Rubin: More Counter-Narcotics Success in Afghanistan's "Opium-Free" North

Health Warning: This post may contain irony. Readers impervious to irony should consult other blogs.

UNODC just published this year's World Drug Report, warning about rising heroin production in Afghanistan, but congratulating itself and its drug-warrior allies for the "fact" that "the problem is much localized. Most cultivation (80 per cent) took place in 5 southern provinces, which are the most unstable."

This just in, from Afghanistan's stable, "opium-free" north:

The bazaar sits on a small island in the river Panj, a narrow expanse of shallow but fast-flowing water that is all that separates the Badakhshan region of Tajikistan from the Afghan province of the same name. On either side loom the Pamir mountains, a range of high peaks that cuts the region off from the rest of the world.

When the bazaar opened about five years ago, the hardy Pamiri people of Tajikistan rejoiced that they would now have contact with people on the Afghan side of the river from whom they had been cut off for decades – by the Soviets, by war, and by ruined economies.

Some boasted happily that Tajikistan would soon be able to share its technical know-how with its Afghan brothers.

That know-how has since flowed both ways, although not as the optimists hoped.

The unprepossessing frontier bazaar squatting on the river Panj has become one of the largest arms-for-drugs trading centres in the world.

But opium cultivation is way down in Badakhshan! And Tajikistan is opium-free! I'm sure that any remaining problems can be dealt with through a robust eradication program in Helmand. (Please see health warning above.) Read more on this article...

Rubin: More Misleading Talking Points on Drugs in Afghanistan from UNODC, USG, etc.

Poppy harvest is approaching, and it's eradication time in southern Afghanistan! This is as good a time as any to look back on the debate I have been having with UNODC and the US Government over the relationship of the drug economy to poverty and counter-narcotics strategy. My colleague Jake Sherman and I presented our findings and analysis in a report released in February (cover, left), which included in an appendix a letter that I wrote to the administrator of UNODC, Antonio Maria Costa.

But first, a few events that haven't gotten much coverage, what with Obama's low bowling scores and all:

Militants launched two attacks against Afghanistan's vulnerable police, killing eight officers, including four who were destroying a field of opium poppies, officials said Sunday.

Kandahar provincial police chief Sayed Agha Saqib said the militants killed four eradication police in the province's Maiwand district on Saturday. The attack is at least the third time militants have targeted such teams in the last several weeks and comes one week after fighters killed seven officers who were eradicating poppies.

Saqib has said police would increase the teams' protection. Around 100 officers on the country's poppy eradication force were killed in the line of duty over the last year, the Interior Ministry has said.

There are a lot of such reports these days. In most such reports the "militants" are identified as "Taliban." In many of these areas, the local population is reported to be hostile to the government, and the "Taliban" are said to have reinfiltrated in preparation for their yearly offensive. The tempo of attacks is already significantly above last year's. I wonder if there is any connection....

Harjit Sajjan, a police detective from Vancouver, British Columbia, served in military intelligence with the Canadian Land Forces in Kandahar. His work with the local population was key to halting the Taliban offensive in the summer of 2006. Detective (Major-Reserves) Sajjan wrote me a note about his observations, which also appears as an appendix in our report. In his frontline experience, "The current eradication program is pushing the farmers to the Taliban," because "eradication impacts the farmers who are trying to feed their families."

A U.S. official with responsibility for counter-narcotics in Afghanistan wrote me to share his opinion that our report was "So inaccurate as to border on dishonest." A senior international official with lengthy experience in Afghanistan and many other war-torn countries (including his own) found the report to be "better than anything ever written on the subject by UNODC or anyone else." UNODC has responded to arguments made by us and other critics. I have also been involved in a number of private exchanges on these matters.

The experience has been quite frustrating. I am sure that I am wrong about some things. I would welcome debate on the points that we raised. But instead the responses have consisted of combinations of: creating easy targets ("straw men") by distorting arguments in our report and elsewhere into ridiculous caricatures, and then refuting these distortions; repeating dogmatic formulae without engaging or acknowledging the arguments against the way that these dogmatic formulae are being applied; and changing the subject by asserting obvious facts as if these facts refuted other arguments. Examples:

1. Refuting distortions: We and other critics argue that crop eradication in insecure areas disproportionately hurts the poorest people involved in the opium economy, because the sharecroppers and laborers in insecure and isolated areas have the fewest alternatives. UNODC responds that "poverty does not appear to have been the main driving factor in the expansion of opium poppy cultivation in recent years," which is a valid response to a claim no one has made. The US government responds to the "myth" that "Afghan poppy is only grown by poor farmers" (another claim no one has made), arguing that "In the South, where most of the poppy is now grown, cultivation is organized by wealthy traffickers and big landowners who plant poppy because of high profits and the absence of law enforcement in insecure areas." The opium economy is controlled by rich people who are seeking profit! Imagine that!

The US and UK claim that they "are helping the Afghan Government to target eradication at the wealthy, not the poor" (I can't link to this source). Besides the ludicrous idea that the US and UK have better information on land tenure in rural Afghanistan than the Afghan government (see this), I have yet to receive an explanation, even in response to direct questions, of how the US and UK intend to target rich landowners without targeting their poor sharecroppers and laborers. I'm still waiting. UNODC and the two governments nowhere in their recent arguments acknowledge the existence of sharecroppers and laborers. I shall come back to how they use sloppy language to disguise sloppy thought, with potentially the same disastrous results that George Orwell warned about in "Politics and the English Language" (the points apply to any language, not just English).

2. Dogmatic formulae: we argue that eradication should be used only in secure areas where licit livelihoods are available and communities have confidence in them (which by the way, is the official policy of the Afghan government, which the US and UK have overruled with their pressure tactics). A recent report by UNODC demonstrates that alternative livelihood programs reduce poppy cultivation only in secure areas; it stands to reason that the same is true of eradication. Security is what we social scientists call a"contextual variable." Where life is relatively secure and government can operate, alternative livelihood programs lead communities to reduce poppy cultivation, and (a reasonable hypothesis) a credible threat of eradication does likewise. Where there is little or no security, however, alternative livelihood programs are used for corruption or to improve the yield of illicit crops (as in Helmand), and eradication leads communities to support the insurgents. Hence security -- above all a political issue -- must come first.

Rather than engage this argument, the US and UK respond with the dogma that "Virtually every successful anti-opium campaign in history has required a downside risk to deter poppy cultivation at the level of the individual farmer, and eradication is just one risk factor among many." If either government has an answer to our arguments about the sequencing and contextual requirements for eradication to succeed, I have yet to hear it. The fact that "some" downside risk is necessary provides no evidence that any and all downside risk is effective. Evidence (which we cite) indicates that the downside risk created by the current policy of eradication in insecure areas drives communities to turn against the government rather than to move out of the drug economy. I would welcome a genuine argument against this evidence, if there is one.

3. Changing the subject: We argue, and the US and UK governments claim to agree, that the principal target of counter-narcotics policy in a situation that combines counter-insurgency in some areas and peace building in others is narcotics profit that funds insurgency and corruption. All evidence indicates that traffickers and their political-military protectors, not rural communities engaging in cultivation, receive 70-80 percent of the gross profits of narcotics in Afghanistan. We also argue that crop eradication has no effect or a harmful effect on curbing narcotics profits, by moving cultivation around, raising the price of raw opium, and driving traffickers to seek profit higher on the value chain (as they have done). We also argue that it is futile to try to de-fund the Taliban and al-Qaida through counter-narcotics policies, because they have alternative sources of funding. The US-UK response?

The opium trade and the insurgency are closely related. Poppy cultivation and insurgent violence are correlated geographically, and opium now provides the Taliban with a portion of its revenues.

Fine. There is a correlation between insecurity and poppy cultivation. As we argue in our report, the causality is primarily from insecurity (which has political causes) to poppy cultivation, not vice versa, but the US and UK governments apparently do not recognize the distinction between correlation and causality. Yes, the Taliban get part of their revenue from poppy production. I daresay that every significant political group in Afghanistan, including the Taliban, derives a portion of its revenue directly or indirectly from the narcotics economy. This obvious fact, however, in no way responds to the argument that crop eradication has at best a neutral effect on the amount of illicit funding generated by the drug economy, and that such funding is best addressed by interdiction, including interdiction of the imports of precursor chemicals into Afghanistan from other countries.

This might seem a little wonky... and thoroughly analytical. When I started posting on this blog, I warned readers that I was a senior research scientist. But there is a very important political point: UNODC and the US Government use what Orwell called a "mixture of vagueness and sheer incompetence" to create prose that "consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated henhouse." A mass of words "falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outline and covering up all the details." To defend the indefensible, "political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness."

I shall illustrate with the example from UNODC's 2007 Afghanistan Opium Survey that I cited in my original letter to Mr. Costa:

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 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.

Quite a target-rich environment. (If UNODC is like other organizations with which I have experience, politicos in the front office wrote these paragraphs, not researchers, who might be embarrassed by them.) Both paragraphs start with sentences using extremely vague verbs in the passive voice, as if UNODC were using Orwell as a source of negative inspiration. Opium cultivation "is no longer associated" with poverty. Opium cultivation "is now closely linked" to insurgency. There are no human beings in these sentences, just abstractions that might be linked or associated to each other. Taken on their own terms, such sloppy assertions mean very little. But these statements cannot be taken on their own terms: UNODC's leadership is making these assertions as interventions in a political struggle over Afghanistan.

UNODC has produced a whole "discussion paper" about whether "poverty" is the "main driver" of opium cultivation. Not surprisingly, UNODC finds that both rich and poor participate in Afghanistan's largest industry. Only a UN Agency could think this finding worthy of reporting. But the argument over poverty and opium cultivation has nothing to do with such banal truisms.

UNODC never identifies who is making these decisions about poppy cultivation:

Hilmand, Kandahar and three other opium-producing provinces in the south have now opted for illicit opium on an unprecedented scale (5,744 tons), while the much poorer northern region is abandoning the poppy crops.

Apparently in southern Afghanistan provinces make decisions about opium cultivation, whereas in the north the entire region decides together. And these "rich" southern provinces (though the three "other" ones are actually much poorer than most of the north) have made the wrong decision, while the poor but virtuous North has made the right one.

[Update: This just in from the field:

10 Apr, Balkh Province, Balkh District, Kata Khel Village – One person was arrested for the possessions of narcotics and weapons. Eighty two kilograms of Opium, a shotgun and an AK-47 was seized from them.

Balkh is the poster child for "poppy-free" provinces.]

First, the argument about the relationship of poverty to the drug economy refers to the poverty of the entire country of Afghanistan, not just relative poverty within Afghanistan. Afghanistan is tied for last place in human development and security indicators as the poorest country and most insecure in the world along with a handful of African countries. It has been ravaged by thirty years of war that destroyed physical, human, and social capital, in which the opium economy was a survival strategy from which some profited handsomely.

Second, though rich and poor both profit from the drug economy (and, tautologically enough, the rich profit more), the poor are the most dependent on the drug economy for survival, especially in insecure areas. Therefore forced eradication in the so-called "rich" province of Helmand, where average incomes are $1 per person per day, disproportionately hurts the poor. That the poppy may be grown on land owned by the relatively wealthy has no bearing except as magician's business drawing attention away from the actual trick being performed. The main point is not care for the least among us (though I confess a certain such concern), but that eradication in insecure areas drives the poor (the vast majority) to seek protection from the insurgents (see opening of this post). But these actual people, their motives, alternatives, and choices, do not exist in the UNODC language fog.

The second paragraph is worse. I already noted that by itself a correlation of insurgency or insecurity with poppy cultivation cannot explain anything or argue for any policy. That depends on how policy interventions affect the choices of human beings. But in UNODC's language there aren't any human beings! Just "insurgents," who "have allowed greed and corruption to turn orchards, wheat and vegetable fields into poppy fields." Thus UNODC technically avoids saying that the Pashtuns of southern Afghanistan, unlike the virtuous other ethnic groups of northern Afghanistan are greedy and corrupt. (Nonetheless, this is what some Afghans understand them to be saying, and is another reason that this approach is highly irresponsible.) Apparently "Greed" and "Corruption" are political and economic actors in southern Afghanistan, and they must be struck down by "Counter-Narcotics" and "Counter-Insurgency," as if Pilgrim's Progress had come to Afghanistan.

This language situates us in a metaphorical world of abstraction, rather than the real world of violent struggle among some of the world's poorest and most traumatized people. We are engaged in an apocalyptic struggle with Greed, Corruption, and even, dare I say... Evil! How can anyone oppose measures against Greed and Corruption? Thus by conveniently removing the Afghans from Afghanistan, UNODC and the governments that fund it justify carrying out counter-narcotics policies driven by ideology and bureaucratic interest against the interest not only of Afghans but of all those who wish to see a secure and stable Afghanistan.

It is interesting to compare the World Bank's rhetoric with UNODC's. I imagine that it would not be difficult to find World Bank writings that could be similarly criticized as using vague language to disguise human realities. But here is the World Bank's main recommendation about the opium economy in Afghanistan:

Today, production is increasingly concentrated in five southern provinces where the security situation is most acute. This makes it vital that alternatives to opium address the problems of these vulnerable rural farmers by supporting their access to land, credit, food security, and sustainable economic livelihoods.

Here is how the World Bank summarizes the "Narcotics Challenge" in Afghanistan:

Afghanistan is a desperately poor, war-ravaged country. The usual challenges of
post-war reconstruction are made even more difficult by the continuing insurgency, by the age-old centrifugal forces that have always made Afghanistan hard to govern, by the extreme weakness of modern institutions, and by widespread corruption and lack of rule of law.

In the last two decades, Afghanistan has become the world’s predominant supplier of
illicit opiates, accounting for over 90% of world production and trade. Total gross revenues from the illegal drug trade in Afghanistan are equivalent to over one-third of licit GDP. Millions of Afghans benefit directly or indirectly from the opium economy.

The government’s strategy, with global backing, is to fight drug trafficking and to
progressively reduce opium production over time. Where farmers are better off and clearly have viable alternatives, law enforcement measures can be taken. Where farmers are poor, or where landless labourers are involved, government policy is to develop viable alternatives for the rural poor, and only then [my emphasis -BRR] use sterner measures to enforce a ban on opium poppy cultivation.

This prescription is based on study of and dialogue with the actual human beings involved:

Afghans engaged in opium production can be broadly categorized in four types:

1. Better-off farmers who are not dependent on opium. The exit of these farmers from the opium economy is largely a function of security and governance, and of legal market opportunities.

2. Smaller farmers currently dependent on opium but with some potential for producing for legal markets. Where there are good markets for legal crops and livestock, and provided that a modicum of security and good governance are present, these farmers may be expected to shift away from opium in the medium term

3. Poor farmers in remote areas currently highly dependent on opium, with little potential to produce for the market and scant local labour opportunities. Over the longer term, these farmers can move away from opium if value can be added to local on-farm and off-farm production and to labour. Out-migration is likely to play a significant role for this group.

4. The landless, currently highly dependent on providing labour for opium production
(through wage labour or sharecropping). Adding value to labour, developing employment opportunities, and facilitating orderly migration are exit paths for this category over the longer term.

Some U.S. officials dismiss these findings like a Republican School Board considering the teaching of evolution. They claim it is all nonsense, and harsh measures are needed because we are in a war. Orwell noted:

Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness.

The real argument in this case is that the struggle against terrorism takes priority over the welfare (or lives) of poor Afghan farmers. That is not an empirical proposition but a political one -- but one that those in power prefer not to articulate. On strictly empirical grounds, this political position is self-defeating. Without gaining the support of the poor majority of Afghanistan for a government integrated into the international system, we will never be able to secure the country and region against al-Qaida and its offshoots. In any case, as we have stated in arguments that have never been even acknowledged, let alone refuted, the existing policies will not reduce the funding of the Taliban and al-Qaida.

One more thing -- the great cannabis scam. In previous posts I pointed out the fallacy of calling northern Afghanistan "poppy free," just because the power-holders have moved up the value chain to trafficking and processing. They import the raw material from the south. But UNODC mentions an interesting fact in its 2008 Rapid Assessment Survey, though it strenuously abstains from drawing any conclusions from it or attributing it to the actions of Greed and Corruption:

Another disturbing trend is the steady rise in cannabis cultivation, giving Afghanistan the dubious distinction of being one of the world’s biggest suppliers of cannabis in addition to providing over 90% of the world’s illicit opium.

And where is this cannabis grown? Substantial numbers of Afghan communities grow it in the main poppy producing provinces, but also in the "poppy-free" provinces of Paktya (50 percent of villages), Logar (33%), Sar-i Pul (33%), Baghlan (23%), and Balkh (22%). So the "poppy-free" provinces are not "narcotics-free." Their main alternative livelihood is not anything supplied by USAID, but another illegal narcotic! The US and UNODC conceal this fact through yet more deceptive use of language. In one sentence they are engaging in "counter-narcotics," and in the next they are succeeding because provinces are "poppy-free" (though they are full of cannabis plantations and drug traffickers). When reading any official pronouncements on this subject, look carefully to distingish among poppy, opium, heroin, trafficking, and narcotics. That will give you a better idea of the true landscape beneath the snowfall of verbiage.

To analyze Afghanistan's economic dependence on bad governance and insecurity, we need an estimate of the total value of the illicit or criminal economy in Afghanistan: opiate production and trafficking (not just poppy production -- UNODC provides such estimates, though policy makers generally ignore them), cannabis and hashish, methamphetamines (there are reports of start-up labs), and all the other forms of smuggling and looting (of gems, timber, state assets, land, and more) that make up the illicit sector. Then we need a carefully designed and politically feasible policy to promote security and legitimate rule, and, eventually, less bad governance. Word games about Poppy, Greed, and Corruption will not get us there, Pilgrim. Read more on this article...

Poverty and Opium Poppy Cultivation in Afghanistan: Open Letter to UNODC and Reply

Barnett R. Rubin

On Sunday, January 13, I sent a letter (via email) to Antonio Maria Costa, the administrator of the UN Office of Drugs and Crime in Vienna. In that letter I challenged several assertions in UNODC's Afghanistan Opium Survey 2007, in particular these:

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 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.

I have appended the full text of the letter to the end of this post and also posted it here. The main point of my letter was:

I believe that the assertions in the two paragraphs are wrong, not supported by evidence, and are being used in support of a policy that will greatly hinder achievement of the over-riding goals of the Afghanistan Compact, “to improve the lives of Afghan people and to contribute to national, regional, and global peace and security.” The statements also contradict other well known policies of the United Nations: the estimated average per capita income of the residents of Hilmand province, the “richest” province in the supposedly richest part of Afghanistan, is estimated to be $1 per person per day. As you know, the first of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals is to “Reduce by half the proportion of people living on less than a dollar a day.” The United Nations thus has defined the average income in “rich” Hilmand as the threshold of absolute destitution.

UNODC replied by raising a straw man and implicitly admitting that the statement in the Opium Survey 2007 was wrong:

Dear Mr. Rubin,

Thank you for letter (via e-mail) to Mr. Costa dated 13 January. We appreciate the fact that you respect and rely on UNODC's research, and the trouble that you have taken to put forward an extensive letter with a number of thought-provoking points.
We are aware of the policy impact of UNODC's work. We also realize the complexities of promoting both security and development, and the need to eradicate poverty and not just opium.

In due course we will post a discussion paper on the UNODC website (www.unodc.org) that will present some evidence to show that poverty is not the single, exclusive driver of poppy cultivation in Afghanistan. When the paper is uploaded, you may wish to make a link from the UNODC website to your blog.
Mr. Costa will also put forward his views on the subject at the Joint Cooperation and Monitoring Board in Tokyo.

Thank you again for raising these important issues.

Sincerely,

Walter Kemp
Office of the Executive Director
UNODC

I replied:

In your response you say that the discussion paper you plan to post will "present some evidence to show that poverty is not the single, exclusive driver of poppy cultivation in Afghanistan." Such a paper would be welcome, but please note that there is not a single person in the world, including me, who has ever claimed that poverty is the "single, exclusive driver of opium cultivation in Afghanistan." David Mansfield, on whose work for UNODC and others I have relied heavily, argues that the main driver is insecurity, and this is the hypothesis borne out by the data presented in the 2007 Opium Survey.

UNODC's 2007 Opium Survey, however, stated, “opium cultivation in Afghanistan is no longer associated with poverty.” To the average reader this would mean that poverty is not a driver of opium cultivation in Afghanistan. Your statement in your reply to me, implying that poverty is one of several drivers of opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan, directly contradicts the statement in UNODC's 2007 Opium Survey. I hope your paper will include a correction of the serious error.

The text of my letter follows (PDF version here):

13 January 2008
Antonio Maria Costa
Administrator, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime
Vienna, Austria
Via electronic mail

Dear Mr. Costa:

I regret that we have not met in over a year, since we testified together at the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on International Relations on September 20, 2006. I am writing now to follow up on an informal query I sent to your office that has remained unanswered, probably because of the informal and indirect way that I sent it.

I am now writing formally to request a response. At the hearing I had the pleasure of meeting the head of your office in New York, Simone Monasebian, with whom I have developed very good cooperative relations. After the publication last summer of UNODC’s Afghanistan Opium Poppy Survey 2007, I wrote to Simone informally to ask her to pass on a query to UNODC headquarters. I asked UNODC to provide the empirical basis on which the Survey made the following statements:

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 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.

I have not yet received an answer to this informal query, which, as I noted, could easily have been misplaced. I am therefore writing to explain why I consider this question to be important and to request an answer by January 21, in advance of the February 6, 2008, meeting of the Afghanistan Joint Cooperation and Monitoring Board, which will meet in Tokyo to discuss action on counter-narcotics. I consider this matter important, because these two paragraphs are cited by proponents of expanded forced eradication of the opium poppy crops. I believe that the assertions in the two paragraphs are wrong, not supported by evidence, and are being used in support of a policy that will greatly hinder achievement of the over-riding goals of the Afghanistan Compact, “to improve the lives of Afghan people and to contribute to national, regional, and global peace and security.” The statements also contradict other well known policies of the United Nations: the estimated average per capita income of the residents of Hilmand province, the “richest” province in the supposedly richest part of Afghanistan, is estimated to be $1 per person per day. As you know, the first of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals is to “Reduce by half the proportion of people living on less than a dollar a day.” The United Nations thus has defined the average income in “rich” Hilmand as the threshold of absolute destitution.

In my discussions with policy makers about counter-narcotics in Afghanistan, I have at times encountered a dismissive attitude toward research that does not conform to their policy preferences and “academic” forms of argument in general. But UNODC has an extensive and highly respected research department full of academic experts, for whose work I have enormous respect and on which I have often relied. While policy makers cite this work because it justifies what they want to do rather than because they believe the analysis of United Nations Agencies (you may compare your experience with that of your colleague Mohamed El Baradei of the International Atomic Energy Agency), I believe that I owe your researchers a reasoned response based on data and established principles of analysis. I hope you will bear with me as I proceed through this exercise.

The first paragraph makes two empirical assertions:

1. That “Hilmand, Kandahar and three other opium-producing provinces in the south are the richest and most fertile [provinces in Afghanistan], especially compared to “the much poorer northern region.”
2. That because in the past few years there are trends toward reduction of poppy cultivation in the north and its concentration in southern provinces, “opium cultivation in Afghanistan is no longer associated with poverty.”

Nowhere does the report define what it means by “rich” and “poor” provinces or how this is measured. David Mansfield, a researcher who has worked for UNODC in the past, with his co-author, Adam Pain, believes that the assertion is based on “the finding that households in these provinces reported higher average annual incomes ($3,316 for poppy-growing and $2,480 for others) to UNODC surveyors than those in the north ($2,690 for poppy-growing and $1,851 for others) or centre ($1,897 for poppy-growing and $1,487 for others).” There are many ways in which this data is inadequate as a justification for policies such as requiring forced eradication of poppy crops in insecure areas under Taliban control adjacent to areas of Pakistan where Afghan Taliban, Pakistani Taliban, and al-Qaida are well positioned to exploit discontent in either country. Mansfield and Pain mention some of those technical and academic points such as lack of reporting of sample size and statistical significance. They also note that household income is notoriously difficult to estimate and unreliably reported. I will not repeat their arguments here, though I would appreciate a response to them.

The argument fails primarily because of the ecological fallacy, an error of inference from aggregate statistics that I warned my students against back when I was an assistant professor of political science. The arguments make assertions about the “north” and “south” by aggregating provincial averages for all provinces. Yet is it not true that every province in the south is “richer” even by this flawed measure, than every province in the north. Mansfield and Pain note:

Household data produced by the Central Statistics Office of Afghanistan in 2004 and collected by the 2005 National Risk and Vulnerability Assessment (NRVA) rank the southern provinces relatively low in terms of social and economic well-being. Of the 34 provinces, Helmand ranked 6th, Kandahar 15th, Uruzgan 32nd and Zabul 33rd. The seven northern provinces ranked higher: Jawzjan 1st, Balkh 9th, Baghlan 11th, Samangan 13th, Bamyan 18th, Faryab 25th and Sar-i-Pul 31st. These rankings do not substantiate the argument that farmers in the south are significantly wealthier than those elsewhere in the country. Moreover, in 2005, Helmand reported some of the country’s worst school enrolment rates for children aged between 6 and 13, and one of the highest illiteracy rates. Given the intensity of the conflict in the south, these indicators are likely to have dropped further over the two years since the data were collected.

Let me simplify. Of these eleven provinces, the estimated ranking from most to least well-being is:

1. Jawzjan (N)
2. Hilmand (S)
3. Balkh (N)
4. Baghlan (N)
5. Qandahar (S)
6. Samangan (N)
7. Bamyan (N)
8. Faryab (N)
9. Sar-i Pul (N)
10. Uruzgan (S)
11. Zabul (S)

I am not sure which is the fifth southern province to which UNODC is referring. The inclusion of Farah, Nimruz, or Paktika would not change the overall picture, which is that there is much greater difference in social and economic well-being within both the south and the north than between the two regions considered as a whole.

This fallacy is related to the major conclusion of the paragraph, which is frequently cited by proponents of eradication: that “opium cultivation in Afghanistan is no longer associated with poverty.” UNODC has produced no evidence to support this assertion, and the available evidence contradicts it.

UNODC’s argument is: higher average household incomes across multi-provincial regions are correlated with increased poppy production in those multi-provincial regions. Therefore poppy production is not associated with poverty. Indeed the second paragraph goes even further, stating that poppy cultivation is due to “greed and corruption.” This is a very grave conclusion, with major policy implications, which should not be taken lightly on the basis of flawed data and faulty reasoning, compounded by negative stereotyping. Yet, in my view, this is what UNODC has done.

Decisions about poppy production are not made by regions consisting of several provinces that are closely identified with particular ethnic groups. Nor are they made by provinces. They are made by households. This too is overly simplified, as any piece of farmland may be owned by one family, sharecropped to another, and may employ labor from yet another family. Just as there is greater variation within north and south than between them, so there is greater variation within each province than there is among them. There are many desperately poor households in even the “richest” provinces. Valid inferences about the relationship of poverty to poppy cultivation must be based on household-level data. Research by Mansfield, the World Bank, and others using household level data is quite clear. I am sure that your research department is quite familiar with the research showing that dependence on opium poppy cultivation is highest among the poorest households. To put it statistically, among households, poverty is correlated with dependence on opium poppy cultivation.

Therefore, those dependent on opium poppy cultivation in Hilmand are likely to be the poorer households in that province, those with an income less than one dollar per person per day. Does UNODC consider such households to be rich, greedy, and corrupt because households in Balkh have an average income of only $0.70 per person per day?

The second paragraph is more complex, as it is phrased so that it can be subject to several interpretations. The key sentence is “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.”

This statement is true in the following sense. As research by scholars such as Francisco Thoumi of Colombia has demonstrated, the cultivation of raw materials for illicit narcotics migrates to those naturally suitable areas that are most insecure. Hence opium poppy cultivation has migrated from other countries to Afghanistan. Furthermore, within Afghanistan it has migrated from the more secure areas to those where the insurgency is more concentrated. The one way that north and south are indeed very different is that the insurgency is much more widespread in the south and security is worse. That, as you know, is due to the geographical position of the southern Afghanistan rather than its alleged wealth.

Insecurity leads to poppy cultivation in part because, as UNODC says, national authorities and international agencies cannot work where it is insecure. As a result, the government and international community cannot provide security and all of the other supportive public goods necessary to agriculture and other forms of employment, such as financing, technical assistance, and marketing. Instead all of these are supplied by the drug industry.

I will make one parenthetical remark here. The U.S. government says that this does not apply to Helmand, which, if it were a country, would be the fifth largest recipient of U.S. aid in the world. This is a very deceptive statistic. What the U.S. government measures is the amount that it has spent (or authorized) for projects located in Helmand. The single largest and most expensive project in Afghanistan today is the Kajaki Dam, located in Helmand Province. The bulk of U.S. expenditures in Helmand are for this project. As you know, despite the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on that project, it is not yet operational. As the people of Helmand have yet to receive any benefits from this project, it is deceptive to characterize them as its “recipients.”

I have no quarrel with characterizing drug traffickers and their protectors as greedy and corrupt. While policy should be based on analysis of what actions are effective, rather than value judgments alone, certainly this characterization of drug traffickers and their protectors provides moral support for effective measures of interdiction. In my discussions with policy makers, however, they have applied these terms to cultivators of opium poppy in Helmand and used the UNODC statement as justification for eradication. Does UNODC consider opium poppy cultivators in Helmand to be primarily driven by greed and corruption?

Of course, even if that were true, it would not be a reason to carry out eradication, as policies should only be carried out if they are effective. That is not the subject of this note. But I would like to point out that there is a relationship between what I consider to be UNODC’s erroneous arguments and policy on eradication.

The National Drug Control Strategy of Afghanistan states that the Afghan government will “conduct targeted and verified eradication where there is access to alternative livelihoods.” Proponents of increased forced eradication have taken the two paragraphs from the UNODC Survey above as evidence – indeed proof – that Helmand province is such a place and that eradication should therefore be carried out there. I do not think that the fact that the U.S. has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on an unfinished project in a province where the average income per person is one dollar a day and where insecurity has prevented the delivery of education and healthcare constitutes evidence that in Helmand province “access to alternative livelihoods” is available. Does UNODC consider that access to alternative livelihoods is available in Helmand Province and that it therefore should be subject to increased forced poppy eradication?

Some policy makers are aware of these problems and try to compensate for them by arguing that eradication will be targeted against the truly rich, corrupt, and powerful. They have not explained to me yet how they will target the rich owners of land cultivated with poppy without targeting their poor sharecroppers and laborers, who will bear the brunt of the cost and have no access to alternatives. As UNODC’s own outstanding research has documented over the years, the opium economy creates powerful ties of dependency between those who control the economy and the poor who are dependent on it.

I believe that the misleading presentation of research by UNODC is providing a justification for a very mistaken and dangerous policy in Afghanistan. I would appreciate any explanation you can provide of why the assertions in the UNODC Afghanistan Opium Poppy Survey are correct. If I receive a reply by January 21, I will post both this letter and your reply to my blog and circulate them to my mailing list. If I do not receive a reply by that time, I will circulate this letter while awaiting your reply.

Sincerely yours,

Barnett R. Rubin

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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...