Afghanistan Opium
Corruption and illegal drugs in Afghanistan threaten to undermine all aspects of the country’s efforts to build a sustainable economic infrastructure and functioning democracy. Drug-related corruption in Afghanistan — one of the most intransigent problems in the country — must be confronted, particularly at provincial and district government levels.
For more than two hundred years, the international geopolitical situation has worked against the consolidation of an effective central government in Kabul because it has exacerbated Afghanistan’s endemic problems of regional warlordism and particularistic nationalism. Over the past quarter century, the opium economy grew because of the failure of the state.
The illicit opium trade is the one economic activity that not only survived, but flourished, during and after the war. Now it accounts for more than half of GDP and is said to involve corrupt government officials at every level. Tribal warlords control the poppy-growing areas, using the proceeds to fund their militias and arms purchases. Through the poppy/opium value chain, warlords control access to land and credit for much of the rural landless. Poor sharecroppers must agree to grow poppy to get access to the land and credit they desperately need to support their families; they use part of the land to grow other crops for their own use.
Ahmed Wali Karzai, President Hamid Karzai's younger brother, is the chief of the Kandahar Provincial Council, the governing body for the region that includes Afghanistan's second largest city. Ahmed Wali Karzai is influential among the Popalzai, a Pashtun clan, in Karzai's home province of Kandahar. Opposition leaders in Kandahar say that Ahmed Wali Karzai is the biggest warlord of them all. By 2004 US officials suspected Ahmed Wali Karzai of involvement in narcotics trafficking. In 2005 a senior diplomat told the Herald: "The Karzais don't own enough land or oil wells to be dishing out the Thurayas [mobile phones], money and wheat bags that Wali is said to be handing out to seduce would-be voters in Kandahar." Allegations that Ahmed Wali Karzai profits from narcotics trafficking have circulated widely in Afghanistan. Both men say the accusations of drug trafficking are politically motivated. Assertions about the involvement of the president's brother in various incidents were never investigated. The Bush White House said it believed that Ahmed Wali Karzai was involved in drug trafficking, and American officials warned President Karzai that his brother was a liability.
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Traditionally, the bulk of opium poppy cultivation was in the south (Helmand province, 52% of total cultivation in 2000) and the east (Nangarhar, 24%). In 2001 the Taliban ban pushed the output to the north (Badakshan, 83%, though of a far lower total). In 2002 the largest areas under cultivation were again Helmand (40%), Nangarhar (27%) and Badakshan (11%), followed by Uruzgan (7%), Kandahar (5%) and Ghor (3%). Thus, 93% of the area under poppy cultivation is restricted to six provinces that have not yet complied with the ban issued by the Government in January 2002.
The area under poppy cultivation is a tiny fraction of the arable land in Afghanistan (0.9% in 2002). Even in the poppy growing villages, only 8% of the arable land was used for opium cultivation in 2000, though in Helmand and Nangarhar the rates were significantly higher (about one-third of the arable land). The bulk of poppy cultivation took place on irrigated land in the south, where productivity can be 3-4 times higher than in the rain-fed provinces of the north.
Most ethnic groups are involved in opium production, though there seems to be a concentration among Pashtun and Tajik villages located in the main opium producing regions of southern, eastern and northern Afghanistan. Opium cultivation spread throughout the country in the 1990s, following the ethnic distribution of itinerant workers who disseminated the know-how for opium production. Trafficking then spread to neighbouring countries, facilitated by ethnic links across borders: Pashtuns in Pakistan; Baluchis in Pakistan and Iran; Tajiks in Tajikistan; Uzbeks in Uzbekistan; and Turkmens in Turkmenistan.
Under the leadership of President Karzai, by mid-2008 the Government of Afghanistan had made some progress in combating narcotics. However, drug trafficking remains a serious threat to the future of Afghanistan, contributing to widespread public corruption, damaging legitimate economic growth, and fueling violence and insurgency. A successful counternarcotics strategy in Afghanistan hinges on maintaining security, building public capacity, attaining local support, and actively pursuing our joint counternarcotics strategy. Poppy cultivation in 2008 continued to be marked by the divide between the increasingly poppy-free northern provinces and the insurgency-dominated regions in the south. Through political will, and by using a mixture of incentives and disincentives, governors in key northern provinces like Badakshan and Nangarhar have significantly reduced poppy cultivation. Inspired by the Nangarhar model, the newly appointed governor of the southern province of Helmand took steps to implement the first truly serious counternarcotics campaign in the province. Drug control efforts in this area of pronounced poppy cultivation are thwarted by heavily entrenched Taliban centers of power. In 2007 Helmand Province cultivated more than half of Afghanistan’s illegal poppy crop. Difficult security conditions greatly impede counternarcotics operations, particularly in the south and southwest provinces, areas in which the insurgency and organized crime groups predominate and where over 85 percent of Afghan poppy is cultivated.
