords, such as ARJ, who had been removed as district chief of police. This made matters even worse. Through his patronage network, ARJ still controlled most of the police in central Helmand. He retaliated by allowing the Taliban to enter and take control of Marjah.42
The Taliban at war: inside the Helmand insurgency, 2004–2012, International Affairs
It resulted in the 2010 surge, a major event in U.S. politics, being devoted to trying to retake the small opium growing region around Marjah.
The SIGAR report highlights opium eradication in Nangarhar province as having previously been a model of success.
Nangarhar province in eastern Afghanistan, considered a model for successful counterinsurgency and counternarcotics efforts and deemed ‘poppy free’ by the UNODC in 2008, saw a fourfold increase in opium poppy cultivation between 2012 and 2013.
Special Report: Poppy Cultivation in Afghanistan, 2012 and 2013, SIGAR
SIGAR does not mention him in their report. But for eradicating corruption by eradicating opium growing, Gul Agha Shirzai's efforts in Nangarhar are probably not that successful a model. His opium is in Kandahar.
So people like Gul Agha Shirzai, who comes from Kandahar and used to be a big drug lord there, has now for a number of years been the provincial governor in Nangarhar Province. He has been very keen to suppress opium cultivation there and has done so through threats and promises about “alternative livelihood” programs for farmers who don’t cultivate opium poppy. He has not been effectively able to deliver on the promise of alternative livelihood to most of the farmers.
But he has been doing two things: He has been transforming himself from a reviled warlord whom the international community used to strongly dislike to someone who in the eyes of the full international community is defined now as a good governor for keeping poppy cultivation down, and a man who has big presidential ambitions in Afghanistan.
At the same time, his network’s drug assets are all in Kandahar. So if you suppress cultivation in Nangarhar Province, you are appearing virtuous to the internationals, and at the same time you are eliminating your drug competition from a different ethnic group.
Why Eradication Won’t Solve Afghanistan’s Poppy Problem, PBS
The U.S. efforts apart from Gul Agha Shirzai were not much of a model success either. The U.S. plan to pay some Shinwari tribesmen to burn down the crops of their neighbors, stirred up a tribal war.
But the swirling controversy surrounding the American deal in eastern Afghanistan's Nangarhar province demonstrates that efforts to alter the existing power structure can have unintended and unsettling effects. The plan involving the 400,000-strong Shinwari tribe developed earlier this year when elders told Col. Randy George, a senior commander in eastern Afghanistan, that they wanted to unite to oppose the Taliban and stamp out opium cultivation. As a reward, George offered the Shinwari elders the power to decide how to spend $1 million in U.S.-funded development projects.
It ended after the local power broker, Gov. Gul Agha Shirzai, a towering and controversial figure in Afghan politics, complained to President Hamid Karzai, who lambasted U.S. Ambassador Karl W. Eikenberry in a February meeting for meddling in tribal politics.
Shirzai accused U.S. officials of turning tribal elders into "little governors."
Soon, the State Department ordered its employees to cease working on the deal. The embassy has drafted, but not yet issued, guidance that no civilians in Afghanistan should be involved in tribal pacts.
U.S. military runs into Afghan tribal politics after deal with Pashtuns, Washington Post
Farmers close to the provincial capital, Jalalabad, have often managed to cope by switching to crops such as vegetables, increasing dairy production and working for wages in reconstruction programs. However, farmers away from the provincial center, such as in the districts of Achin, Khogyani and Shinwar, have suffered great economic deprivation. With their income slashed by as much as 80 percent and no alternative livelihoods programs made available to them, their political restlessness has steadily grown (.pdf). Those areas have seen great levels of instability; intensified tribal conflict over land, water and access to resource handouts from the international community; rebellions of young men against the local maliks supporting eradication; physical attacks on eradication teams; intense Taliban mobilization; and increased flows of militants into and through the province from Pakistan.
War and Drugs in Afghanistan, World Politics Review
So opium cultivation in Afghanistan is now at an all time high. And the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction has sent a report to the administration, highlighting the $7.6 billion spent with no results.
Opium cultivation being at an all time high serves as a potent symbol of the American failure in Afghanistan, and the report is being picked up by the media for this.
But the SIGAR report, and media reporting on it, is missing context. Eradication had mostly been given up on and defunded in 2009. It starves farmers. It drives people to the insurgency. It creates rather than solves corruption. It doesn't work.