August 28, 2013
Widely known as the largest producer of the world’s supply of heroin, Afghanistan presents a complex challenge for global leaders as the withdrawal of international forces in 2014 draws closer. Despite achieving limited success in controlling the flow of poppies from the region, post-withdrawal, many observers fear the explosion of both drugs and violence from the country as it loses ISAF troops. Poor security and uncertain rule of law are critical for the drug trade because they limit licit alternatives for the average person. This is particularly true in Afghanistan, where near constant political and military turmoil has created a systemic culture of uncertainty and pushed average farmers toward high-profit crops like poppies.
The uneven counter-narcotics efforts undertaken by the global community since 2001 have failed to reduce incentives or shore up state institutions and have instead served to increase opium production by over 150 percent. Today, Afghan poppy represents a rising $65 billion industry and is projected to continue its expansion as international forces leave. Afghanistan and Pakistan should remain serious counter-narcotics priorities for policymakers in the interests of achieving stability in this turbulent and strategic locale, while also addressing the global health crisis.
Opium should be considered a security threat as well as a social one. The violent experiences of drug-producing states like Mexico and Colombia demonstrate the threat of secular, powerful illicit actors and foreshadow how the confluence of ideology and narcotics is dangerous to global stability. Drugs and terror enjoy a symbiotic relationship because they leverage similar networks, allow insurgents access to significant revenue to continue their resistance, and provide a way for non-state actors to emancipate themselves from state sponsors. Both also weaken state institutions and in this way, can be self-perpetuating.
However, increased ties to drugs also mean looser ideological motivations and a blurring of distinction between terrorist and criminal. It is entirely feasible that the future of instability in Afghanistan will resemble the narco-terror of Mexico rather than the Islamist-based insurgency of today. In either case, criminals involved in heroin production are a destabilizing threat, particularly in the geopolitical context of South Asia, and should be addressed as such.
To affect change, policymakers and security operatives must appreciate the dynamic context of the Afghan opium challenge. There are many aspects to the narcotics cycle operating in Afghanistan: history, economic pressures, social morays, and most importantly, regional dynamics. The country’s neighbours are part of both the current problem and the required solution. Ethnic and tribal linkages, in combination with a highly porous Afghanistan-Iran-Pakistan border, offer opportunities for drug traffickers and other criminal actors to move contraband easily without detection.
While Iran regularly executes low-level drug dealers caught transporting narcotics over their border, Pakistan remains crucially open for the Afghan opium trade. Opium emerged as a smuggled commodity in the 1980s, due to factors ranging from regional power shifts, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and American support of the mujahedin. Today, Pakistan represents the ‘command and control’ hub of the Afghan heroin networks, a key element in the trafficking of opiates from production to markets in Europe, Asia, and the Americas. Crafting a workable response to Afghan heroin requires significant counter-narcotics and governance capacity building within Pakistan as well as in Afghanistan.
The intertwined nature of Afghanistan and Pakistan necessitates the pursuit of a dual strategy or a regional solution if the global community truly wants to address the problem of Afghan heroin. While the production of the drug may be contained within Afghanistan, operational directives are decidedly issued from within Pakistan. Luckily, because of the interconnected nature of opium networks in the region, many of the policy recommendations can be applied to both countries. Some aspects of the solution can be pursued under a single program; indeed, they may be more effective that way. As with all law enforcement and state-building activities, policymakers should take care to consider unintended consequences of their policies – particularly in the case of illicit activity, as seemingly positive efforts can spawn turf wars, widespread violence, and the ennobling of drug czars.
The international community must also learn to differentiate between the sectors of opium production. As the Cato Institute noted in 2009, a solution that concentrates on eradication disproportionately affects the lowest economic bracket and lends itself to the balloon effect of simply displacing cultivation into less scrutinized areas. A massive rural development program in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, particularly in the border region, would be an excellent start to fomenting lasting change. Unfortunately, as with most development projects, the effects will be long in coming and the true value of such an approach will only be shown after several years, requiring a certain amount of faith from both policymakers and their constituents. Nevertheless, if the international community wishes to stabilize and reinforce the global rule of law, such policies must be enacted.
Long term counter-narcotics strategy should be multifaceted and address root causes rather than current cultivation. Concentrating on limiting warlordism and building both governmental and security capacity within Afghanistan would be worthy, midrange goals in the overall effort to eliminate opium in Afghanistan. Vanda Felbab-Brown of the Brookings Institute eloquently argues that building law enforcement capacity and legitimacy, as well as other rule of law institutions, are essential to any counter-narcotics project, and those in charge of transnational counter narcotics in the country should take note. Additionally, as demonstrated in the ongoing struggle against drug cartels in Mexico, goals of both the domestic police forces should not be ‘numbers based’ (i.e. how many tons of heroin seized, how many arrests made). Rather, evaluation must be done on a more qualitative basis.
The aim should be to promote the societal perception of the police as impartial, honest, and competent brokers rather than as grasping thugs in uniforms. By building judicial capacity within both Afghanistan and Pakistan, this will allow for the arrest and prosecution of top-level traffickers, reducing the peril of vertical integration that is currently being experienced in the region. Other, more short-term efforts should include a strong focus on interdicting the precursor chemicals used to transform opium into heroin – a strategy considerably more effective than burning poppy fields. Pursuing drug kingpins and attacking the fiscal support structure of Afghan heroin would also provide short-term benefits in slowing the flow of drugs. However, if these policies are undertaken without complementary systemic change programs, there will be little to no true improvement in the region.
Ultimately, the large quantity of narcotics produced and trafficked out of the country affects not only the political, economic, and social development of Afghanistan, but also the state’s relationship with its neighbours and the wider international community. The opium-heroin networks of South Asia will continue to strengthen both illicit and ideologically motivated actors in the region, transforming this from a global health concern to a legitimate international security threat. Policymakers should look to implementing regionally based policies as soon as possible with the goal of increasing rule of law and governmental capacity before ISAF troop withdrawal is complete.
About the Author
Katharine Petrich has twice served as a representative to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s Parliamentary Assembly and is the author of Extremists in Forgotten Corners: Hezbollah in Latin America (International Journal of Terrorism and Transnational Crime, 2013). Petrich has been a Dean’s Merit Scholar for the University of San Diego since 2011 and served as the MAIR program president from 2012-2013. She has previously provided international and domestic political analysis for a variety of consumers and continues to write for Trans-Border Institute’s Justice in Mexico project, located in San Diego, California. Petrich’s research interests are primarily focused on transnational crime – its evolving and diverse nature, linkages to extremist movements, and impact on the global political system. She also works on regional issues in Latin America, Africa, and South Asia.