Afghanistan's Drug Problem

[tequila]

Taliban Raise Poppy Production to a Record Again - NYTIMES, 25 Aug.

Afghanistan produced record levels of opium in 2007 for the second straight year, led by a staggering 45 percent increase in the Taliban stronghold of Helmand Province, according to a new United Nations survey to be released Monday.

The report is likely to touch off renewed debate about the United States’ $600 million counternarcotics program in Afghanistan, which has been hampered by security challenges and endemic corruption within the Afghan government.

“I think it is safe to say that we should be looking for a new strategy,” said William B. Wood, the American ambassador to Afghanistan, commenting on the report’s overall findings. “And I think that we are finding one.”

Mr. Wood said the current American programs for eradication, interdiction and alternative livelihoods should be intensified, but he added that ground spraying poppy crops with herbicide remained “a possibility.” Afghan and British officials have opposed spraying, saying it would drive farmers into the arms of the Taliban.

While the report found that opium production dropped in northern Afghanistan, Western officials familiar with the assessment said, cultivation rose in the south, where Taliban insurgents urge farmers to grow poppies......

[Jedburgh]

UNODC, 27 Aug 07: Afghanistan: 2007 Annual Opium Poppy Survey

In 2007, Afghanistan cultivated 193,000 hectares of opium poppies, an increase of 17% over last year. The amount of Afghan land used for opium is now larger than the corresponding total for coca cultivation in Latin America (Colombia, Peru and Bolivia combined).

Favourable weather conditions produced opium yields (42.5 kg per hectare) higher than last year (37.0 kg/ha). As a result, in 2007 Afghanistan produced an extraordinary 8,200 tons of opium (34% more than in 2006), becoming practically the exclusive supplier of the world’s deadliest drug (93% of the global opiates market). Leaving aside 19th century China, that had a population at that time 15 times larger than today’s Afghanistan, no other country in the world has ever produced narcotics on such a deadly scale.....

[Tom Odom]

Follow up to Jed and Tequila:

Second Record Level for Afghan Opium Crop KABUL, Afghanistan, Aug. 27 — Opium cultivation in Afghanistan grew by 17 percent in 2007, reaching record levels for the second straight year, according to a United Nations report released Monday.

Despite a $600 million American counternarcotics effort and an increase in the number of poppy-free provinces to 13 from 6, the report found that the amount of land in Afghanistan used for opium production is now larger than amount of land used for coca cultivation in all of Latin America.

Afghanistan now accounts for 93 percent of the world’s opium, up from 92 percent last year, the report said.

Antonio Maria Costa, the executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crimes Policy, which issued the report, called the new figures terrifying. “Afghanistan today is cultivating megacrops of opium,” he said at a news conference. “Leaving aside China in the 19th century, no other country has produced so much narcotics in the past 100 years.”

[Dennis]

Two issues I'll present:

1) Recognizing the larger monetary return of growing poppy as opposed to another crop, would we necessarily have the desired effect if the money flow to the Taliban is through their protection of farmers and the transport routes? Won't the Taliban continue to get their piece of the pie of another crop?

2) Can we influence the farmers without addressing the land owners and the corruption within the Afghan government?

[tequila]

U.S. Counternarcotics Strategy in Afghanistan - Aug 07. The official public release. There is a classified release which deals with problems of official corruption that are too sensitive for open discussion.

[tequila]

How Afghan anticorruption chief once sold heroin in Las Vegas - GUARDIAN, 28 Aug. Passed on via Afghanistica.

Fighting sleaze is no easy task in a country like Afghanistan, as anti-corruption tsar Izzatullah Wasifi can testify. The economy is awash with opium money, and bribery and backhanders are rife, as confirmed by yesterday's alarming UN report.


Then again, Mr Wasifi is unusually well acquainted with the perilous lure of easy drug money.

Twenty years ago US police arrested a young Afghan emigrant at his hotel room in Caesars Palace, Las Vegas. The Afghan, who introduced himself as Mr E, tried to sell a bag of heroin to an undercover detective. At his trial, prosecutors said it was worth $2m.

The man spent three years and eight months in a Nevada state prison before being released on parole. His wife, who had stood lookout in the hotel corridor, received a probationary sentence.

Now Mr E - or Mr Wasifi - is the director general of the Afghan government's main anti-corruption agency.

He plays down the 1988 drug bust as a little youthful fun gone wrong. "It was my honeymoon. I was a youngster and youngsters do stuff," he said with a shrug during an interview at his modest Kabul office. "Stuff like gambling, drugs" - he rubbed a finger against his nose and sniffed - "and girls. I was a Las Vegas boy ..."

The rest of the article has good details on the massive corruption ongoing in Kabul which is undermining the war effort.