Press Releases 2007
U.S. Embassy Deputy Director for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement, Lee “Rusty” Brown’s remarks at the Paris Pact Conference in Kabul
November 20, 2007
Afghanistan’s Counter Narcotics Strategy: Present Imperatives and the Long Term
The government of Afghanistan completed its January 2006 National Drug Control Strategy (NDCS) at an auspicious time. September 2005 parliamentary and provincial council elections had confirmed new democratic institutions. NATO had decided to expand ISAF to the south and east. And, more to the point, the 2004 expansion in poppy cultivation seemed to have peaked and receded. 2005 saw a 21% decrease in overall poppy cultivation, with big drops in Nangarhar, Oruzgan, and Badakshan.
2006 was a good time to write a five year national strategy, then, a time when the country could take a long view of how to approach a big problem. President Karzai recognized the problem when he called the opium economy “the single greatest challenge to the long-term security, development and effective governance of Afghanistan.” However, since the strategic threat was long term, there was time to address it. With this perspective, the NDCS was built up into a structure of goals, priorities, timelines, and pillars supporting complementary efforts. The architecture of the strategy was solid. Its principles and general policy recommendations guide us today. I hope they will continue to guide us into the long term.
But in late 2007 it is much harder to talk confidently about the long term – or even the mid term. It’s clear now that the improvements of 2006 were only a dip in a larger pattern of expansion in Afghanistan’s narcotics economy. Since then, we’ve witnessed two years of record cultivation levels. We’ve seen a rapid evolution in the structure of the industry, with booming production not only of raw opium but also finished heroin. Poppy cultivation in Helmand province now qualifies as agri-business, organized on a massive scale using directed streams of migrant labor and sturdy systems of credit, distribution, and export.
In the south and east, the opium industry is often protected by anti-government insurgents, who finance themselves with proceeds from trafficking. We can’t be too easily reassured, either, by the bifurcation of Afghan agriculture over the last two years, in which the north has reduced poppy cultivation and the south has made massive business of it. Most dangerous of all, drug money and fear of drug power has corrupted many government officials and paralyzed many others.
In late 2007, in other words, Afghanistan’s opium economy is threatening to do in short order what the insurgency could never by itself manage – that is, defeat the efforts of Afghans and their international partners to build a stable democracy in charge of its own security. The strategic threat no longer resides in the long term, but in the present moment.
This is the main point of my remarks to you today. It is simple. The explosion of the narcotics industry in Afghanistan has cast into doubt the future of Afghanistan and the international mission supporting it. The narcotics industry presents a strategic threat more dangerous than the complementary and intertwined threat of violent insurgency. In spite of our counter narcotics strategies, we have failed to make headway against this threat. And every year that we let it get worse, every year that it entrenches itself more deeply in this country’s political and economic structures, our efforts to turn it back will become more difficult, less likely to succeed.
That’s how it is right now. If the Afghan government and its international partners do not take definitive action in the short term, if we do not turn the corner very soon, we might as well stop talking about strategies, because there will be no meaningful mid term or long term context in which a counter narcotics strategy might deliver improvement.
The August 2007 U.S. Counter Narcotics Strategy for Afghanistan accepted the architecture of the NDCS, with similar priorities and pillars of implementation. But after two years of record poppy crops, the key note of the U.S. strategy is its sense of urgency: “The drug trade has undermined virtually every aspect of the Government of Afghanistan’s drive to build political stability, economic growth, and rule of law and its capacity to address internal security problems.” The U.S. strategy calls for “dramatic changes in the way Afghanistan and the international community implement the counter narcotics strategy.”
I have heard the U.S. strategy described as being an inventory of tactics rather than a classic strategy. In a formal sense, I have to agree. Beyond the basic principles it shares with the NDCS, the U.S. document mainly discusses means and instruments. Calling for dramatic changes in implementing strategy is really a call for dramatically better tactics.
But let me come back to the main point. To address the threat posed by Afghanistan’s narcotics industry, we need effective tactics for the present. Long term strategies and harmonized coordinated institutional approaches are important, but we should not let them distract us from present imperatives.
Making a strong difference now is the U.S. imperative. We must look to the tools at hand and decide which combination will be most effective against the threat we face. At this moment, our success depends on seizing present opportunities, keeping plans flexible to put the most pressure on those points where we can make the biggest difference. The inventory of instruments described by the U.S. strategy defines the tools. Whether we succeed or continue to fail depends on how well we use those tools and in what combination.
By saying “we,” of course, I mean the Afghan government with support from international partners. The tools, the tactics, have meaning only insofar as they belong to the Afghan government. It will take energy and commitment by Afghan leaders to use them effectively. While internationals can assist with tools related to CN-targeted economic assistance, law enforcement, eradication, and public information, only the Afghan government can deploy the most powerful one of all – and in fact the only instrument that has proven to be effective in the short term. By this I mean political leadership, and particularly the leadership of governors.
If one thing is clear from the history of the last few years, it is that governors can make a measurable difference in their provinces when they make a strong effort to fight cultivation. We’ve seen it happen in Balkh, Badakshan, and other provinces in the past. We’re seeing it right now in Nangarhar. Governors can make a difference. Governor power is a proven instrument waiting to be used. So why are only some governors making a strong effort, and those are doing so mainly in isolation, in spite of the good efforts of the Ministry of Counter Narcotics? Why does Kabul allow other governors to keep their offices when they make little or no effort to fight narcotics in their provinces? If Kabul recognizes the emergency we face, and if Kabul wants to turn it around, governors should have as priority number one the mandate of reducing the presence of the narcotics industry in their provinces. This is a measurable outcome. Like a general who runs a bad campaign, a governor who fails in this regard should be replaced with one who can succeed. Why is this not the case? And why is the same not true for sub-governors, police chiefs, and other appointed local leaders?
We have the tools; we simply not using them well. That’s the underlying sense of the U.S. strategy document. What about eradication? All the big strategies agree that eradication is an essential pillar. UNODC estimates that it takes eradicating at least 25% of the area cultivated to create enough doubt in growers’ minds to effect overall cultivation. Why did we allow eradication to fall short of this during the last two years? We have failed to use a tool that our strategies tell us is essential. A few weeks ago, the Policy Action Group decided to correct this failure when it set 50,000 hectares as this season’s eradication goal. This is a call by the Afghan government and key international partners for effective implementation of a tactic without which we cannot succeed, especially in the short term. Governors and the Poppy Eradication Force must give a 100% effort to meet this goal. If we fail to reach it, if we fail to use the essential tool of eradication, we will have to ask ourselves why we fell short and what we can do differently to reach the goal of effectiveness.
I could go on listing major instruments recognized by our strategies but underused in actual practice. Development assistance benefits farmers in the long term, but in the short term has little effect on the local leaders, landowners, and traffickers who instruct farmers to plant opium. Interdictions and arrests occur regularly, but few criminals are actually punished with long jail terms. Public information, military cooperation, and border control are other so far underutilized tools. But these are only examples and it’s time to conclude.
My main point is simple: that the threat posed by narcotics threatens everything we hope to accomplish in Afghanistan, that it has become an emergency, and that henceforth every year we let pass without turning it around sends us further along the road to failure. My second point is that we no longer have the leisure to argue over grand strategies and the long term. Thanks to the Afghan government and its international partners, we already have good strategies; I hope there will be a long term in which Afghanistan can benefit from them. But now is the time for what the U.S. document calls “dramatic action,” particularly on the part of the Afghan government. The tools are there. They need to be used.
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