It’s good to know that NATO Ambassador Kurt Volker is essentially reversing GEN Craddock’s stance that NATO members should go on kill-missions against opium kingpins. At issue is a directive Supreme Allied Commander Craddock made last month, in which he hinted that NATO was going to reorient itself toward kill missions in the Southern bits of Afghanistan. Craddock, who seemingly based his policy off a three-day visit to Kabul last year, was gently mocked in a CJR column I wrote on the topic.
Unfortunately, GEN Craddock’s thinking is very popular these days: opium causes all of our problems, so they say—it creates instability, funds the insurgency, and wreaks havoc on the government. The reality is, while opium does not help matters, it is at best a trailing indicator of insecurity, insurgency, corruption, and economic malaise. That is because opium cultivation does not happen in a vacuum, but rather has many factors driving its growth and distribution.
Consider, for example, the Nangarhar swing. According to the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime, in 2006, it was virtually poppy-free, yet 2007 saw a 285 percent increase (pdf), making the region one of the country’s top poppy producers. In 2008, it was once again virtually poppy-free (pdf). This shift cannot be tied only to security, as many like to claim: Nangarhar is not noticeably safer than it was in 2007, yet poppy cultivation there dropped to virtually zero. Similarly, in Khost province, just south of Nangarhar, poppy cultivation has been practically disconnected from the region’s growing insurgency; Khost hasn’t been a significant source of the crop for years. Indeed, it is remarkable to see the entirety of Eastern Afghanistan almost empty itself of opium even as violence rose 40 percent amid major coordinated militant attacks; the South, meanwhile, saw violence levels rise to relative highs—nearly even with violence in the East. Yet today, the South is the epicenter of opium cultivation, and not the East.
There are darker angles to Nangarhar’s economy in particular. Governor Gul Agha Sherzai still maintains deep links to Kandahar province, where he made the city such a welcoming place the Taliban chased him away to cheers in 1994. He later received literal truckloads of American cash, guns, and special forces soldiers to help him retake the city when the U.S. invaded in late 2001. Rumors fly fast and free that Nangarhar’s opium economy has an inverse relationship to Kandahar’s; namely, when Sherzai’s family and friends do well, Nangarhar is poppy-free. Those are the rumors, at least.
But from a larger perspective, cultivating poppy is actually healthy economic behavior. What’s driving things, especially in the south, is credit: in many places opium traffickers are the only ones who are willing to provide microloans and other credit mechanisms for farmers to finance their crops. Through a system of payments called salaam payments, they in essence create informal futures markets on crops… but only opium. Cereal crops and fruits, or other licit agriculture, are not included in this system (though it is possible for other actors, whether the government or NGOs, to provide this service). In fact, the ways these markets have developed in the south is remarkably similar to how informal credit markets formed in rural medieval Europe. It is normal. We just happen to dislike the crop.
What makes salaam payments unique from other credit markets is that, instead of relying on currency (a tricky option when you have the rupee or the afghani), it is denominated in opium. So, when prices fluctuate, farmers become easily trapped in a debt cycle, and the only means of breaking that cycle is to grow yet more opium. There are last-ditch options, such as selling a daughter or son to the traffickers in payment, and many families have fled to either Iran or Pakistan to avoid reprisals for unrepaid debt. As Barnett Rubin explained it (pdf):
For example, a farmer who made a salaam contract for 10 kg in the fall planting season of 2000, when opium was selling at about $40/kg, would have been paid $200. If he produced more than 10 kg, he could sell the rest at the harvest price or keep it as inventory. If he produced less, he would owe the balance in cash at the harvest price, which he might pay, if he could, or roll over as debt to be paid off with opium from the next growing season.
Thus in the spring of 2001, the farmer who had contracted for 10 kg – which he was unable to produce because of the Taliban ban – would still owe the 10 kg of opium, but now at the new price of nearly $400/kg. So the farmer would owe $4,000 to pay back a $200 loan.
He was referring to the Taliban ban on opium, and how much it screwed over the South. Looking at opium cultivation as an economic factor, however, leads one to many conclusions that are highly inconvenient for a political and military apparatus designed to oppose drug cultivation. Focusing on opium as a military issue, as General Craddock would prefer, would throw into chaos the entire rural economy in the south—surely encouraging insurgency, rather than dampening it. We can do better for Afghanistan than mindlessly killing the smugglers.
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