Hasan Selim Ozertem USAK Center for Energy Security Studies printable version send your friend

Tuesday, 30 March 2010

Last week, one of the main debates in the Russia NATO Council was the poppy issue in Afghanistan. The core of the debate was the difference between the Russian and NATO approaches to tackling the poppy cultivation in the country. The Russians proposed destroying poppy fields and solving the problem by using hard measures that would definitely hamper the poppy production in 2010. Moreover, the Afghan authorities also demand a similar policy be implemented to weaken the economic instruments of the Taliban.

On the other hand, NATO did not accept this proposal due to its indirect and direct repercussions. NATO’s thesis is based on the fact that eradication of the poppy fields was tried before, but this has not helped to reach a long lasting solution in fighting against the drug problem in the country. On the contrary, this process triggers another problematic mechanism that ends with pushing farmers to the ranks of Taliban. NATO’s diagnosis seems to be fair, but the situation has turned into a structural problem and Russia wants to pursue a radical policy in Afghanistan. However, for a long lasting solution of the problem, hard power measures can only result in disappointments. The parties should go down to the root reasons of the problem.

Understanding the Causal Mechanism

Actually, poppy cultivation in Afghanistan is a long-term problem that has global and regional repercussions. One of the main reasons of poppy cultivation is the easily gained rent from drug trade. Unlike other agricultural products, thinking about its cost/profit balance,opium is a magical commodity, due to its non-competitive nature in the market. In the absence of a sovereign central government that can control the whole state, Afghanistan is a paradise for opium production. Moreover, the absence of a strong government means problems in terms of the domestic economy and people will lean towards finding easy ways of earning money to be able to survive under these unfavourable conditions. It should be underlined here that the situation is not better in Afghanistan after the Coalition Forces’ operation in 2001. The Taliban has regained power in time, and the conditions outside of Kabul cannot be defined as stable. Especially the situation in southern provinces, which are closer to Pakistan,has a complicated character due to geographic and socio-economic dynamics in these places.

Instability in Afghanistan has negative impacts in neighbouring countries as well. The problems of refugees, terrorism, and drug trafficking are turning into (or have already turned into) structural problems in the region. This makes neighbouring states to look for new measures with their limited resources. The Central Asian countries, Pakistan and Iran are among the states that suffer from these problems at first hand. Drug trafficking in particular is a core problem that makes it easier for radical groups to get financial resources.



Source: United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2009

In reference to the statistics, it can be seen that 82% of the worlds opium is cultivated in Afghanistan and almost 90% of opium is produced in the same country. Parallel to the above analysis, almost 65% of poppy cultivation is in the southern province of Helmand. However, it should be understood that poppy cultivation is not the cause of the aforementioned problems, but the result of regional and domestic dynamics. Imagine that people younger than 30 years old have had no chance to live in a stable country with a functioning government or without being under the shadows of weapons. Considering the life expectancy in the country, which is 44 years, the gravity of the picture can be better understood. The state building process should be done with this available human resource. However, the traumas of people and the problematic characteristics of the demographic structure are not presenting so many options to the policymakers in this process.

Apart from the human resources of the country, it should be emphasized that all infrastructure and superstructure has collapsed since the Soviet invasion in 1979. Another challenge for the Coalition Forces and NATO in the country is rebuilding Afghanistan. Provincial Reconstruction Teams are playing critical roles, but they have limited means to overcome this challenge. Yet, Canadians in Kandahar and Turks in Wardak are taking important steps in terms of improving the conditions of irrigation, health and education in these provinces. However, these policies are still quite far from a global approach to the solution of the problem.



Source: United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, World Drug Report 2009


Choosing Between Solutions

So, what should be done in Afghanistan?This is a million dollar question. There is no crystal clear answer. However, what should be eschewed while implementing policies is easier to formulate. First of all, there is a governability problem in the country. It is not something that can be solved overnight. Yet, services provided by international NGOs are not helping to create a strong state profile in Afghanistan. In a modern state, people who get services from their own state bodies would respect state authority. However, this is not the case in Afghanistan. Second, training Afghan security forces and letting them take over the responsibility of preserving stability in the country has taken so much time that what Afghan people see in the streets are the uniforms of a foreign country not their own soldiers or polices. Third, disproportionate force used during military operations and civilian casualties feed enmity among the Afghan people against the Coalition Forces. This also creates a basis for enmity myths to be reproduced that would cause a long-term problem of victimization in the society, which also serves the interests of the terrorist groups.

Under these assumptions, policies of eradicating poppy fields without a global policy that includes social and economic dimensions will definitely fall short of a long-term solution. As we can recall, Afghanistan’s share in poppy growth was at its lowest level in 2001 during the Taliban’s reign. In 2001, Taliban put a ban on poppy cultivation and pursued a similar approach to what Russia is proposing today. Since NATO’s Afghanistan operation, Afghanistan’s share in global production has increased dramatically and, in 2008, reached its highest level in 15 years. Thus, eradicating poppy fields will certainly be effective in the short run, but will definitely create direct and indirect results. Recent reports show that there are signs of a decrease in poppy cultivation in Afghanistan. On the other hand, 65% of the cultivation is concentrated in Helmand province. This underlines the necessity of local and nationwide policies to be implemented in Afghanistan. However, security is still the chief problem, but without cutting the resources of terrorists, and providing new sources to Afghan people, it is not possible to bring stability. In a country like Afghanistan, where development depends on agriculture, policies should be pursued in this context. Irrigation, training of farmers and creating a functioning market, which is not based on the principles of the free market at least for a couple of years, are important. Subsidy policies should be implemented in the medium term to make cultivating commodities other than poppy more attractive, but this cannot be done within the mechanisms of a free market. This is why state should regulate the market and international community can play the role of auditor to minimize corruption.

It is not easy to ignore Russian concerns. Afghanistan is the starting point for drug trafficking that begins from this country and then reaches to Europe, the Middle East and Africa. In other words, Afghanistan is the main supplier for the opiate market in the West. Moreover, it has negative impacts in Central Asia as well. However, the opium issue is not the main cause of instability in Afghanistan, it is just a result. Thus, policies should be developed with this fact in mind.


Hasan Selim Ozertem

Centre for Eurasian Studies - Researcher