Harvest Time

Every year at this time, as the poppies are harvested all across Afghanistan, the questions of what to do about it start sprouting up as well. The AP writes:

KABUL, Afghanistan - Profits from Afghanistan's thriving poppy fields are increasingly flowing to Taliban fighters, leading U.S. and NATO officials to conclude that the counterinsurgency mission must now include stepped-up anti-drug efforts.

Of course, that's a horrendous conclusion for U.S. and NATO officials to draw when you look three paragraphs down:

Afghanistan accounts for more than 90 percent of the world's heroin supply, and a significant portion of the profits from the $3.1 billion trade is thought to flow to Taliban fighters, who tax and protect poppy farmers and drug runners.

The Taliban make their money from the poppies because the poppy farmers and others involved in the trade need protection. But for some reason, U.S. and NATO officials believe the solution to this is to increase their need for protection. Increasing the demand for what someone is selling is a pretty terrible way to defeat them.

James Risen also discusses the topic in the New York Times and while he provides a lot of interesting background from the discussions inside the administration, he generally misses the main underlying conundrum as well.

KABUL, Afghanistan — In a walled compound outside Kabul, two members of Colombia’s counternarcotics police force are trying to teach raw Afghan recruits how to wage close-quarters combat.

Using wooden mock AK-47 assault rifles, Lt. John Castañeda and Cpl. John Orejuela demonstrate commando tactics to about 20 new members of what is intended to be an elite Afghan drug strike force. The recruits — who American officials say lack even basic law enforcement skills — watch wide-eyed.

"This is kindergarten," said Vincent Balbo, the United States Drug Enforcement Administration chief in Kabul, whose office is overseeing the training. "It’s Narcotics 101." Another D.E.A. agent added: "We are at a stage now of telling these recruits, 'This is a handgun, this is a bullet.'"

Balbo is apparently only in 3rd grade, because by 5th grade, you learn that it's completely impossible to wage war against a plant.

Originally, the poppy farming wasn't a major concern in Afghanistan. It wasn't until after we got into Iraq that it became an issue (not because of Iraq, but because the priorities of the administration shifted to nation building in both places). Risen talked about the rift in the Bush Administration:

The State Department and Pentagon repeatedly clashed over drug policy, according to current and former officials who were interviewed. Pentagon leaders refused to bomb drug laboratories and often balked at helping other agencies and the Afghan government destroy poppy fields, disrupt opium shipments or capture major traffickers, the officials say.

Some of the officials declined to be identified because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

Former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and military leaders also played down or dismissed growing signs that drug money was being funneled to the Taliban, the officials say.

And the C.I.A. and military turned a blind eye to drug-related activities by prominent warlords or political figures they had installed in power, Afghan and American officials say.

This generally fits the expected script. The Pentagon has always been averse to waging the drug war, and the CIA has always been perfectly content with excusing (and sometimes even participating in) drug trafficking if it serves a higher purpose. What's interesting about how the situation in Afghanistan has become so messy is that the Blair government, the U.N., and the U.S. State Department have actually been some of the most deluded parties. When the war against the poppy farming was escalated in 2004 (with support from both Karzai and the Bush Administration), it was the British who were put in charge of the operation militarily, which caused a small uproar among those in the UK who knew of the futility of the task.

The main person being squeezed by all of this stupidity is Karzai:

To step up efforts, last fall President Bush privately prodded President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan to curb opium production, then vowed publicly in February to provide more help.

But as Risen describes, it's utterly impossible for him to do anything about it:

But while new Afghan drug prosecutors are charging hundreds of messengers and truck drivers with drug offenses, major dealers, often with ties both to government officials and the Taliban, operate virtually at will.

An American counternarcotics official in Washington said a classified list late last year developed by several United States agencies identified more than 30 important Afghan drug suspects, including at least five government officials. But they are unlikely to be actively sought anytime soon, several American officials caution.

...

The few times that influential drug figures have been investigated, the resistance has been intense. In January, for example, the D.E.A. and the Afghan national police arrested two drug suspects in remote Kunduz Province, only to find themselves hauled before the provincial governor as a crowd gathered outside. The drug team had to leave their suspects in custody in Kunduz.

"It’s happened several times that there will be a raid, and a mayor is involved, and nothing happens," Mr. Lunnen complained. "Every day we feel frustrated." He added that the Karzai government did not adequately support the Afghan drug task force because it was viewed "as a creation of the West."

...

Like the law enforcement efforts, the eradication program is rife with corruption. Farmers know they must offer bribes to avoid having their crops destroyed, American and Afghan drug officials said. It is often only those who lack money or political connections whose fields are singled out.

"I would go out to an eradication site, and we would be driven past miles and miles of poppy fields, and the Afghans would say, 'You can’t do that field,' because it belongs to such and such a commander, 'You can’t do that field, you can’t do this field,'" recalled one American counternarcotics official. "Finally, we would arrive at one field where we could set up for eradication, and you had to wonder, why had they chosen this one?"

The mess there is nothing new to us. All of this stuff happens in smaller degrees in places like Mexico and Colombia. The obscene profits from drug smuggling inevitably turn public officials into willing accomplices. In Afghanistan, where the opium production is roughly half the country's GDP, the idea that we can militarily wipe it out requires a special breed of delusion that was even too much for Donald Rumsfeld. That's saying something.

Risen eventually gets to the heart of the problem right here:

Farmers growing poppies in Taliban-controlled areas pay a tax to the insurgents, who then hire "day fighters." For their part, drug traffickers pay the Taliban for security. Smugglers who take opium and heroin out of Afghanistan bring weapons and bombs back for the insurgents, officials say.

And this is exactly how it works. Due to pressure from the U.S., the U.N., and NATO, the Karzai government declared war on the poppy farming. As a result, the Taliban now have a steady stream of income, in the form of weapons, that can now be used to attack coalition forces. All the while, heroin continues to make its way to London, Dublin, Los Angeles, and all the other cities where there's demand for it. We're losing ground to the Taliban, while accomplishing nothing, and wringing our hands over whether we're not committed enough to this horrendous strategy.

Over the next 4 to 6 weeks, the Taliban will once again be on their spring offensive, as the poppy harvest is complete and they no longer have to guard the fields from the government eradicators. Maybe this year, we'll start to see some more in-depth analysis of why we're losing so badly over there and hear about the alternatives.