Drugs and security

Analysis

Afghanistan Opium Survey 2009: Summary Findings, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, September 2009,

In 2009, opium cultivation in Afghanistan decreased by 22%... the number of poppy-free provinces has increased from 18 to 20... Production has dropped less dramatically because farmers have extracted more opium per bulb. Over-supply at the source and lower market penetration (in Europe) are pushing opium
prices down... Falling prices and lower cultivation this year caused a 40% collapse in the total farm-gate value of opium production in Afghanistan.

There is growing evidence – from tougher counter-narcotics and improved intelligence – that some anti-government elements in Afghanistan are turning into narco-cartels. Yet, the world over, drug money eventually trumps ideology, and becomes as addictive as the dope itself. Illicit drug stockpiles may have now reached 10,000 tons – enough to satisfy two years of world (heroin) addiction, or three years of medical (morphine) prescription.

The Pessoptimist, Barnett Rubin, Informed Comment Global Affairs, 9 July 2007

"There are a few things we know about Afghanistan with a great deal of certainty, and there are a few pretty robust research results. We know that Afghanistan is the poorest country in the world outside of sub-Saharan Africa and that it has been at war for almost 30 years. We know that the great and also some rather mediocre powers have spent billions and billions of dollars sending weapons to anyone in the country who asked for them -- and some others as well. Actually, the value of these weapons has exceeded several multiples of Afghanistan's economy. Perhaps that's why some people are optimistic about Afghanistan -- it has attracted a lot of attention.

"I say, 'we know' these things, but I feel a Saeedian puzzlement. Who are 'we?' Apparently many people - even people wielding history's most deadly weapons and budgets of billions of dollars -- have not bothered to acquaint themselves with these facts. Recently I attended an off-the-record meeting outside of Washington. At this meeting officials from many parts of the US government (but not the Department of Agriculture) met to discuss counter-narcotics policy in Afghanistan. I learned many things. I learned that Afghan farmers are too secure and are making too much money. That is why it is necessary to eradicate their crops. But no one at this meeting mentioned that 40 percent of the families in rural Afghanistan do not have enough food to eat, though they can easily find someone with an automatic weapon to "protect" them. I suggested that maybe Afghan farmers needed more rather than less security, but no one wants to reward bad behavior like growing opium poppies."

Fighting Afghanistan’s opium dependency as a means of disrupting al Qaeda’s illicit funding, Gardner B. Hilton, US Army Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, 2006

"Afghanistan supplies 87 percent of the global opium product, and terrorist organizations are using the narcotics trade to fund their operations. The nascent Afghani government has a limited capacity to combat this problem without significant assistance from the US and its coalition partners."

The Political Economy Of Organized Crime  and State Failure:  The Nexus Of Greed, Need And Grievance, Jessica West, Innovations, Volume 6, 2006

Political economy of organized crime in Afghanistan and Tajikstan. "Targeting the drug trade through military means is another popular policy with little potential for success. The problem lies in the assumption that the drug trade will disappear if the Taliban, IMU and other political insurgency groups are defeated. Organized crime, while connected to violence against the state, is not inimical to it and has its own primarily economic logic and dynamics that must be directly addressed."

An Afghan ‘Narco-State'?: Dynamics, Assessment and Security Implications of the Afghan Opium Industry, Matt Weiner, Canberra Papers in Defence No. 158, August 2004

"By assessing the control and regulation by drug networks of a state's three key pillars — Coercive Instruments of the State, Financial Apparatus and Government Executive and Policy — the degree to which a state approaches the ideal-type ‘complete narco-state' can be measured. This paper applies this model to contemporary Afghanistan and concludes that it merits the label of a ‘narco-state' only to a medium degree, but the embryonic nature of the post-conflict state apparatus places it at risk of higher control in the future. The narcotics trade also has created regional security implications that are subsequently analysed across human, economic and political security spheres."

Frontiers and Wars: the Opium Economy in Afghanistan, Jonathan Goodhand, Journal of Agrarian Change, Vol. 5 no. 2, April 2005.

Project coordinator: Richard Tanter
Additional research: Ronald Li
Updated: 7 February 2010