“I grew poppy on five hectares last year,” said Jan Mohammad, 35. “Three hectares were destroyed by the police, but they left my neighbour alone. I later found out that he had paid off the local officials. This year I too paid, and I was able to profit from my land.”
Jan Mohammad’s story illustrates the uphill battle that counter-narcotics officials are facing as they tackle what some describe as Afghanistan’s number one problem.
In December, 2004, newly inaugurated President Hamed Karzai gave a stirring speech in which he called for a “jihad” against drugs. But two years later, this holy war seems to have failed.
Few international efforts in Afghanistan have consumed as much time, effort and money as the counter-narcotics programme. But despite hundreds of millions of dollars invested, poppy production skyrocketed in 2006.
A report issued in November by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, UNODC, indicated a nearly 50 per cent increase in opium production over last year.
“We expected an increase, but we were shocked at the size of it,” said Syed Mohammad Azam, head of public relations for the counter-narcotics ministry. “This is very bad news for Afghanistan.”
Afghanistan is by far the world’s largest producer of opium, accounting for 92 per cent of world supply last year. The 2006 crop was the highest ever recorded, at 6,100 metric tonnes of raw opium. This, according to Doris Buddenberg, UNODC country representative in Afghanistan, is 1,500 metric tonnes in excess of worldwide demand.
The bulk of Afghanistan’s poppy crop ends up as heroin sold on the streets in Europe and Asia.
COORDINATION PROBLEMS UNDERMINE EFFORT
The counter-narcotics campaign has been plagued by inefficiency, corruption, and miscommunication. Moreover, there are signs of serious disagreements, both on tactics and strategy, between the international community and the Afghan government.
US State Department officials can quote chapter and verse of the anti-drug strategy. Based on five “pillars” that include judicial reform, crop eradication, alternative livelihoods, public information and law enforcement, the counter-narcotics effort has already cost the American taxpayer hundreds of millions of dollars.
While exact figures are difficult to come by, one US counter-narcotics specialist acknowledged that the amount of money devoted to the cause will “significantly” exceed the 780 million US dollars pledged in early 2005. The British government, which spearheads the fight against drugs, has pledged over 850 million pounds, about 1.7 million dollars, for the period 2002-09.
The money is intended to achieve what amounts to an overhaul of Afghan society. Eradication will be ineffective without a concerted effort to stamp out corruption; public information campaigns are useless unless impoverished farmers are given viable alternatives; interdiction will not work if there are no courts or prison cells for those who are detained.
Counter-narcotics officials freely admit that the effort is going to take time, and are at some pains to point out that progress, however slow, is being made.
“There has been a giant learning curve,” a US State Department official, who did not want to be named, told IWPR. “But are things better than two years ago? Yes. There is no silver bullet. It will take time.”
There have been successes, insisted the official. Afghanistan has a more professional Supreme Court, a new attorney general who has declared war on corruption, and a brand-new high-security wing in Pul-e-Charkhi prison waiting for its first drug-lord inmates.
But the authors of another recent UNODC study say efforts to combat narcotics have been targeted at the wron
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