Afghanistan: At war with drugs
After ten years of foreign intervention, the situation
in the country
is still
precarious.
The drug
industry
fluorishes more than ever, posing a threat to Russia and to the West
Viktor Ivanov
After a well over The military intervention led by the US and Nato in Afghanistan will enter its tenth year. The situation in the country remains unstable, and has even deteriorated. The explanations for this in the media are insufficient. It is often put down to aggressive Islam or a clash of civilisations, and there are suggestions that the US would intentionally destabilise the region in pursuit of their own selfish geopolitical interests.
Such conspiracy theories suggest that the US intentionally stirs up so-called conflicts of low intensity to secure their energy needs from the Middle East, under the pretext of exporting democracy. A more robust analysis would focus on the role played by the sprawling terror network that is so well-established in the region and increasingly undermines the viability of social institutions in Afghanistan and its neighbouring countries, despite the hugely expensive and comprehensive efforts undertaken to break it up.
Nevertheless, today the Taliban can hardly be seen as a terrorist organisation. On the contrary, the official position of the US and Afghan governments - supported by the UN - is that the Taliban should be regarded as a political opposition movement, or at least as an insurgency with which one should try to negotiate. At a hearing before US Congress in October 2009, General James Jones - until recently President Obamas national security advisor - stated that there are now less than 100 Al-Qaida fighters in Afghanistan.
They possess neither a military base nor any other means of carrying out large-scale terror attacks. According to the figures cited by Jones, for every Al-Qaida fighter in Afghanistan there are now 1500 NATO soldiers, at an annual cost of $300 million to the taxpayer. Even though terrorism was undoubtedly a major consideration at the beginning of the Afghanistan campaign, over the past 9 years it has progressively become a secondary factor.
Since 2003, the primary problem in Afghanistan has been different, and one which the international community, until today, has refused to take seriously: the drug industry. Over the past years, drug production in Afghanistan has reached unprecedented levels. In fact, there are more and more reasons to believe that Afghan drug production, far from playing a subordinate role, is at the root of international terrorism.
The conventional wisdom that terrorists use the drug trade as their economic base should therefore be reversed: drug production is also the root of terrorism. That production and trade of Afghan opiates have increased so dramatically has much to do with the military intervention, which has modified the structures and processes in Afghanistan in four key dimensions:
1) The increasing resentment of the local population has led to the constitution of a broad political opposition reaching across various parties and movements, and in which the Taliban no longer play a key role.
2) The armed resistance of this growing opposition has caused a huge increase in military clashes, which in turn results in a constant rise in organised crime.
3) The intensity of these clashes has destroyed the economic conditions in which Afghan farmers used to grow traditional crops. This has in turn significantly raised the profitability of poppy cultivation.
4) Over 4 million people have been displaced, a large population group out of which it is easy to recruit numerous drug traffickers. What is more, the expanding number of drug addicts amongst Afghanistans youth is destabilising society.
It is obvious that drugs have become a crucial issue in Afghanistan not only for the Afghan government, but also for Russia and Western developed countries. Between autumn 2001 and the end of 2007, the quantity of opium produced in Afghanistan increased 40 times. And even though production in 2010 amounted to only 3600 tonnes, i.e. half of what was produced in 2009, this was still 20 times more than in 2001 under the Taliban (185 tonnes). This years sharp production decline was not in any way caused by the success of an anti-drug strategy, but by weather conditions and a fungal disease that affected opium poppy.(1)
In parallel, the surface area of cultivated poppy fields has risen from 82,000 to 123,000 hectares between 2000 and 2010 (2), while the consumption of Afghan opiates has rocketed: every year, European consumers use 711 tonnes of opium, Russians 549 tonnes and Americans 212. The UN estimates that more than 100,000 people die every year due to the use of Afghan drugs; this would mean that in the first decade of the new millennium, Afghan drugs have caused at least one million casualties, of which 10,000 are in Nato member states.(3) With 40,000 per year, the number of drug casualties in Russia has also increased sharply. Heroin, and also hashish, are rapidly spreading across Russia and the rest of the globe.
EXPORTING INSTABILITY AND TERRORISM
The trade in Afghan opiates contributes massively to instability, extremism, organised crime and terrorism, not only in Afghanistan itself but also in places far from this hub of drug production. For example, the profits derived from the Afghan drug trade finance the turmoil and military clashes in the Fergana Valley as well as the persistent terrorist attacks and international crime in the North Caucasus.
Chinese intelligence services say that the outburst of separatism and extremism in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region was supported by money from the Afghan heroin trade. Meanwhile, Kosovo, which lies at the heart of Europe, has turned into a central trafficking spot for Afghan opiates destined for the European market. Groups and cartels that emerge from the Afghan drug trade breed crime and terrorism. In their competition for power, influence and markets they pervade and use political structures for criminal undertakings. This leads to the emergence of influential - albeit anonymous and transnational - centres of power which are financed by the drug trade and significantly undermine the sovereignty and the power of states.
The UNODC estimates that the annual turnover of the drug trade is as high as $500 billion some 5% to 8% of global trade. As a comparison, the steel and car manufacturing industries make up only 2.8% and 5.3% of global trade respectively, oil and gas - 8.6%. Drugs account for a large majority (up to 78%) of illegal commercial operations, while the illegal arms trade accounts only for 7% and human trafficking, prostitution and illegal migration for the remaining 15%.
Today, the main actors in the global drug trade are also actively involved in the global financial markets, and as such, were one of the main activators of the recent global economic and financial crisis. The extent to which drug-related investments pervade the economy became particularly clear as the drug mafia, according to former UNODC head Antonio Costa, transferred $352 billion to banks from a number of major developed countries at the peak of the 2009 financial crisis to compensate financial losses through liquid capital.
These transnational groups are aware of their economic and terrorist power, and see themselves increasingly as political entities. Add to that a religious component and the result is an explosive mix whose aggression potential is targeted at prosperous and peaceful developed nations.
Afghan drug production is the main source of revenue for these illegal networks. Our research shows that the Afghan drug mafia has experienced an impressive concentration and centralisation over the past 7 years: Afghanistans political institutions, which are still incomplete, have been replaced by a transnational drug mafia. Within 10 years, a fully-fledged system of drug cartels that strongly resembles those in Mexico has emerged in Central Asia.
Viktor Petrovich Ivanov, a Russian politician and businessman, is a former KGB officer
