Rubin: Milanovic on Globalization and Corrupt States

In my first post on former US Afghanistan counter-narcotics coordinator Tom Schweich's article claiming that Afghanistan is a narco-state (with the connivance of the US Department of Defense, Democratic Party, and NATO among others) I mentioned a World Bank article on the world drug economy and corruption by a Hungarian economist. I was pretty close, really: actually it's an article by a Serbian economist, Branko Milanovic, published by Yale Global Online.

Here's some of what Milanovic has to say in his essay, Globalization and the Corrupt States:

Intensified trade and travel have enabled the rise of corrupt states that thrive on illegal businesses. Only by changing the rules of the same global trade that has allowed corrupt states to grow can one hope to remove this blot on globalization.

"Corrupt states" are different from a more commonly used category of "failed states." The distinguishing characteristic of a failed state is its inability to exercise control over its national territory; a key feature of a corrupt state is its weak governance structure, lawlessness and inability to move toward self-sustained development. While failed states have existed in the past - think of the Ottoman Empire in its last century - the spread of corrupt or criminalized states is a recent phenomenon, almost non-existent before the current wave of globalization. Is this a coincidence?

Globalization influences the relative profitability of different activities. In the US, globalization reduced profitability of steel production and increased it for software. In corrupt states, profitability soars in the production of goods and services that are internationally illegal: drugs, sex trafficking, contraband weapons or cigarettes, or counterfeit goods. . . .

Once organized crime and its supporters become the largest employers in the country, they play the same role that a more conventional business plays in other countries. They try to influence the political process. Moreover, they need to control the political arena - election of presidents and parliaments - even more tightly than "normal" business people because their very existence depends on having a government willing to tolerate violation of international rules as the country's main activity.

The government structure that emerges is "endogenous": It reflects domestic social and economic structure, which in turn is the outcome of greater international trade and economic incentives, much like other countries, except that the governance structure is, almost inevitably, more corrupt. The recent World Bank and International Monetary Fund's insistence on reforming governance in these countries is bound to fail because the cause is misdiagnosed.

Governance is viewed by the international organizations as something "exogenous," something that a country just happens to have and which - through a better electoral process, more transparent laws and more honest lawmakers - can be improved. Thus the international organizations are in a permanent, and fruitless, search of an "honest" lawmaker, an Eliot Ness who will bust corruption and illegality. They fail to notice that governance structures respond to underlying incentives, and to expect an honest person to rise to power in a corrupt state is akin to expecting a person with no financial backing from big business to be elected president of the US. In both cases, the outcome of a political process reflects the country's underlying economic conditions.

A different approach is necessary: legalize the currently illegal activities like prostitution and drug use and modify the often draconian US and European immigration laws that stimulate human trafficking. If prostitution and drugs indeed became like haircuts and candies, their production would obey the same rules: Countries that export beauty services and confectionary products are not notably more corrupt than others. Some of the current entrepreneurs would remain in these activities, others would move to others. In either case, there would be a general "normalization" akin to what was observed after prohibition on alcohol sales was lifted in the US. Thousands of "bootleggers" became normal producers of alcohol, alcohol-linked criminality decreased, and only a minority of those with preference for high risk and crime moved to other illegal activities. . . .

The key is that meaningful reforms do not begin in the corrupt states themselves, but in the rich world that is the main consumer of illegal goods and services. This requires a total overhaul in our thinking about the root cause of a corrupt state. Many of the most corrupt states are "corrupt" because they specialize in goods and services that are deemed illegal. But what is illegal today is not necessarily illegal tomorrow. "Illegality" is a historical category, as the long history of accepted prostitution and drug use shows. Thus if illegality is the main cause of corrupt governments, then the best way to root out corruption is to remove illegality.

The way to help corrupt countries does not lie in hectoring them about the virtue of good governance, but in pushing for the legalization of their main exports. The target constituency of the international organizations' advocacy thus becomes the rich, not the poor, world.

Read more on this article...

Rubin: Bush Administration on Drugs in Afghanistan -- So Wrong, So Long

This reminds me of an old Jewish joke (scroll down for joke), updated:

The rabbi was in his study deep in thought, when in rushed Donald Rumsfeld, U.S. Secretary of Defense, Thomas Schweich, Senior Coordinator for Rule of Law and Counter-Narcotics in Afghanistan, and Condoleeza Rice, Secretary of State. It was clear that they had been having a heated argument that only the learned rabbi could resolve.

"Rabbi, goodness gracious, this mission creeper wants to drag our warfighters into police work!," burst out Rumsfeld. "First we must win the war on terror, even if it means arming, funding, and protecting drug traffickers! Then let others win the war on drugs! Mercy me!"

The rabbi thoughtfully scratched his beard. "You're wrong," he said.

"Of course he's wrong, rabbi," yelled Schweich. "Drugs are funding the Taliban and al-Qaida! Not only that -- our supposed allies in the Afghan government are protecting traffickers! The poor Tajiks and Uzbeks and Hazaras have all stopped growing poppy and only the greedy rich Pashtuns still want more! Even the UN Agency that I fund says so! The only answer is aerial spraying!"

The rabbi studied the commentaries in a holy book and seemed lost in contemplation. "You're wrong," he said.

"But rabbi," pleaded Condi Rice, "Both of these political appointees from different factions of the Republican Party have the ear of the President! So what if neither of them knows anything about Afghanistan or the economics of the drug industry or counter-insurgency? They can't both be wrong!"

The rabbi stared at the ceiling, as if seeking the counsel of a Higher Father. Finally he spoke: "You're wrong too."

(Note to Afghans: to change cultural context, replace learned rabbi with Mullah Nassruddin. Christians -- not sure, but you could try Father Ted or a character from Garrison Keillor.)

If only I were exaggerating....

Rumsfeld armed and empowered anybody who would or could fight the Taliban and resisted any attempt to curb them, since he didn't want any trouble while we saved our forces for success in Iraq (and then needed more to make it even more successful!). The U.S. doesn't do nation building, it does regime destroying. The Bush administration didn't even allocate any new money for reconstruction the first year! They wanted other countries to clean up Afghanistan after we had destroyed al-Qaida and Taliban. Then -- next!

Schweich (and his predecessor, Bobby Charles) revolted against this policy. Drugs, they rightly argued, were funding the insurgency and government corruption. The war on drugs is part of the war on terror. We have to do both at the same time! Spray the fields and arrest the power-holders! If anyone opposes us, arrest them too!

But nobody ever explained how to win over the farmers while destroying their crops before they had secure alternatives. (Schweich denies he was doing this, which shows how little he understands peasant villages in general, let alone Afghanistan.) Nobody every explained how to fight the Taliban and build security in alliance with a government based on the power of drug-trafficking militia commanders funded and armed by the U.S. while arresting these same people. Consequently the U.S. pursued a bad counter-insurgency strategy and a bad pro-insurgency strategy simultaneously, which Schweich confirms in his account of the total absence of an inter-agency process for implementation of counter-narcotics . It's difficult to say if the government as described by Schweich was not implementing a strategy or implementing no strategy.

The answer is, THINK!!! What are we trying to accomplish, where, with whom, and with what resources? Then develop a strategy for the specific situation instead of taking dogmatic unexamined concepts like "war on terror" and "war on drugs" and trying to smash them together.

The goal is political -- to help our Afghan allies win the battle for legitimacy. The political, military, and economic strategies (including counter-narcotics, which cuts across them) have to be integrated for that end. Yes, integrate counter-insurgency, counter-narcotics, development, and lots of other types of operations by disaggregating them into lines of policy and figuring out priorities and relationships: strengthen counter-insurgency AND counter-narcotics by massive aid to increase the productivity and connectivity to markets of rural communities without attacking their livelihoods before the aid comes to fruition; strengthen legitimacy and governance with massive aid to the police and justice system (refused by Rumsfeld to President Karzai's face) while offering a package of cooptation or marginalization for leaders formerly or presently involved in trafficking; use military force sparingly but only against the highest part of the value chain (heroin labs, major trafficking operations); and attack the sources of the drug industry outside of Afghanistan by programs against the export of precursors to the country and money laundering.

I know that was an excessively dense paragraph. For an excessively lengthy exposition of the same thing, see the report I wrote with Jake Sherman.

In conclusion, a warning from Mullah Nasruddin about policy recommendations:

At a gathering where Mullah Nasruddin was present, people were discussing the merits of youth and old age. They had all agreed that, a man's strength decreases as years go by. Mullah Nasruddin dissented.
- I don't agree with you gentlemen, he said. In my old age I have the same strength as I had in the prime of my youth.
- How do you mean, Mullah Nasruddin? asked somebody. Explain yourself.
- In my courtyard, explained Mullah Nasruddin, there is a massive stone. In my youth I used to try and lift it. I never succeeded. Neither can I lift it now.

Only God knows the whole truth.

Read more on this article...

Rubin: Liberal Reality Attacks Bush Appointee's Claims on Colombia and Afghanistan

One of the recurrent themes in Tom Schweich's report from the front about how "odd cabal of timorous Europeans, myopic media outlets, corrupt Afghans, blinkered Pentagon officers, politically motivated Democrats and the Taliban [prevented] the implementation of an effective counterdrug program," is that the strategy he was proposing was tried and true. It had demonstrated its effectiveness all over the world, especially in Colombia.

This just in:

PASTO, Colombia — Along with Colombia’s successes in fighting leftist rebels this year, cities like Medellín have staged remarkable recoveries. And in the upscale districts of Bogotá, the capital, it is almost possible to forget that the country remains mired in a devilishly complex four-decade-old war.

But it is a different story in the mountains of the Nariño department. Here, and elsewhere in large parts of the countryside, the violence and fear remain unrelenting, underscoring the difficulty of ending a war fueled by a drug trade that is proving immune to American-financed efforts to stop it.

Soaring coca cultivation, forced disappearances, assassinations, the displacement of families and the planting of land mines stubbornly persist, the hallmarks of a backlands conflict that threatens to drag on for years, even without the once spectacular actions of guerrillas in Colombia’s large cities.

Soaring narcotics cultivation in the areas affected by the insurgency . . . . Sounds just like Afghanistan. . . .

But then "reality has a well-known liberal bias." Read more on this article...

Rubin: Schweich, ICG, etc. -- Assume the Existence of a State in Afghanistan

The buzz about Afghanistan (outside of Afghanistan) has focused on Thomas Schweich's New York Times Magazine article, Is Afghanistan a Narco-State? This article contains the startling revelation that corrupt Afghan officials protect the drug trade, and that neither President Karzai nor the U.S. Department of Defense believes that direct confrontation with some of the most powerful people in Afghanistan while we are already losing the struggle with the Taliban is a good idea.

Before I proceed, I would like to stipulate that I know and like Tom Schweich. He came into his job as coordinator for counter-narcotics and rule of law in Afghanistan with virtually no background on the subject and read into his brief very quickly and impressively. He is very smart, and he works harder than I do. Unfortunately, he has no idea what Afghanistan is.

(For a detailed analysis of the drug economy in Afghanistan, counter-narcotics policy, and the fallacies of arguments like Schweich's see the report I co-authored with Jake Sherman.)

(Another point: drugs is by far the largest industry in the Afghan economy, probably accounting for a quarter to a third of GDP. It is not a "deviant" activity in the sociological sense. As a political scientist, I don't know of any government in the world that does not have relations with the owners of its country's largest industry and biggest employer. There was a very good essay on this general problem, not focusing on Afghanistan, by a Hungarian World Bank economist. I'll post the link as soon as I can find it.)

I'm going to criticize the Bush administration later in this post (no fainting please), but the basic error Tom makes is not limited to the Bush administration, Republicans, people on the right, or Americans. Samina Ahmed of the International Crisis Group and many others (for example in my own human rights community, if I have not yet been excommunicated) make the same mistake, which we might call the Can Opener Assumption.

According to a story I heard in graduate school, a chemist, a physicist, and an economist were stranded on a desert island where their only provisions were canned food. How would they eat? The chemist tried to analyze the composition of the metal and searched for materials that would rapidly corrode it. The physicist sought to create a lens out of palm leaves and sea water to concentrate the sun's energy enough to pierce the metal. All failed. Finally, they turned to the economist to ask his advice.

The economist examined the can. After reflection he said: "In principal the problem is very simple. First, assume the existence of a can opener."

In this case, the solution is: assume the existence of a state.

Tom summarizes President Karzai's view as:

"[Mr Karzai] perceives that there are certain people he cannot crack down on and that it is better to tolerate a certain level of corruption than to take an aggressive stand and lose power."

I imagine that is a fair statement of President Karzai's view. He has decided not to lose power trying to do things that might fail disastrously. Tom never says that Karzai is wrong about this, so I wonder what his objection is. Maybe such a grim analysis is contrary to his moral principles.

I happen to think that the President of Afghanistan does not have to be that weak, and there is more he could do, though not the way Tom recommends. But Tom tells us a few things he does not comment on, and he refers to a few things he does not say explicitly, that might explain some of President Karzai's problems.

I'm going to make this short, because there is nothing new here. The Bush administration responded to 9/11 by arming and funding every commander they could find to fight the Taliban, regardless of criminal past or involvement in drug trafficking. Then they refused to get involved in "nation building" activity and instead got other "lead nations" to be responsible for various security issues with insufficient funding and capacity, including counter-narcotics. Then, every time that President Karzai tried to remove one of the U.S.-funded commanders from a position, Donald Rumsfeld would warn him against it and say the US would not back him if there was a problem.

Then the Bush administration decided narcotics in Afghanistan was a problem, but since they didn't want to move against the power holders, they decided to attack the poor -- at least they are consistent in their domestic and foreign policy: eradication, eradication, eradication. They wanted to have a "balanced" policy in Afghanistan: alongside our counter-insurgency policy we should also have a pro-insurgency policy. Karzai resisted that too.

(The charge about poverty is the one that upsets Tom the most. He cites the UN, actually the UN Office of Drugs and Crime, which argues that poverty and poppy cultivation are not connected and says he would not support a policy that attacked the poor. I am analyzing the effect of the policies not the intentions behind them. See our report for an explanation of the poor data and statistical fallacies on which UNODC bases its claim. The World Bank takes the position that "Dependence on opium cultivation is associated with poverty.")

To his credit, Tom tried to introduce more incentives and more enforcement. It is very good that he compiled a list of corrupt officials with data that would hold up in a US court (and he is a law professor, not, I think of the Yoo/Addington variety, so he should know). But just who did he think was going to arrest or fire these people?

It's simple: assume the existence of a state.

What does this mean? Tom Schweich says that Afghanistan's Attorney-General, Abdul Jabbar Sabit, says he wanted to arrest 20 corrupt officials and that Karzai stopped him. Unlike Tom, I have known Sabit for 20 years. He helped me in my research by introducing me to some of his colleagues in Hizb-i Islami. But I would not necessarily take everything he says literally.

Actually Sabit did try to arrest a corrupt official one time, General Din Muhammad Jurat, one of the most powerful Northern Alliance commanders in the Ministry of the Interior. The upshot was that Jurat detained Sabit and disarmed and beat his men. This was not in a remote area on the Pakistan border but less than an hour's drive north of Kabul in an area considered to be under "government" control. What does that mean? It means that Jurat and people like him are the government. There is no state that operates independently of power holders like Jurat. The project is to build such a state, not assume its existence and use it based on that false assumption.

The same applies to Samina Ahmed's incoherent critique of "talking to the Taliban," though at times she opposes negotiating with the Taliban and at other time accepting the Taliban's most extreme demands, as if this were the same as talking to them (this is the John Bolton approach to diplomacy: surrender first, then we'll discuss the terms). (Samina is also a friend, but I wonder if ICG takes the same position on Hamas, Hizbullah, or Iran?)

According to Samina, the international community should first build a state in Afghanistan and then negotiate the Taliban's surrender. Talking now would just be a "quick fix" that would not work. First we should build a functioning nation-state, and then construct the political agreement on which it will be based. Sounds good to me! And how do we build that state without a political agreement? Assume the existence of legitimacy. Read more on this article...

Rubin: Marines Stuck Protecting Opium in Helmand

An AP story quoting me about the deployment of U.S. Marines to Garmser District, Helmand Province, Afghanistan is making the rounds on the Internets, and mostly being misinterpreted by conspiracy theorists who think it shows that the US government (or the "Bush crime family") is engaged in drug trafficking. A surprising number of them seem to be Ron Paul supporters. I thought I would try to explain what I think this story is about and what my quoted comments meant.

The nub:

The Marines of Bravo Company's 1st Platoon sleep beside a grove of poppies. Troops in the 2nd Platoon playfully swat at the heavy opium bulbs while walking through the fields. Afghan laborers scraping the plant's gooey resin smile and wave.

Last week, the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit moved into southern Helmand province, the world's largest opium poppy-growing region, and now find themselves surrounded by green fields of the illegal plants that produce the main ingredient of heroin.

The Taliban, whose fighters are exchanging daily fire with the Marines in Garmser, derives up to $100 million a year from the poppy harvest by taxing farmers and charging safe passage fees -- money that will buy weapons for use against U.S., NATO and Afghan troops.

Yet the Marines are not destroying the plants. In fact, they are reassuring villagers the poppies won't be touched. American commanders say the Marines would only alienate people and drive them to take up arms if they eliminated the impoverished Afghans' only source of income.

Many Marines in the field are scratching their heads over the situation.

Thanks to the wonders of satellite technology (and, I imagine, the Thoraya company), the reporter, Jason Striuszko emailed me while he was in the field last week:

Hi. I'm on an embed right now with the Marines in Garmser and need to do a story about poppies. The whole town up and down the river is filled with fields. Some farmers have fled the barrages of fighting but many have stayed behind and are currently lancing. Marines are scratching their heads at the apparent contradictions --- hunting down and calling in airstrikes and artillery on Taliban but telling farmers they won't touch their fields, and telling farmers that they'll help protect them from the taliban. Of course, those fields will be harvested and some money likely used to help fuel the Taliban, and the Marines are thinking, essentially, "huh?"

Is this the best U.S. policy can do right now? To have Marines flooding a zone that Taliban will derive money from but not touching the crop?

I realize many would say this should be counterdrug policy or eradication police job, but it's a hard thing to swallow, no?

Will there ever be a day in Afghanistan, if the drug problem can't be fixed by other means, that military steps in?

I have already argued that there is no military or even law enforcement solution to the drug economy in Afghanistan. My answer, part of which Jason quoted, was:

This is the result on the ground of a one-dimensional military policy. All we hear is, not enough troops, send more troops. Then you send in troops with no capacity for assistance, no capacity for development, no capacity for aid, no capacity for governance, and you get a lot of head scratching. Of course now there is nothing they can do. Because they think it is a military problem, they send in the Marines during the fighting season, which is also the harvest season. Why didn't they send them in during the planting season with development aid? Because they don't know about planting and harvesting, or at least they have no idea how to integrate these very basic political and economic considerations into their planning.

If they attack the farmers of course they will lose control of the area. They should try to coopt as many of the local small traffickers as possible to keep them from selling to the Taliban (believe me, the local administration knows who they are) and then launch a big aid program for next year.

After all this time, they still have no idea what they are doing.

I can already hear the reply -- how can you say U.S. policy is one-dimensional, we are giving so much aid to Helmand that it would be the fourth largest aid recipient in the world if it were a country.... Of course, on paper U.S. policy is not one-dimensional. Somebody, somewhere is working in many different dimensions. But here is one of the most important U.S. policy decisions in Afghanistan -- a mini-surge of troops, even of Marines, who have not been in Afghanistan for years. And it seems to have been planned in a completely one-dimensionlal military fashion.

Just two weeks ago I was speaking at an Army seminar, where a colonel asked us civilian "experts" how the military could integrate non-military considerations into its planning. This is a perfect example of the failure to do so. These troops have been sent to Afghanistan with a mandate derived from years of lessons learned. Instead of being told to hunt, kill, and capture terrorists, they are being told to provide security to the local population. Finally. And how do they define providing security? Keeping the Taliban away.

If the planners had included analysts who understood Afghan society a little and also understood the concept of human security, they might have learned that the most important component of security in rural Helmand is gaining a livelihood, and that the opium economy is above all an adaptation to insecurity. The time to wean farmers from the opium economy is before planting, with aid and incentives, not at the time of harvest, when they have already sold their crop on futures contracts and have no alternative. Given the impossible situation in which their commanders have put them, the Marines are doing the right thing by leaving the poppy crop alone. But when will the decision makers understand what this struggle is really about? Not before January 21, 2009, I guess. Read more on this article...

Counter-Narcotics in Afghanistan V: Is Opium Poppy Cultivation Related to Poverty?

This is the fifth of a series of posts in which I analyze the main aspects of counter-narcotics policy in Afghanistan, in response to the recently published U.S. Counter-Narcotics Strategy for Afghanistan and the UNODC Afghanistan Opium Survey 2007.

The previous installments were: Counter-Narcotics in Afghanistan (First Installment): Defining the Problem; Counter-Narcotics in Afghanistan II: The Value Chain, The Corruption Chain; Counter-Narcotics in Afghanistan III: The False Promise of Crop Eradication; and Counter-Narcotics in Afghanistan IV: Beyond Interdiction. I also presented a general memorandum on counter-narcotics strategy: Points on Counter-Narcotics in Afghanistan: A Critique and a Proposal.

As argued in the previous installments, the U.S. (which funds most counter-narcotics activity in Afghanistan) has invested a disproportionate amount of resources in eradication of the opium poppy crop, which contributes only about 20 percent of the value of the opiate industry in Afghanistan. Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, characterized last year's eradication effort as "a farce." The result of failed eradication programs has been the migration of cultivation, its concentration in insecure areas, an increase in the value of the opium economy, and closer links among farmers, traffickers, corrupt officials, and the Taliban. The opium economy in Afghanistan has spread and become more integrated not in spite of, but because of counter-narcotics efforts.

In the new U.S. Counter Narcotics Strategy, of the five immediate priorities, three are for eradication: make eradication a counter narcotics priority; encourage (i.e. pressure) the Afghan government to set eradication goals, and; encourage (i.e. pressure) the government of Afghanistan to use non–negotiated eradication (mechanical eradication and spraying). The two other goals are improving the fund for rewarding provinces that are “good performers” (with lower cultivation being the only measure of performance) and an improved public information strategy, an area where this administration has proved itself uniquely inept. While the report contains sections on alternative livelihoods and interdiction, neither is listed among the immediate priorities.

Fallacies for Failure

Most people assume that Afghan farmers turn to poppy cultivation because of poverty. And they are right. Of course it is not just the poverty and insecurity of individuals that lead to cultivation: it is the poverty and insecurity of the entire country, which have destroyed infrastructure, gutted the state and justice system, ruined the security institutions, and isolated both each village and the entire country from licit markets. The country is tied for last place in the world in all indicators of human development, such as infant mortality, child mortality, maternal mortality, literacy, and life expectancy.

Poverty and insecurity are not the same, but poor people are more vulnerable to insecurity, which restricts their opportunities and helps keep them poor. Research by scholars such as Colombia's Francisco Thoumi shows that the production of agricultural raw materials for illegal narcotics tends to be concentrated in countries that have a comparative advantage in the production of illegality and insecurity and, within those countries, in communities that are the most isolated and marginalized within the state.

The predominant role of poverty, insecurity, and marginality in poppy cultivation argues strongly for making development, security, and political and social integration the top priorities in countering the narcotics economy in Afghanistan. Perhaps that is why the U.S. government and UNODC, both of which have strong commitments to an enforcement rather than developmental approach to narcotics production and use, have tried to deny the obvious link of poverty to narcotics production through elementary statistical errors and a false distinction between poverty and insecurity.

The UNODC Opium Poppy Survey 2007 asserts:

First, opium cultivation in Afghanistan is no longer associated with poverty – quite the opposite. Hilmand, Kandahar and three other opium-producing provinces in the south are the richest and most fertile, in the past the breadbasket of the nation and a main source of earnings. They have now opted for illicit opium on an unprecedented scale (5,744 tons), while the much poorer northern region is abandoning the poppy crops.

Second, opium cultivation in Afghanistan is now closely linked to insurgency. The Taliban today control vast swathes of land in Hilmand, Kandahar and along [and across, though UNODC does not say so] the Pakistani border. By preventing national authorities and international agencies from working, insurgents have allowed greed and corruption to turn orchards, wheat and vegetable fields into poppy fields.

In both public and private discussions, U.S. counter-narcotics officials unfailingly refer to these statements as evidence that narcotics production is due to the greed of rich farmers working with terrorists to produce poison for profit, rather than the vulnerability of the poor. This is a principal justification for the priority they give to eradication.

The statement that "opium cultivation is no longer associated with poverty -- quite the opposite" is an attempt to use a statistical fallacy to promote a failed policy. This statement is an example of the ecological fallacy, defined by Wikipedia as:

A widely recognized error in the interpretation of statistical data, whereby inferences about the nature of individuals are based solely upon aggregate statistics collected for the group to which those individuals belong. This fallacy assumes that all members of a group exhibit characteristics of the group at large.

Wikipedia provides an example that perfectly duplicates the fallacy committed by UNODC:

Imagine two communities, Chiptown and Pittsville. Within each community there is a divide between the rich and poor, the rich living in gated communities on the hills and the poor living adjacent to the industrial districts that pump carcinogens into their backyards. In both communities, the poor people have a cancer incidence that is many times that of the wealthy people. In Chiptown, where the dominant industry is high-tech computer manufacturing, the overall salaries are higher for both rich and poor people, but the carcinogens spewed into the environment are particularly nasty, giving cancer to nearly all those exposed (almost entirely poor people). Prof. Newbie comes along and decides to examine the risk factors for cancer. He looks up the cancer rates and median incomes of these two towns on the CDC and U.S. Census webpages. He finds, to everyone's surprise, that the cancer incidence is higher in the wealthier community, Chiptown. He concludes that higher income is a risk factor for cancer. In fact, we know that exactly the opposite is true: In the wealthier community of Chiptown, being poor is especially dangerous to one's health.

Substitute insecurity for carcinogens, poppy cultivation for cancer, and Helmand for Chiptown, and you have the UNODC argument, described by the most commonly used source on the intenet as a "widely recognized error." I taught it to first-year graduate students at Yale in 1982.

Are Helmand Farmers Rich and Greedy?

Besides the gross methodological error, UNODC's assertion is based on a definition of poverty as household income alone, a notoriously inadequate measure, especially in rural areas. David Mansfield, probably the world's leading field researcher on narcotics in Afghanistan, comments in a private communication previewing a report he is co-authoring with Adam Pain for the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit:

The claims of the relative wealth of farmers in the south is not supported by the available data. In fact statistics produced by the Central Statistics Office of Afghanistan in 2004 summarising household data and collected in the National Risk Vulnerability Assessment ranks Helmand 6^th, Kandahar 15^th, Uruzgan 32^nd and Zabul 33^rd of the 34 provinces in terms of social and economic well being. This compares to rankings for the seven northern provinces of Jawjan, Balkh, Samangan, Baghlan, Bamian, Frayab and Sari Pul of 1^st, 9^th, 13^th, 11^th, 18^th, 25th and 31^st, respectively.

Moreover, in 2005, Helmand province reported some of the worst school enrollment rates for 6-13 year olds and one of the highest illiteracy rates of any other province other than Zabul and Paktya. Given the intensity of the conflict in the south it seems rather unlikely that these indicators have significantly changed over the last two years -- quite the contrary. The assertion that the population of the southern provinces are not poor seems to be derived from the fact that households in the southern provincesreported average higher annual incomes (US$ 3,316 for poppy growing and US$ 2,480 for non poppy growing) to UNODC surveyors than those in the north (US$ 2,690 for poppy growing and US$ 1,851 for non poppy growing) or centre (US$ 1,897 for poppy growing and US$1,487 for non poppy growing. To put these figures in perspective a "greedy" opium-producing household in the south would have a daily income of $9 per day in contrast to a poor but virtuous household in the north with a daily income of $5 per day. Given the difference in the average number of household members per household, with an average of 9 persons per household in Helmand and 7 persons in Balkh,this would represent a per capita income of $1 and $0.70 per capita respectively. Leaving aside the issues of income inequalities within provinces and the well known methodological difficulties associated with collecting data on household income and its reliability in developing countries,the focus on income as a measure of poverty represents a severely limited understanding of the nature and measurement of poverty, particularly under conditions of chronic insecurity.

Mansfield observes that development experts define poverty multidimensionally, not solely in terms of income, which is why they favor indicators such as the Human Development Index. He concludes:

Given the prevailing levels of insecurity, and other poor health and welfare indicators, some opium poppy growing households may indeed be relatively income wealthy but most will experience the wider dimensions of poverty. These may be even greater in the south where the intensity of the conflict will disrupt labour and agricultural markets, preclude access to health and, education; and where the threat of physical violence from both state and non-state actors is at its most overt.

In a much needed corrective to the false impression conveyed by the UNODC report, World Bank Afghanistan economist William Byrd also stated:

Dependence on opium cultivation is very much associated with poverty.

Those who are actually cultivating opium on a sharecropping basis or who have very small plots of land tend not to be very rich. We have to be careful to distinguish who is cultivating the land and who owns it. Not surprisingly, it is the landowners who get most of the returns on opium at the farm level, while drug traders and their sponsors reap the lion’s share overall.

Current reporting from Helmand by RFE/RL confirms the link of poverty (including insecurity) to narcotics production. One farmer in Helmand, repeating what so many have told interviewers, told RFE/RL:

"I am 20,000 rupees [$350] in debt and I cannot earn even 50 rupees [$1] a day, so I have to plant poppies -- because I am anxious," he explains. "I know that it is a bad thing and the Holy Prophet Muhammad says that 'all intoxicants are forbidden.' But we need it [to survive] and so it is fine to plant it in a situation like ours."

RFE/RL reports what I have found to be the predominant Afghan view:

Tribal leader Ali Shah Mazlumyar argues that there is a simple way to rid Helmand of poppy cultivation. "If 1/100th of the antidrug aid dollars were spent on helping poor farmers [through alternative-crops schemes], the situation would be much different -- if the government could buy their crops en masse and then sell them cheaply [on the open market]," he says. "This would be an enormous help and might solve the problem [of poppy cultivation] without the use of guns, artillery, and tanks."

World Bank economist Byrd agees with Mazlumyar (whose name means "friend of the oppressed"). In the interview cited above, Byrd said that rural development programs will be critical to create alternative livelihoods for poor farmers. “The country also needs to develop labor intensive agriculture exports of high-value added which really will be the alternative to opium. But it has to be recognized that this will take time.”

To recognize that "this will take time" would mean planning for a transition from the drug economy to a fully licit economy. This is a massive macro-economic development task, not a law enforcement task to be supplemented with some economic incentives and sanctions. The next post, a critique of "alternative livelihoods," will outline the components of that task. Read more on this article...