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...

Rubin (Updated): More on Wheat, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Global Security

Update: The British government is providing food aid to Afghanistan:

The [UK] government has promised an extra £3m in new funding to help meet growing food shortages in Afghanistan. . . .The International Development Secretary Douglas Alexander said the cash would provide a "safety net" that would will help avoid a humanitarian crisis. UN research suggests that poor Afghans are struggling to buy food because of rising wheat prices. In Kabul it is estimated that people spend up to 60% of their income on bread alone. The UK government says the shortages have been caused by rising global prices made worse by severe cold weather.

Original post:

I previously showed how the rising global wheat shortage and the resultant price increase is feeding conflict (as it were) in both Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The media are starting to catch on to the political implications of the commodity boom. It's not just oil: today's New York Times analyzes A Global Need for Grain That Farms Can’t Fill. Most of the article focuses on how rising prices for grains and other agricultural commodities are reviving the U.S. farm economy. (Of course the article misleadingly uses a few family farmers as examples rather than the multi-national agro-businesses that account for most of the production and market).

An earlier article in the Wall Street Journal (behind subscription firewall, excerpted here) attributed the shortage and price increase to "drought in Australia and poor weather in other grain-producing countries." The Times article attributes it mainly to increasing demand:

Many factors are contributing to the rise, but the biggest is runaway demand. In recent years, the world’s developing countries have been growing about 7 percent a year, an unusually rapid rate by historical standards.

But the Times article also highlights the global implications:

A tailor in Lagos, Nigeria, named Abel Ojuku said recently that he had been forced to cut back on the bread he and his family love.

“If you wanted to buy three loaves, now you buy one,” Mr. Ojuku said.

Everywhere, the cost of food is rising sharply. Whether the world is in for a long period of continued increases has become one of the most urgent issues in economics....

The increases that have already occurred are depriving poor people of food, setting off social unrest and even spurring riots in some countries. . . .

Around the world, wheat is becoming a precious commodity. In Pakistan, thousands of paramilitary troops have been deployed since January to guard trucks carrying wheat and flour. Malaysia, trying to keep its commodities at home, has made it a crime to export flour and other products without a license. Consumer groups in Italy staged a widely publicized (if also widely disregarded) one-day pasta strike last fall.

As I mentioned in the previous post, one of the most common themes in messages from Pakistan since the assassination of Benazir Bhutto has been the wheat flour (atta) shortage, which many people ascribed to the political instability in the country, though it is a global phenomenon. In response, Pakistan has stopped wheat exports to Afghanistan.

As I also reported, rising food prices in Afghanistan are creating a crisis that is so far silent but that could manifest itself in urban riots, increased recruitment to the insurgency, and increased planting of both opium poppy and cannabis to earn cash incomes to buy food at the higher prices.

(On other commodity markets: The latest UNODC assessment of Afghanistan's drug economy notes "the steady rise in cannabis cultivation, giving Afghanistan the dubious distinction of being one of the world’s biggest suppliers of cannabis" (as also reported, left, in the New York Times). With a completely deadpan delivery, the UNODC report praises cannabis growing provinces as "poppy free." Afghan governors who succeed in convincing farmers to grow cannabis, the price of which has jumped, instead of opium poppy, the price of which is falling because of Afghan over-production, are now considered to be counter-narcotics heroes. Anyone who reads this report should carefully parse where it refers to opium and poppy and where it refers to illegal narcotics. Substitution of one illegal drug for another is being sold as counter-narcotics.)

Meanwhile, the Afghan government, which lacks economic expertise and administrative capacity in rural areas (to say the least) has proposed some kind of support for wheat farming to compensate for the food shortages and take advantage of the rising prices, which appear to be a long-term trend. Currently Afghan farmers are poorly positioned to take advantage of the wheat price rises, as traders monopolize most of the profit, as they do with poppy and cannabis. The World Bank vetoed such a program for the usual reasons (distorting markets, etc.) many of which are valid -- in addition to the fact that the Afghan government could not administer a complex and wasteful program like US agricultural price supports, especially since Afghan cultivators have no political influence.

Nonetheless, the rise in price in wheat and other commodities (what is happening to horticultural commodities, flowers, essential oils, and so on?) presents an opportunity for investing in other cash crops and their marketing in Afghanistan. For all the rhetoric about how the drug economy is supporting insurgency and terrorism, where is the program to seize this market opportunity? And for all the talk of the importance of Afghanistan to global security, where is the program to assure Afghans of an affordable supply of basic food? This would do at least as much good as more NATO troops, and with less risk of collateral damage (market distortion versus killing civilians).

Please post policy proposals in the comments. Thanks.

Read more on this article...

Counter-Narcotics in Afghanistan (First Installment): Defining the Problem

The U.S. Department of State Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement released a new “U.S. Counternarcotics Strategy for Afghanistan” this month. The strategy calls for added efforts in all pillars of the Counter-Narcotics effort in Afghanistan, but its most salient change from the past is its proposal for more forceful and extensive eradication of opium poppy crops. The Strategy calls for “non-negotiated” eradication, ostensibly in order to avoid the manipulation of eradication by local elites to exempt their own crops and focus eradication on their rivals or the powerless. While the Strategy states that no means of eradication will be used without the approval of the Government of Afghanistan, it contains many examples of thinly veiled pressure on the Government of Afghanistan to authorize the spraying of herbicides both from the ground and from the air.

Implementation of this strategy will lead to a rapid deterioration of security at least in the south of the country and the further weakening of the Afghan government. Afghans will conclude (if they have not so concluded already) that the U.S. does not consider Afghanistan to be sovereign and that the foreigners are in Afghanistan to pursue their own agenda, not to help Afghanistan. Significant portions of the countryside that have been neutral or pro-government will move toward the Taliban. The farmers will respond to the greater risk imposed by eradication not by stopping poppy cultivation but by preventing the government and international community from entering their areas. By and large, they will succeed, especially as US resources, credibility, and alliances continue to be drained by the disastrous war in Iraq.

Currently, the Taliban-led insurgency does not have stable and exclusive control of any significant territory and population in Afghanistan, as does the FARC in Colombia. Areas subject to aerial spraying for crop eradication, however, are likely to come under much more stable Taliban control. The government and its international supporters will be unable to enter such areas to provide development assistance or to engage in interdiction. Hence the more that aggressive eradication and aerial spraying are introduced before Afghans believe they have secure alternative livelihoods, the more the counter-narcotics policy will be reduced to eradication by military means, amounting to a war on the livelihood of the part of the Afghan rural population most vulnerable to Taliban influence.

Implementation of this strategy will also undermine attempts to stabilize the tribal areas of Pakistan and Baluchistan, by providing incentives for drug traffickers to move their operations into those areas just as Pakistan is undergoing a political crisis with unpredictable results.

The continuing escalation of tension between the U.S. and Iran will also promote the success of drug trafficking, as does the lack of U.S.-Iranian cooperation on counter-narcotics, the policy area where they have the clearest common interest. If the administration attacks Iran, as many observers are predicting, Iran will respond in such a way as to make much of Afghanistan ungovernable, including regions that the US government seems to think are under the stable control of the government. Counter-narcotics and many other policies will become impossible to implement. Iran's current activities in Afghanistan are both preparing for such an eventuality and signaling what it can do. As I will discuss in subsequent posts, the administration can have a confrontation with Iran or some success in Afghanistan, but not both.

I have read only the unclassified version of the Strategy. I am told that the classified version includes some of the elements that are missing in the open version, in particular on money laundering and high-level corruption. Those with the needed access can decide whether those sections meet some of the objections in my critique.

In a short series of posts, I will suggest why I find the proposed strategy so dangerous to international strategic goals in Afghanistan. In these posts I will confine myself to considering strategies within the framework of the current prohibitionist international regime for narcotics, including opium and its derivatives. I have argued elsewhere (including in front of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee), that

The international drug control regime, which criminalizes narcotics, does not reduce drug use, but it does produce huge profits for criminals and the armed groups and corrupt officials who protect them. Our drug policy grants huge subsidies to our enemies.

Over the next few years, at least, we will be working within that regime, which I take as a given here.

This first post deals with defining the problem and understanding the situation.

Overall goals:

The overriding goal of the U.S. and allies in Afghanistan is stabilizing the government and the region to (1) assure that al-Qaida cannot re-establish its bases in Afghanistan and (2) destroy al-Qaida’s current sanctuary in some of Pakistan’s tribal agencies. There are (and were long before 9/11) moral, humanitarian, and altruistic reasons to try to heal the wounds of Afghanistan and provide its people with a better life, but those reasons did not inspire the intervention that has been taking place since October 2001. The strategic goal is related to the ethical ones, however: the only long-term way to secure the region is to strengthen the state institutions and economies of both Afghanistan and Pakistan to the point that they can enforce norms of the international system with the consent of the people throughout their territories.

Among the many reasons that the US, UN, NATO, and dozens of donors and troop contributors are NOT in Afghanistan is to stop drug addiction in Europe or the U.S. Mounting a major state building effort in Afghanistan would hardly be the appropriate means to attain that goal. This does not mean that Donald Rumsfeld’s original policy of turning a blind eye to drug trafficking by counter-terrorism allies was right. That view of counter-narcotics was based on the same myopic vision that saw counter-terrorism solely as a "kill and capture" mission, whereas it can succeed only if it establishes the basis for effective security and policing. Policing and law enforcement, unlike military action, require the consent of the bulk of the population. That is why efforts to eliminate narcotics in a badly governed or ungoverned state tend to drift into a military mode (war on drugs). I will explain that when I discuss interdiction.

So what is the problem posed by the narcotics economy? The narcotics sector consists of economic activities whose profit (or rent) derives from illegality. The final price of narcotics is determined mainly by the cost of smuggling and distributing an illegal product rather than by conventional costs of production. Afghanistan’s principal comparative advantage is not in poppy cultivation but in the production of illegality. It is cheaper to engage in illegal activity in Afghanistan than almost anywhere else in the world. Iraq is catching up, however. Having first followed Afghanistan's lead in becoming a major haven for transnational terrorism, Iraq is now starting to produce opium poppies.

Thus Afghanistan's drug economy expanded when the state broke down after 1992. It consolidated itself and expanded further under the Taliban, because the Islamic Emirate was a peculiar type of state: internally it strictly enforced its own laws and brought security to trade routes and rural areas, at least in the Pashtun zones. But the government was not recognized internationally and did not recognize international law. Narcotics was profitable because it was illegal beyond the borders of Afghanistan, but it could expand securely within Afghanistan because of the security and administrative control of their regime. It consequently produced only modest revenues inside Afghanistan, compared to today.

Since the Taliban never treated drug trafficking as a crime, and forbade poppy cultivation for only one year, the drug trade provided little or no opportunities for corruption within Afghanistan. This changed only during the year that the Taliban banned poppy cultivation (2000-2001), though they never banned trafficking. The Taliban ban, by criminalizing part of the opium economy, made the narcotics economy far more profitable –prices rose ten-fold. Though prices have declined since then, they have never returned to the competitive levels of the period when the entire drug economy was de facto legal inside Afghanistan.

The current government, however, is committed to (in the words of the preamble to the Constitution of 2004/1382) “restoring Afghanistan to its rightful place in the international community.” Hence, unlike the Taliban Emirate, the government cannot tax, regulate, or settle disputes arising from the main economic activity in the country. Instead the constitution provides:

The state shall prevent all types of terrorist activities, the production and consumption of intoxicants (musakkirat), and the production and smuggling of narcotics.

While I cannot prove it with survey data, my informal observations lead me to conclude that the social consensus in Afghanistan is that poppy cultivation and drug trafficking are wrong, but that they are inevitable and excusable (at least cultivation and small trading are) until economic alternatives develop. (I will discuss the view of the ulama in a subsequent post on interdiction and law enforcement.)

Narco-economy: the tax base for insecurity

The participants in the narcotics economy must govern this economic sector (about a third of the economy, at least half of the cash economy) through activities that are “illegal,” but that are hidden mainly from foreigners rather than other Afghans. The Afghan police and administration, political leaders, and the anti-government insurgents all offer protection services to poppy growers and drug traffickers. Competition for this lucrative role motivates much of the violence in the country. The U.S. Strategy probably overstates the relative importance of the Taliban and al-Qaida in protecting the trade and understates the degree to which the narco-economy is controlled by officials and political leaders in the Afghan government. Portraying the drug economy as primarily supporting terrorism, however, does make militaristic approaches to it seem more acceptable.

Hence the narcotics economy corrupts and weakens the government, undermines stable economic development, and funds terrorism and insurgency. It also promotes dishonesty between Afghans and foreign officials, since the former cannot tell the latter what they really think. Political insurgents, whether national or transnational, predatory officials, and illegal businessmen have a common interest in preventing consolidation of the government or rule of law. The rents from illegality provide them with the resources to undermine security, though, like the Taliban, they also use these resources to provide the local security that the drug economy needs. From the point of view of Afghan poppy cultivators, eradicators provide insecurity, and leaders (whether in the government or Taliban) who can keep eradicators out provide security. Hence poorly designed and implemented counter-narcotics policies drive many disparate forces together, though most are not ideologically committed to transnational terrorism.

On pages 13-14, the US Strategy (“Defining the Problem”) correctly diagnoses the problem as “drug money,” which “weakens key institutions and strengthens the Taliban.” But this diagnosis has consequences that the Strategy does not draw. A strategy to lessen the flow of drug money into corruption and insurgency is not identical to a strategy to reduce the quantity of addictive substances produced and exported. Once the US Strategy accurately diagnoses the problem as “drug money,” it then reverts to a nearly exclusive focus on drugs themselves, and not even on heroin, which produces much more drug money, but on poppy cultivation, which accounts for at most 20 percent of the drug economy in Afghanistan but has become the photogenic Paris Hilton of Afghan narcotics policy. This analytical flaw is the root cause of most of what I believe is wrong with this strategy.

The focus on flowers rather than drug money has led to a false comparison between northern and southern Afghanistan. U.S. officials now imply that political elites in northern Afghanistan are engaging in successful counter-narcotics, while the southern drug economy expands. This depiction has obvious ethnic implications, to the point that one government (not the U.S.) asked me to comment on whether different ethnic groups have different cultural attitudes toward opium.
The basis for these generalizations is that poppy cultivation spread into Afghanistan mainly through the Pashtun areas and that in the last year poppy cultivation has decreased in the mainly northern provinces (see the UNODC Rapid Assessment Survey map). The main reason that the drug economy expanded the most in the Pashtun areas is that traffickers shifted the cultivation to Afghanistan from Pakistan when Islamabad started to suppress it in the 1980s, and the government collapsed in Afghanistan. As a trans-border people, Pashtuns are well-organized for smuggling, whether of opium, weapons, or spare parts for trucks.

But most importantly, the map shows only the flowers. The U.S. Strategy nowhere claims, discusses, or even mentions whether “drug money” has decreased in northern Afghanistan. It has not. Balkh may be poppy-free, but its center, Mazar-i Sharif, is awash in drug money. The commanders who control Northern Afghanistan today are playing the same shell game that the Taliban did in 2000-2001. Some have suppressed cultivation (in Ghor and Bamiyan cultivation is hardly worthwhile anyway, the yields are so poor) but none have moved against trafficking. Most of them continue to profit from it, if only through what in the U.S. we would call "political contributions."

Some of the same officials who today get credit for counter-narcotics efforts are generally believed to have become millionaires directly or indirectly from drug trafficking. Recently the nephew and right-hand man of the chief of the border police in a province colored a hopeful green in the map above was caught driving a car full of heroin north through Kabul. Why? Because there is still plenty of trafficking going through the North, and trafficking, not cultivation, is where the money is. An Afghan friend (and official of the Afghan government) told me that when he was in Bamyan recently, the north-south road by the lake at Band-i Amir was crowded like a highway with trucks taking the opium and heroin of Helmand northwards. (This is the same road that the mujahidin used to transport arms from Pakistan to northern Afghanistan in the 1980s.) The same traffic goes through Ghor, to the west. The arms traffic goes in the other direction, as northern commanders sell their Iranian weapons to dealers who re-sell them to the Taliban.

The commanders have learned that we pay no attention to the money but only to bright colored flowers. And what both government officials and politically connected people tell me is, the pressure for photogenic progress comes from Congress. Every year it wants easily depicted metrics, and flowers provide it. Perhaps someone from the legislative branch would like to comment on this.

In the next installment, we will look beyond the flowers to analyze the implications of the neglected opiate value chain for counter-narcotics policy. Read more on this article...

The Pessoptimist

My title comes from Emile Habiby's novel, The Secret Life of Saeed, the Pessoptimist. I turned to this book (which intentionally or not proves that Jews and Palestinians are secret twins) for help in answering one of the most puzzling questions people ask me: "Are you optimistic or pessimistic about Afghanistan?" In future posts I will also explore whether the glass is half full or half empty.

Far from helping me find an answer to this question, however, I found that the hero of this picaresque science fiction tale suffered if anything more intensely from the same doubts as I. As he explains, he inherited his anxiety from a long line of Pessoptimists:

That's the way our family is and why we bear the name Pessoptimist. For this word combines two qualities, pessimism and optimism, that have been blended perfectly in the character of all members of our family since our first divorced mother, the Cypriot. It is said that the first to so name us was Tamerlane, following the second massacre of Baghdad. This was when it was reported to him that my first ancestor, Abjar son of Abjar, mounted on his horse outside the city walls, had stared back at the tongues of flame and shouted, "After me, the deluge!"

Take me, for example. I don't differentiate between optimism and pessimism and am quite at a loss to which of the two characterizes me. When I awake each morning I thank the Lord he did not take my soul during the night. If harm befalls me during the day, I thank Him it was no worse. So which am I, a pessimist or an optimist?

But Saeed was lucky compared to me (as he would be the first to admit). He asked himself this question in the privacy of his own home.... Actually Saeed had neither privacy nor a home. But he did have a self, whose attitude toward the future he found difficult to define.

I, however, must answer this question at cocktail parties, on lecture stages, at conferences and seminars, not only in private (or, as we say, in "off-the-record" briefings) but to members of the press with cameras and microphones: "Professor Rubin, Are you optimistic or pessimistic about Afghanistan?"

First of all, I am not a professor. My job title is "senior research scientist." There are some doubts in the NYU Politics Department as to whether I am qualified to instruct PhD students. I understand these doubts as well as my unfortunate cousin Saeed would have. I do not profess anything. But I do try to be worthy of the title "senior research scientist."

I am as prone as anyone to make judgments based on superficial impressions, wishful thinking, or a bad mood. But I sought training as a social scientist to help overcome my mood swings, not use them as a guide to public life. As a result, I try to rely on information (limited as it is), data (faulty as they are), research results (contradictory and subject to revision as they may be) and unceasing questioning. I know that there is a Romantic school of thought that disdains such "reality-based" thinking (you know who I mean). But I remain a fallen classicist.

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

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

It's pretty clear that very poor countries with a lot of weapons, high unemployment, and insurgents and terrorists based in neighboring countries and remote, mountainous regions have, shall we way, a "high risk" for armed conflict. By the way, I also read a few history books. They disagree about a lot of things. But it does seem that foreign military interventions in Afghanistan have a poor track record.

So am I pessimistic? Look at the facts. What are the chances that Afghanistan will become a stable, prosperous, democratic, gender-sensitive country? But as I sometimes say, being pessimistic about Afghanistan is not an intellectual challenge. I didn't become a "senior research scientist" just to assert the obvious. Perhaps this is why I am no longer a professor.

In the past several years I have become a practicing pessoptimist, not just a theoretician. In October 2001 I stated on television that, even though the US and other countries should help Afghanistan rebuild, there was no chance that the country could become a stable democracy in two years. Then I went to Bonn as part of the UN team, and at the end we produced an agreement saying that Afghanistan should become a stable (and gender-sensitive!) Islamic democracy in.... two and a half years.

I guess the Bonn Agreement has provided a lot of the water to fill up that glass (more on how thirsty Afghanistan is in later posts). I guess I should boast about it like the other things I have been involved in -- the Afghan Constitution, the Afghanistan National Development Strategy, the Afghanistan Compact.... Of course people call me an "adviser," meaning someone who gives advice. They never call themselves "advisees," meaning someone who takes advice. There is a reason for this, but it is a professional secret. It is known only to other "senior research scientists."

I even did something stranger. I invested my own money in Afghanistan. With some Afghan and French investors I started Gulestan Ltd., to manufacture essential oils for the fragrance and personal care industries. It's easy to register a business with the Afghanistan Investment Support Agency, but just try to operate it once you leave the AISA compound! My business is just like opium, but the flowers are different. Also it's legal. And Afghanistan is not really set up for legal businesses. According to the World Bank Investment Climate Survey, Afghanistan is, more or less, the worst place in the world to invest. Maybe I will start a new fund: Pessoptimist Venture Capital.

I know a senior diplomat who says that there should be a time limit for work on Afghanistan, because it warps your mind. But this same person, who supposedly retired several years ago, has just signed up for another year in Kabul. Those of us who have been around for a while get used to the new faces telling us how they will fix everything. Their optimism will soon turn to pessimism, and then they will leave.

Except for a few of us. Just like Saeed, every morning we thank the Lord that he did not destroy Afghanistan during the night. And if harm befalls Afghanistan during the day, we thank the Lord it was not worse.

And then we get to work.

As Saeed's mother used to say, "And why should we not praise God?" Read more on this article...