CNN:
Afghan opium kills 100,000 people every year worldwide — more than any other drug — and the opiate heroin kills five times as many people in NATO countries each year than the eight-year total of NATO troops killed in Afghan combat, the United Nations said Wednesday.
About 15 million people around the world use heroin, opium or morphine, fueling a $65 billion market for the drug and also fueling terrorism and insurgencies: The Taliban raised $450 million to $600 million over the past four years by “taxing” opium farmers and traffickers, Antonio Maria Costa, head of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, said in a report.
Not all the money is going into the pockets of rebels or drug dealers; some Afghan officials are making money off the trade as well, he said.
I’m amazed that it even needs to be pointed out that Afghan officials are making money off this trade. It accounts for somewhere between 1/3 and 1/2 of that nation’s GDP. Here in the US, the financial service and insurance industries account for less than 10% of our GDP, yet they’ve been able to use their financial clout to run our government for the past few decades.
In all of the discussions about what to do in Afghanistan, though, this topic hardly ever comes up. It’s central to how the Taliban have funded their resurgence, yet it’s treated as a sideshow – as if it were irrelevant to our ability to succeed there. It’s not. As long as the Taliban continues to profit from the trade, they will never be “defeated” by any Afghan government that is forced to treat the opium industry as a form of corruption that needs to be eradicated.
Thankfully, this CNN report was done by the excellent Christiane Amanpour, so there was actually a dissenting point of view to counter the “bury our heads in the sand and send in more troops” perspective:
The report offered little new in the way of possible solutions, said Ethan Nadelmann, founding executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, which promotes alternatives to the war on drugs.
“It’s very good at describing a problem,” he said. “But it truly is devoid of any kind of pragmatic solution, and it essentially suggests that the answer is to keep doing more of what’s failed us in the past.”
So long as there is a global demand for opium, there will be a supply, he said.
“If Afghanistan were suddenly wiped out as a producer of opium — by bad weather or a blight or eradication efforts — other parts of the world would simply emerge as new producers, “creating all sorts of new problems,” he said.
And Afghanistan itself would not be helped either, he said.
“You would see in Afghanistan millions of people probably flocking to the cities unable to make a living and probably turning more to the Taliban than they are now,” he said.
He listed three possible options. The first, global legalization and control, “is not happening, not any time soon,” he said.
The second option is to increase drug treatment for addicts who want it and to provide legal access to the drug, as Switzerland, Germany, the Netherlands, England, Spain and Canada have done, he said.
“In all of these places, there are small, growing programs of heroin maintenance that allow addicts to obtain pharmaceutical-grade heroin from legal sources rather than from the black market,” he said.
But Nadelmann added that more people died of opiate overdose last year involving pharmaceutical opiates than died from illegal heroin.
A third possibility, he said, would be to view Afghanistan as essentially a red-light zone of global opium production and to think about the solution as a vice-control challenge, “which means acknowledge that Afghanistan is going to continue to be the world’s supplier of illegal opium for the foreseeable future and then focus on manipulating and regulating the market participants, even though it is still illegal.”
He added, “That, I think, is in some respects the de facto strategy, even though it cannot be stated openly, for political reasons.”
Dick Cheney can complain all he wants about Obama dithering, but it was his boss and their administration who were dithering about this problem for seven whole years instead of addressing it head on. The Bush Administration was warned repeatedly that trying to aggressively eradicate the opium trade would backfire and hand the country back over to the Taliban (even the European Parliament urged them to consider licensing the production). He didn’t listen and that’s exactly what happened.
Despite the long and storied history of empires meeting their demise in Afghanistan, I don’t believe that a humiliating defeat there is guaranteed. But even the most sophisticated counter-insurgency effort will fail unless we start to understand how the opium industry functions, why it exists, and the pitfalls of trying to remove it as part of that effort. As Nadelmann pointed out, our current strategy is starting to look more like one of tolerating the production while manipulating the participants. In the end, if we seek out some sort of agreement with the Taliban, that’s essentially what it will be – a deal with those who now control the opium trade. It may look like a defeat to people who’ve been conditioned to equate drug traffickers with terrorists, but it was the war itself that joined those two forces. When the Taliban were in power, they were also trying to eradicate the opium harvests. Making a deal with those who control the opium trade in order to isolate those whose main interest is fighting America is how we win there.
Why worry about Southeast Asia when we have major problems with the pill billy express right in in the USA?http://current.com/groups/vang.....n-express/
Agreed, but rednecks pushing Oxy aren’t funding the Taliban and/or al-Qaeda. The simplest solution to this is never mentioned: why doesn’t the Afghan gov’t offer a better price than the Taliban, then sell the opium for legitimate pharmecutical use?
I know, just too simple, right?
@2 BJ
If we (via the Afghan govt) competed to buy the poppies, all that would d is drive the price up.
OTOH, I suspect there is a high tedch answer … we should have the technology to detect poppyt fields and destroy them. The problem then might be how we would feed the farmers?
I suspectn the real answer is for the USA to stop tryiung t be the world’s cop. Aas long as we can keep el Qaeda out or useless, why is the opium our problems. As I understand it most of it goes t Europe and China. If they way to fix the problem isn’t it their job?
I alaso suspect the establishments in Iran, Pakistan, India, Russia, and China have more motivation to deal with this then we do.
Would driving the price up necessarily be such a bad thing? We (‘we’ being the Afghani gov’t, NATO, and Big Pharma) have kajillions more than the Taliban, so bleeding them dry would accomplish much the same goal as blowing them up.
As for trying to destroy opium crops, no way. Two words: Agent Orange.
And remember, we may be in the lead in Afghanistan, but this is a NATO operation. And I suspect that the current Adminstration could do a better job of building a coalition amongst the nations you mentioned to deal with the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Remember, all five of them have problems with terrorists and/or separatists funded and trained in the safe haven that was Afghanistan under the Taliban, whether it’s separatists in southeastern Iran, Chechnya, Kashmir or Xinjiang. The ultimate goal should be to bring to heel those that financed the Taliban, and continue to funnel money to them, the Salafist (Wahhabi) clerics and their followers spreading out from Saudi Arabia like a poisonous cloud of hatred disguised as religious austerity.
Almost forgot. Being a coalition-builder also means being willing to let others take their fair share of the credit. We can be the lead dog without being the ‘global cop’, so long as we work withother nations rather than just jumping into the fire alone.
tres excellent piece, Lee. I am still looking for the leader who has the correct answer. It wasn’t Bush, and it sure in hell isn’t Obama-Kerlikowski.
This isn’t a matter concerning ONDCP. It’s a lot more complicated than that, not to mention international, multinational. And I think we all know that Kerlikowske is merely saying what he’s being told to say, why else would he have done such a 180 in the first place?
In all likelihood, such a coalition wouldn’t be led by an American in the first place, unless it were voted upon by either NATO or the UN.
My personal concern is not with the opium but with the lack of alliances.
It seems to me the best way of thinking about Afghanistan is to divide it into three problems.
1. Threat to the US. We need enough force to assure that this will not happen again. That result, however, is likley jnot dependent on who governs fghanistan.
2. Threat to her neighbors. Here is a fantasy … if the US had NOT prevented Russia from taking over Afghanistan, wouldn’t we be better off now? Why can’t we get a coalition of neighbors to work their will in Afghanistan?
3. Opium. Why do we care? The majotr impact of Afghani Opium is on Europe and the Muslim countries. If the Taliban did make the poppy the natural resource so many fear, how would that hurt the US? Wouldn’t the result be rreactions by Pakistan, Russia, Europe, Iran to the threat to their societies?
I am afraid that the big reason we are in Afghnaistan is Reagunesque US Cowboyism. What happens if we decide that issue 1 and 2 are NOT US concerns? There is a model for this sort of thing. Mao’s foreign policy was a sort of “do not ask. do not tell. ” Even today China pursues an amoral self interest by working in its own national interest in cess pools like Burma or the Congo. If we took a similar attitude, could the American public sput aside their need to do good?
This leads to one more fantasy … one where a colaition solves the Afghanistan issue. Even if BHO could alter America’s need to ride the white horse,
diplomacy takes time. What so we NOT know about US diplomacy? When BHO came to office he had to deal with a precipitous fall in American influence in the world. This has meant a continuous push t redefine our image and our relationships around the world with a goal of creating a new, multicentric balance.
Imagine this outcome. Obama, Putin, Hu, Amadinejad, Sarkozy and Singh announce a summit. The summit, chaired by Hu, announces a plan to replace the US/Nato forces with a multinational force.
How would such a force work?
One more thing to worry about:
There are reports that the Afgans are providing heroin in smokable form to our boys in uniform. Just like Viet fucking Nam…
“…There’s a hole in daddy’s arm where all the money goes…”
Time to leave — NOW.
Broadway Joe,
Can’t argue much with your position on Saudi Arabia…
Dr SJ
I absolutely agree; I further (respectfully) fear that your academic environment inhibits your ability to undertand just how pervasive the “good-old-boy-ala-northern-usa mindset is, e.g., America is the Best, Smartest, Holiest…..etc and it’s OUR RIGHT to tell the rest of the world how to live. We’re better than they are. I work (for one more week, thank God) with large numbers of these people. It’s like slime.
it’s a disgustingly huge problem, it underlies both the religious right (of course) and the “conservative” factions.
ALL our foreign policy needs to be viewed in terms of this influence, IMHO
The drugs are not going away.There exist synthetic narcotics that are 10,000 times as strong as heroin.The powers that be would simply switch to those if all poppy plants were killed.EXample FENTANYL.Also your comment about heroin killing more people than any other drug is FALSE.Death from alcohol and the accidents under the influence FAR OUTSTRIP the deaths by heroin.LEGALIZE the stuff and take the criminal element out.Most of the deaths are caused by overdose because every dose of street dope is different.A legal market would have known doses and the need for theft to feed the habit would be removed.THE WAR ON DRUGS IS OVER DRUGS WON.
How else can the government fund a war during the recession?
11 X’ad
Y’all hear me? Cowboys!
What the flaring, phosgene loaded fuck does my “academic background” have to do with these sorts of things? Seems to me the left and the right have an utterly bizarre view of people who do my kind of job.
Back at my post, RayGunism ain’t limited to the right. The librul side of things is as guilty as the conservative of taking on white hat obligations while treatin other folks as if they were Tonto.
Listen to feminists decry the treatment of women in Afghanistan while being very willing to put all our brave girls into combat in the name of equality.
How many libruls think it is OUR job to feed Africa and bring Democracy TO Burma and Texas?
Cowboyism .. the mantra of our great forefathers from John Wayne and the Lone Ranger to Superman and even the odd expectations of President Obama … Cowboys is what we all is. Y’all hear me? Cowboys!
Lee and Razorback
Legalize? legalize what?
If H were legal, it would be marketed. How would you limit a legal product from being wide spread?
@15
Legal only by doctor prescription. Prescription heroin as a way to wean people off it has been very successful.
Info here. It’s already being done in Switzerland, Germany, Denmark, and Holland.
I’m also in favor of allowing people to pay a fee to obtain certain prescription drugs without a prescription in order to eliminate gray markets.
@15
And to be absolutely clear, I would be 100% opposed to allowing advertising for any addictive drugs that are made available for recreational use.
What a lot of people forget is that presently illegal drugs were once legal, were cheap as a result, and the cartels only came into existence after wrong-headed idealism about creating a religious and social Utopia (fueled in no small part by racism) via substance prohibition led to the laws banning those substances. We shot ourselves in our own feet by doing that. And we keep doing it. The cartels would not have the power they do if we had not granted them that power.
There’s only one way to break that power, and that is to remove their profit motive from trafficking, and that means re-legalization. And most pols know this privately, but because they fear a small but extremely vocal minority, comprised mainly of self-serving bureaucrats, law enforcement, Big Pharma and manipulable ‘concerned citizens groups’, said pols are afraid to speak up.
But that doesn’t matter much anymore, as the fact is the money to run the DrugWar will soon dry up, with the economy heading into a years-long recession/depression. It will come down to money for the DrugWar, or money for unemployment insurance, health care, etc. The economy will force the long-delayed debate as to whether we should even have a DrugWar at all. And when that happens, the DrugWar will be over…and questions like the issue of poppies in A-stan will be relegated to the same importance as how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.