How the United States Makes Enemies

The United States supports Pashtun tribes in the Hindu Kush that are active in the narcotics trade. This endangers the population’s security.

Far away in the Nazayan district of Nangarhar province, about two hours by car from the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad, a border police station stands in a valley at the foot of a mighty mountain range. A handful of officials are doing their jobs here on the Pakistani border. Long, winding valleys meander into the mountains and what few roads there are, are poor. Beyond this mini-fortress lies the uncontrolled so-called tribal region where armed Taliban troops are on the move.

The police pull guard duty behind stone ramparts. In the expanse of the foothills, they are literally in no man’s land. They’re happy simply to be able to protect themselves and keep from being overrun. Their power extends only as far as the range of their weapons. To think they control the area, that they can stop the drug trade — impossible!

Most of the raw opium comes from Helmand province to the south. There, where 90 percent of Afghanistan’s opium is grown and 90 percent of the world’s supply of raw opium originates. There, where the country’s best farmland is located, land that could out-produce even Indochina’s Golden Triangle and nourish not only Afghanistan but parts of Pakistan as well if they would grow high-quality food instead of poppies. There, where most areas are controlled by the Taliban or by warlords who have meanwhile become part of the political establishment. There, where in the shadow of the revolt, a Mafia-like network of growers, financiers, smugglers, refiners and corrupt officials engage in what is called the narcotics trade. There, where around one-third of the narcotics money goes to the insurgents. Reportedly, that amounts to between $150 million and $200 million annually.

One and a half million people in Afghanistan make their living in the narcotics trade. It accounts for 25 percent of the country’s gross domestic product. The United States and Great Britain have taken the lead in the drug war since the defeat of the Taliban in December 2001. But so far, they’ve found no successful strategy. Because destroying the growing fields is too expensive and hurts only the poor farmers (the fields controlled by the drug barons have been defensively mined), the government has begun focusing on attacking the smuggling trade.

“But we don’t have enough personnel to patrol the borders,” admits Mohammad Ibrahim Azhar, deputy minister of the agency fighting the drug trade. He’s also candid about criticizing the United States saying, “The USA puts a lot of money into military operations but neglects the battle against the cultivation and smuggling of narcotics. That permits the financing of the insurgents.” For smugglers, the borders are wide open. He’s also highly critical of the British saying, “Their effectiveness was 100 percent negative.”

The high-level official is at a loss: “Without the drug problems we would have better security because the Taliban would have less operational funding. But we have neither the know-how nor the strategy to stop poppy cultivation nationwide. No one knows which direction to take.” NATO has nevertheless produced a chart showing eight steps in combating the drug culture: from agricultural alternatives for farmers, to the destruction of poppy harvests and on to the criminal prosecution of drug producers and dealers. But none of this has yet been translated into effective action.

The international community has begun offering a bounty of $1 million for areas that have become opium-free. Twenty-two of 34 provinces have qualified as such so far. But what does “opium-free” really mean? It means simply that poppies are no longer being grown in these provinces and not that they have no processing laboratories or smuggling routes. Nangarhar, for example, qualifies as opium-free, yet the capital Jalalabad is full of drug processing labs. Raw opium is imported from the south and heroin is exported across the border into Pakistan.