Good News, Bad News Reported on Afghan Drug War
01 September 2006
Worldwide opium cultivation down in 2005, but increase likely in 2006
Washington – A new U.N. report on narcotics trafficking says global opium poppy cultivation fell 22 percent in 2005, but a senior U.S. State Department official warns 2006 could see an increase in poppy cultivation to record levels because insurgency is hindering control and law enforcement in Afghanistan.
Afghanistan is the largest cultivator of the opium poppy, responsible for 89 percent of illicit opium and opium derivatives hitting world markets, according to the 2006 World Drug Report from the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), released September 1. Opiates are the chief problem drug, heroin being the most deadly of those.
Even though poppy cultivation figures are down for 2005, they are expected to skyrocket in 2006. “We do anticipate a very high number, significantly higher than last year,” Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL) Thomas Schweich told journalists in Washington August 31.
Signs point to a bumper crop ahead. Western anti-narcotics officials in Afghanistan recently predicted opium poppy cultivation could rise as much as 40 percent in 2006 as compared to 2005 levels. An estimated 150,000 hectares of poppy was cultivated this season, up from 104,000 in 2005, according to Associated Press sources in Afghanistan. The U.N. report concurred: “Early indications are … that planting of opium poppy increased during 2006, particularly in the southern provinces.”
“It’s bad news and we need to improve it,” Schweich said. The Afghan government’s multifaceted anti-narcotics strategy, which is supported by the U.S. and partner countries, takes time to implement. “It’s not a catastrophic failure, but it’s no success, either,” he said, adding, “What we ask the public and international community to understand is sustained poppy reduction requires perseverance, sticking with the plan, refining the plan and giving it a little bit of time to work.”
The two-year-old strategy involves several phases, beginning with a public information campaign to educate Afghan citizens about the downside of poppy cultivation. Crop eradication, interdiction of trafficking and processing activities, judicial reform, strict law enforcement and provision of alternative livelihoods for poppy growers all are essential components of the effort to reduce poppy cultivation significantly, Schweich said. The U.S. government has spent more than $300 million in the past two years on developing alternative livelihoods in Afghanistan. But given that a poppy crop earns 10 times the money as that earned by traditional wheat crops and six or seven times what fruit orchards can bring, incentives must come with strong disincentives.
The limited capacity of Afghan judicial and law enforcement institutions contributes to slow progress. “A special tribunal in Kabul has national jurisdiction over drug cases that involve a certain minimum threshold of opium,” Schweich said. “It’s got cases in there and they are prosecuting people.” But there are only about 100 cases being prosecuted currently, “We would want to see thousands,” Schweich said.
“You can have the best policy in the world, you can identify narcotraffic, you can take them down, but if they go in one door in the courthouse and out the other one because of corruption, lack of facilities or lack of capacity, it doesn’t make any difference. There has to be a credible threat of prosecution,” he said.
Eradication and enforcement also are encumbered by insurgency. Prior to its ouster in 2001, the Taliban government cracked down on poppy cultivation, which resulted in reduced production for a year or so. Now Western and Afghan sources say the Taliban-led insurgency might be involved in the drug trade. “There is increasing evidence that the insurgency is using narcomoney to fund their activities,” said Schweich. That gives anti-drug efforts more urgency, he said.
Central Afghanistan is less problematic than the south. Helmand province, increasingly plagued by insurgency, is expected to produce a record-breaking opium poppy crop. Yet Schweich said that even in Helmand a governor-led eradication program was “quite successful over the past 10 months.” He said, “[T]he governor-led eradication got [13,000] or 14,000 hectares, close to 10 percent of the crop, over the past several months.” The operation built the confidence of Afghan forces that conducted it, he said. Not only is the eradication a deterrent, “the government shows it’s capable of going into dangerous areas and asserting itself.”
The U.N. report says that Afghanistan’s neighbors in South and Central Asia are among the countries with the highest drug use: “More than half the world’s opiates-abusing population live in Asia and the highest levels of opiates abuse are along the main drug-trafficking routes originating in Afghanistan.”
But official corruption, insurgency and a weak government mean one step forward and two steps back. The INL sees containment of the drug trade in Afghanistan as a long-term project requiring sustained effort and assistance from the international community “over many years.”
The full text of the World Drug Report 2006 is available on the UNODC Web site. The report is based on 2005 data.
For more information on U.S policy, see Rebuilding Afghanistan.
(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
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