Afghanistan- Narco Nation

The opium trade prospers in lawless countries, and thirty years of strife in Afghanistan turned that country into a major producer of opium in the mid-1980s. It's now labeled a narco state in which drug lords and traffickers control both the economy and law enforcement.

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The United Nations estimates that the Afghan opium trade supplies fifteen million addicts worldwide and kills one hundred thousand people a year. More Russians die from addiction to Afghan opiates every year than the total number of Soviet soldiers killed (fifteen thousand) during the Soviet-Afghan War, reports Fariba Nawa in her book, Opium Nation. (1) The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) disclosed in May 2013 that Afghanistan is currently the lead producer and cultivator of opium globally. The nation was responsible for 74 percent of the global illicit opium production in 2012. About 131,000 hectares in Afghanistan was devoted to opium cultivation, MORE THAN ALL OTHER NATIONS COMBINED. Prior to the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, the Taliban had reduced opium production in the country to a record low of 7,600 hectares. (2) Afghanistan's drug output is up by nearly 50 percent in the last year and opium profits totaled $68 billion globally, but less than 10 percent of that remains in Afghanistan. (3)

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A preliminary assessment of opium poppy cultivation trends in Afghanistan in 2013 revealed that cultivation is likely to increase in the main opium growing regions, which would be the third consecutive increase since 2010. (2) At the same time, heroin addiction rates are soaring in the United States and even more so in a wide ring of countries around Afghanistan, from Russia to Pakistan. How did this all Happen? Fariba Nawa says, “The Soviet invasion destroyed traditional farming and replaced it with poppy cultivation. But it wasn't just the war that increased the drug trade. In Helmand province, American agricultural aid projects from the 1950s had advocated modern farming techniques on incompatible soil. These techniques led to eroded soil, which made it possible for only a few crops to grow—the most lucrative of which was poppy. Also in Helmand, mujahideen commander Mullah Nasim forced farmers to grow opium. The mujahideen and their cohorts discovered the lucrative benefits of heroin. As poppy farming took hold in the north in Badakhshan and Balkh provinces—Afghanistan eventually turned into a one-stop shop for drugs: the opium was cultivated there, processed into heroin, and then trafficked.” (1) It isn't that the US government hasn't tried to curb the problem. Since 2001, the US alone spent more than $6 billion to curb opium production, including crop eradication programs and subsidies for alternative crops. This clearly hasn't been enough. Opium is five to six times more lucrative than other crops, so the incentives—or penalties—have to be enormous to effectively discourage poppy farming. The next biggest export crop after opium is nuts—7.4 percent of Afghanistan's total official exports of $376 million. Farmers can earn as much as $203 a kilogram for harvested opium, report Owen Matthews and Anna Nemtsova. (3) And despite more than $100 billion spent on social services in the country over the same period, the West has failed to build anything resembling a real Afghan economy. In the 1970s, Afghanistan grew all its own food. Now it has to import vast quantities of food to feed its 32 million people. (3)

Summary

Matthews and Nemtsova ask, “The question for many of the coalition countries who invaded Afghanistan in 2001 is: Have we really spent twice as much time and money as it took to fight World War II just to make Afghanistan safe for poppy farmers who are busy turning suburban kids into junkies?” Another concern is that the Kabul administration doesn't seem interested in continuing to fight opium production or for that matter in fighting the Taliban. President Karzai recently called the Taliban insurgents 'brothers,' has publicly accused the Untied States of working with the Taliban to stage bombing attacks, and has declared that if a war broke out between the US and Pakistan, he would side with Pakistan. (3) Jack Dini Livermore, CA References 1. Fariba Nawa, Opium Nation, (New York, Harper Perennial, 2011), 34 2. World Drug Report 2013, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), May 2013 3. Owen Matthews and Anna Nemtsova, “American abandons Afghanistan to drug lords,” newsweek.com, January 10, 2014

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