Thanks to everyone who emailed me the latest tom-foolery about counternarcotics in Afghanistan. In short, Thomas Schweich, once responsible for the opium eradication campaign in Afghanistan, argues that the Bush administration has badly flubbed the job.
It is a strange mixture of good and bad, from Schweich arguing that arial spraying didn’t create any sort of backlash on the ground in Afghanistan (even though we know it has), to the early argument that opium profits help fund the insurgency, to the DOD stonewalling them every step of the way. Of course the corruption of the government is a huge issue. But Barnett Rubin raised a key point Schweich, and most other non-experts analyzing the country, make: assuming Afghanistan is a state. While he argues it is not, I would actually argue that is is a collection of states (more appropriately nations) that have no system equivalent to federalism to tie them together. Indeed, it is precisely the programs Schweich oversaw—as Rubin briefly notes, Schweich, like every other official who swopped in, simply though the cookie-cutter approaches that worked elsewhere would work there, despite Afghanistan’s long history of violently demonstrating its uniqueness—that helped to undercut the fledgling authority of Hamid Karzai, and arguably made the problem of official corruption far worse than it otherwise would have been.
Missing in Schweich’s account is a way of squaring a fundamental fact of opium in Afghanistan: farmers there grow it on purpose. He complains of the British dropping leaflets explaining that they’re not a part of the eradication effort—while counterproductive to the idea of actually building a functioning country, the motivation behind that was the Brits knew just how angry misplaced eradication programs will make the local populace. They were traipsing around the country, destroying the entire agricultural foundation of the economy without providing sufficient alternatives, and could not understand why their program was so hates. It was terrible, and arrogant as hell, but really, this is nothing new.
But the message—that the overemphasis on military solutions to what is at its heart a social problem has almost permanently undermined the mission in Afghanistan—is one that should certainly be repeated until someone in charge starts to pay attention.
Alas, that won’t happen. Practically every action the U.S. and international communities have taken on the last six years has served the opposite their intended purpose: increasing the legitimacy of the central government. Time after time, whether it is spraying poppies with air-borne poisons or needlessly killing civilians in poorly executed air strikes, the international community has consistently sent the message that there is no reason to have faith in Kabul, since what they say or want or do will not matter in the slightest. And that is why the situation is deteriorating so badly. We should own up to our own failures—across institutions.
{ 7 comments }
Schweich lost me when he swore early on that aerial spraying would be the best solution to the opium problem. Interesingly, while he mentions a few countries in which it worked, he ignores the obvious country where it didn’t – Colombia. That country has actually seen an increase in coca production, the $600 million in annual U.S. anti-drug aid notwithstanding. He also doesn’t delve into the psychological aspect of aerial spraying. During the war with the Soviet Union, the Soviets used to use plans to spray poisons on troops and villages. Does Schweich think that those same villagers might now guess that the poison is actually just aimed at opium poppies?
Finally, he makes a big point of accusing President Karzai, his family and his government of allowing the drug trade to flourish. He even admits that the intelligence proving it is unclassified and widely available. But then…he doesn’t actually provide any of it. If you’re going to make such grandoise accusations, BACK THEM UP.
Unfortunately, Schweich missed the chance to start a meaningful conversation on a difficult topic. Instead, his comes off as self-serving and his article as typical Washington score-settling.
Agreed. It is totally self-serving, which is why my instinct is to discount even his valid points.
I love in particular how he talks about how awesome it was to land in a poppy field, when I believe this same incident was described by Joel Hafvenstein in “Opium Season.” He writes about it as emblematic of how shoddy the counternarcotics campaign was, and how clueless U.S. officials were.
Which sounds about right.
On Karzai allowing the drug trade to go unchecked, Schweich didn’t mention any specific examples. But let’s take, for instance, this guy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sher_Mohammed_Akhundzada
Governor of Helmand. Busted with gigantic quantities of opium. Appointed, naturally, to the upper house of parliament. Almost certainly a major player in the opium trade to this day.
Many of the drug lords ended up in the parliament–and Karzai’s ability to stay in power was to a degree dependent on not upsetting them.
I’m not saying Schweich is right on everything, but it’s no secret that the drug lords maintain a big influence over the political affairs of the country.
Ian,
Oh, absolutely. But if you think about how young, fragile states have developed throughout history, how many have been able stand up to their biggest industrialists? Not many. In Afghanistan, you’ve got the added pressure of warlords just waiting to call upon their tribe or ethnic group to bring the whole experiment in democracy crashing down.
Karzai will eventually have to tackle the biggest drug traffickers in the government. The fact that he hasn’t isn’t because he doesn’t want to, in my opinion, but rather because the state has neither the institutional capacity or strength to do so.
Afghanistan will take a long time to figure all its interconnected problems out. A long time. The international community seems to want it done on a hurried schedule, something that no one can expect would work.
Thank goodness no one ever thinks to legalize opium or coca production! Al Capone and the U.S. Great Depression proved that prohibition works!
Josh, we’ve looked into that. In Afghanistan in particular, there are major barriers to making legalization feasible — starting with domestic american and european politics, and ending with the inability of the afghan state to levy taxes or regulate industry. There needs to be a lot more development all around before a rational solution like that is feasible.
I’m glad Afghan sovereignty includes the right to consult the U.S. and E.U. about its domestic political interests.
I totally agree that legalization is, for all intents and purposes, off the table. The I’d disagree that the Afghan state’s inability to tax or regulate is a reason not to consider it. It is clear that a) they’d be spending less on eradication, so could spend a little more on tax collection, and, b) even with modest tax compliance on the legal crop, they’d have even more for the same.
It simply isn’t an accident that the Golden Triangle and Colombia, Bolivia, Peru (the White Triangle?) are political basket cases.
Comments on this entry are closed.