Afghanistan's Drug Problem

[JMA]

What options have they got? The US doesn't have the capacity to create a non-corrupt democratically legitimate regime in Afghanistan. Short of letting the Taliban have the place or the non-option of taking over and running it as a colony, what else would you have them do?

Personally, I don't think the US should ever have gotten involved in prolonged occupation, installing governments, or attempts at "nation-building", but it's a little late for that.

Second point first. Yes we appear to agree that the switch to nation building was a major error in judgement.

IMHO there were two Afghan related incidents along the timeline which would have/should have prompted a US/NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan.

* when it was realized that the Karzai regime irredeemably corrupt.

* when the second? election was obviously rigged.

It was time to withdraw recognition of the Karzai regime (as they should do for all non-democratic countries) and downgrade their diplomatic contact (there is a term for this I am in too much of a hurry to look up)

In concert with that a strategic withdrawal (or a better word; extraction) of troops would take place. The Karzai regime was never worth the lives and limbs of US or any ISAF servicemen.

The key word here is "cycle". The question is what point of that cycle is the most efficient and economical target for intervention. Given the cost of military intervention in Afghanistan, I'd suggest that we'd be better off attacking the cycle where it's actually under our control, and we can do it with our own government, rather than having to either work though a completely dysfunctional government elsewhere.

And obviously one such point (but obviously not the only one) is where you have 100,000 troops and the crop in the field. That's a no brainer.

That said one understands soldiers have to prioritize their tasks and focus one one enemy at a time. As per Mark Moyer in his paper ‘The Third Way of COIN: Defeating the Taliban in Sangin’ on 3/5 Marines approach in Sangin in 2010:

The Marines decided that they had too many enemies already to engage in large-scale counternarcotics activities. Much of the population depended on the opium industry for its livelihood, and could be expected to cling to insurgency more strongly if that livelihood were at stake. Counternarcotics could wait until the government had enough personnel and adequate security to undertake robust counternarcotics measures.

Sadly the situation in Sangin has never reached that of 'adequate security' for 'robust counternarcotics measures' to be undertaken (even if the will was there).

US drug policy has for years been based on the utterly boneheaded notion that supply creates demand, that the people who buy drugs are innocent victims who need to be helped and the people who sell them are the evil ones who must be punished. That policy has left demand unchecked and has constrained supply just enough to make the business incredibly profitable. Of course as long as the demand and the profit are there, somebody somewhere will produce the stuff. The basic force driving the business is not supply, but demand. Trying to blame Mexican cartels (we're already being told we have to "do COIN" in Mexico) or Afghan growers for a problem that starts within our own borders is utterly counterproductive: until the US gets serious about addressing demand, any "solution" will be stopgap at best.

Sounds good but you miss the obvious link between availability and use. Anyway as drugs in the states is a trillion dollar industry you don't really believe that corruption in that regard has not reached the highest levels of politics/government/law enforcement do you?