Istalef in the Shamalle Plain via Vonbergen.net.

Afghanistan now accounts for 93 percent of the world’s total opium production. Considering how volatile that nation has been for decades, that number just floored me when I read it.

But considering how much of the revenue from poppy growth goes toward supporting the various warlord factions and feeding Taliban coffers, it has become a hot topic of late among the national security, diplomatic and military strategists inside the Beltway and across the globe.  

Because heroin addiction worldwide feeds the wallets of an increasingly factionalized and unstable Afghanistan.  And by not tackling the root of addiction problems, addicts across the globe are feeding funds back into violence in Afghanistan.

What does all of this mean?

In human terms, it can be devastating. Recent humanitarian reports point to an increasing problem of addiction issues, especially for women which go untreated, leading to infant medical problems and high mortality rates. Scholars and Rogues has been running a fantastic series written by an aide worker in Afghanistan, and the most recent entry is chilling:

Before long we were ushered into a low room that had a carpeted floor, walls, and ceiling. It was on the way there that we saw the dried poppies, and it was the first and only time I’ve felt afraid on this trip. It wasn’t a panicked fear, or a strong one, just a gnawing feeling that sat in my gut and made me go over the worst scenarios again and again. We were isolated, I didn’t think our phone was working, these people almost certainly knew what they were growing was illegal. And here we were, sitting in a room lousy with flies, stuffy with heat, and listening to these poppy farmers tell lying versions of Nasim’s story. Again, I got the unshakeable sense that something was very profoundly flawed in these people. The way they laughed, the way they acted normally when telling Nasim’s ordeal, the glazed over way they looked at us, and the way Yasin responded in turn showed their disconnect from reality. I was struck with the conviction that these people were acting, that they had somehow lost any kind of emotional direction and simply spoke out of custom, out of habit rather than thought, rather than empathy. The more they talked, the more I thought that, inside, they had rotted away.

Yasin was the first to express what we all felt, he turned to us saying, “I feel sick here.” And it was true. During the rough ride I’d felt tired but fine; here I felt nauseous and claustrophobic. I realized gradually that the claustrophobia wasn’t just the room, it was socially suffocating. These people, shorn of any kind of deeper reality, made me physically ill.

…Finally word came that Nasim’s mother and father wouldn’t see us. We could take Nasim and officially put him in the orphanage.

When looking at a problem this pervasive, what is the appropriate action to take, especially coming in from the outside?  As outsiders, is it our action?  Or oughtn’t it be the Afghan people themselves?

A former US state department official, Thomas Schweich, whose portfolio was narcotics intervention argues that the US must intervene, including using aerial spraying even though there has been consistent argument from Afghans against this.  Not the least of which because traditionally food crops are interspersed among the poppies to maximize use of the forced irrigation diversion by warlods and Taliban forces, and spraying would decimate survival abilities for villages where these are grown, according to folks both inside and outside of Afghanistan.  Let alone the fact that aerial spraying is difficult to control, and brings back horrible defoliation memories of Vietnam and elsewhere.  

Schweich has gotten a lot of pushback for his views, including from the conservative CATO Institute.

Furthering the problems, a recent UN report details how much more sophisticated the drug operation has become inside Afghanistan, with shipments of conversion materials,  outside technical help setting up labs and other conversion facilities having come in from both Pakistan and Iran and elsewhere over the last few years through Afghanistan’s porous borders.  

But questions have arisen as to whether the report accurately documents the extent of the problem — or raises doubts precisely to justify continued funding for a war on drugs.

So, what can be done? Especially with a problem this long-standing and intertwined with security, economic and survival issues.  There are no easy answers, but Rory Stewart — whose book The Places In Between was an amazing glimpse of Afghan life — proposes the following:

…A smarter strategy would focus on two elements: more effective aid and a more limited military objective. We should target development assistance in provinces where we have a track record of success. Our investment goes further in stable and welcoming places like Hazarajat than it can in hostile, insurgency-dominated areas like Kandahar and Helmand, where we have to spend millions on security and the locals do not contribute to the project and will not sustain it after our departure. We should focus on meeting the Afghan government’s request for more investment in agricultural irrigation, energy and roads. And we should increase our support to the most effective departments, such as education, health and rural development; they are good for the reputation of the Afghan state and the West. Creating more educated, healthier women and men and better transport, communications and electrical infrastructure may be only part of the story, but they are essential for Afghanistan’s economic future.

Our efforts in nation-building, governance and counternarcotics should be smaller and more creative. This is not because these issues are unimportant; they are vital for Afghanistan’s future. But only the Afghan government has the legitimacy, the knowledge and the power to build a nation. The West’s supporting role is at best limited and uncertain. The recent elimination of the opium crop in Nangarhar, for instance, was driven by the will and charisma of a local governor and owed little to Western-funded "capacity-building" seminars. The greatest recent improvements in local government have come about through the replacement of local governors rather than through hundred-million-dollar training programs. Since these successes are often difficult to predict, we should invest in numerous smaller opportunities rather than bet all our chips on a few large programs.

Our military strategy, meanwhile, should focus on counterterrorism — not counterinsurgency. Our presence has so far prevented al-Qaeda from establishing training camps in Afghanistan. We must continue to prevent it from doing so. But our troops should not try to hold territory or chase the Taliban around rural areas. We should also use our presence to steer Afghanistan away from civil war and provide some opportunity for the Afghans themselves to create a more humane, well-governed and prosperous country. This policy would require far fewer troops over the next 20 years, and they would probably be predominantly special forces and intelligence operatives….

Like I said, no easy answers, but because there is so much more to consider with this, I’m going to continue this conversation over the next few weeks.

Afghanistan is likely to be in the news quite a bit over the next few months, as violence there is increasing and instability is rising, and with a presidential election year you can be sure there will be some discussion of this in the days ahead. Much more to come…