I had the chance to sit in on a lecture on 7/11/09, sponsored by the 1st Marine Division as part of a lecture series which will eventually include David Kilcullen and Greg Mortensen of Three Cups of Tea renown. The lecturer was Gretchen Peters, the author of Seeds of Terror: How Heroin is Bankrolling the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Participants were provided with a copy of the book and I am reading it slowly, but I made several notes that i offer up here as an after action review of sorts. I'll likely post a book review later, because I think she has some important things ton say, though they cut against the grain in terms of our current strategy.

My notes are in no particular order, and some are actually just notes to self:

-Ms. Peters began the lecture with several images of Afghan militants, and stated that most of the West views the Taliban as a bedraggled, bearded fighter toting a Kalashnikov, and sworn to protect Islam. She prefers the image of the mafioso, however, since the Taliban, from her research, are profiting from the drug trade despite other claims that they are anti-drug. They are less an ideologue, and more a basic thug. Although they are thugs, they are better equipped, better organized, and more capable than they were in late 2001 when the US first went in to Afghanistan. The reason is the profits made from the explosion of opium production.
-Methods of interrogation oriented on eliminating criminal elements, would in fact be better than the techniques we might use otherwise, because crime and corruption is at the heart of the insurgency while opium production skyrockets.
-In reported cases, the Taliban and peripheral drug kingpins have purchased, up front, a poppy crop's opium output. This results in occasions where farmers (who do not make significant profits from growing poppy) end up in debt to the trafficker and Taliban when we swoop in an d eradicate crops.
-We (read as coalition) need to be careful of how we are viewed when we cast our lot in with the ANA and ANP. [as in Iraq] the ANP are not as respected as the ANA, and are seen as the more corrupt of the two. Morale of the story: think about the IO aspect of your alliance with security forces, before you descend on a village with them in tow.
-Distribution, smuggling, extortion, and contract protection are making more money than the revenue created at the lower-level from growth of poppy and the initial production of opium from the poppy resin. We should be expending energy at disrupting these middle to upper-level activities, and interdict the trade after it leaves the farm.
-With the improvement of distribution networks, we need to conduct an analysis of drug trafficking ratlines first. Will a new road help us in our interactions with the local populace, or help the Taliban?
-In order to make our impact worthwhile, we might need to focus on corruption that is rampant within the civil servants and local official the strapped government, s. The reason for this is that too many people rely on instability in order to keep the illicit activities going, and their actions are more dangerous (although still corruption on the surface) than the policeman who pockets a few bucks while running a checkpoint. Ms. Peters was talking about instances where entire police forces are absent from certain roads that eventually see drug convoys pass through on the way to Pakistan or points west.
-The coalition would do itself a favor to take pictures of the drug kingpins homes in Quetta and other border areas who are living lavishly on the backs of poor farmers, and then use them as part of the IO campaign in poppy-rich areas.
-Proposals to legalize the Afghan opium production don't survive the rigor of the hygienic requirements needed in medicinal opiate production. Even if it did, the process would have to be subsidized in order to make the profit margin better than what can be gained from growing wheat, or we need to subsidize agricultural alternatives. Her point to that is "why not?" Why not totally reshape our counter-drug policy to put money into into alternative agriculture while focusing on interdiction at the same time.
-By and large, the problem in Afghanistan is more easily compared to Colombia, and therefore we should look at the COIN efforts conducted against the FARC to glean TTPs and operational-level policy.
-We can remove the terrorists through force, or maybe even hearts and minds, but unless we remove the narco-state, we still lose.

Ms. Peters utilized HN research assistants, paid with United States Institute of Peace grant money, to conduct primary source research in the study she conducted, which led to the book. She made several statements that we need to do a better job of killing the bad guys who need to be killed, so I don't take her assessments as tinfoil conspiracy theory that seeks to undercut any administration's effort. The simple fact that she advocates interdiction along the flow of opium, and not destruction at the source (since that is a problem too large to defeat), causes me to rethink my understanding of the problem, because I am going to be dealing with this at the farmer and local governance level during my next deploy. And since Helmand Province is the scene of the greatest poppy growth, I can expect to be dealing with a slice of the populace tied to the drug trade.