Obama and the Afghan narco-state
– Bernd Debusmann is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own. –
To understand why the war in Afghanistan, now in its eighth year, is not going well for the United States and its NATO allies, take a look at two statistics.
One is Afghanistan’s ranking on an international index measuring corruption: 176 out of 180 countries. (Somalia is 180th). The other is Afghanistan’s position as the world’s Number 1 producer of illicit opium, the raw material for heroin.
The two statistics are inextricably linked and, a year ago, prompted Richard Holbrooke, the man President Barack Obama has just picked as special envoy for Afghanistan, to write: “Breaking the narco-state in Afghanistan is essential or all else will fail.”
Holbrooke, who was not in government service at the time, took particular issue with the counter-narcotics strategy the Bush administration pursued in Afghanistan.
“The … program, which costs around $1 billion a year, may be the single most ineffective policy in the history of American foreign policy,” he wrote in an op-ed in the Washington Post. “It’s not just a waste of money. It actually strengthens the Taliban and al Qaeda, as well as criminal elements within Afghanistan.”
Exactly what the Obama administration intends to do about that, and how it might break the narco-state, has yet to be articulated. Sending more troops to fight a growing insurgency does not necessarily translate into progress towards dismantling the “narco-state,” eliminating corruption or cutting down on the opium production whose proceeds help finance the Taliban.
Bernd, we have been waging a worldwide war on drugs for decades now and it has never worked. I feel that the first and best defense against the worldwide illegal drug trade is for Americans to stop buying illegal drugs. Maybe Mr. Obama can use his magic to convince the American people to stop using. Sadly I don’t see such a thing happening anytime soon. The US government buying the opium crop would surly change the dynamics of the opium market. The purchase would take the existing supplies off the illegal market on the one hand, but the opium producers will have another major purchaser pushing up the price of their product. The higher price will result in more opium production in new areas of the world. I see such a dynamic pushing the cost from $2 billion to $10 billion or more and still not reduce the funding for the Taliban.
I can see the current recession doing more to reduce the demand for opium then any action governments can take.