The war on drugs in Afghanistan: another failed experiment with interdiction.

• Author: Coyne, Christopher J.
• Position: Report

U.S. and international leaders have repeatedly asserted that winning the war on drugs in Afghanistan is necessary for winning the war on terror. According to Assistant Secretary for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs Robert Charles, "[C]utting down the opium supply is central to establishing a secure and stable democracy, as well as winning the global war on terrorism" (2004). Former president of Afghanistan Hamid Karzai clearly stated the perceived connection between antidrug efforts and the war on terror in his inaugural address: "[I]llicit drugs is [sic] another serious threat that is directly intertwined with terrorism.... The government has the duty to decisively fight against the cultivation, trafficking and consumption of illicit drugs.... We seriously ask for close coordination within the international community, as well as cooperation from the international community with the Government of Afghanistan to fight illicit drugs" (2009). Following this line of reasoning, coalition forces have worked closely with the new Afghan government to eradicate opium production since the overthrow of the Taliban in 2001. The underlying logic of this strategy seems to make sense--effectively eradicating illicit drugs will eliminate a key revenue source for terrorist groups. This reduction in resources will limit the growth and capabilities of groups such as al Qaeda and the Taliban that threaten the stability and future of Afghanistan (see Mili 2007; Peters 2009).

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

In 2002, less than a year after the start of the U.S. invasion, Afghanistan produced more than three-quarters of the world's opium (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime 2002, 4, and 2003b, 15). Since that time, the United States has spent $8.4 billion on a variety of counternarcotics initiatives (Sopko 2016, 12). Further, the U.S. government "exported" many elements of its domestic drug-interdiction efforts to help fight the Afghan drug war. For example, the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) opened thirteen offices in Afghanistan in 2003. By 2013, ninety-five offices were in operation. Over that same time period, the DEA increased its operating budget for its Afghanistan initiative by $6 million per year (Beith 2013).

More than a decade has passed since the United States launched its ambitious wars on drugs and terror in Afghanistan. The results are sobering, to say the least, as illustrated by figure 1, which shows the growth of the area under opium poppy production in the postinvasion period (marked by the bold vertical line). (1)

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) reports that the area under opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan has nearly tripled, from 76,000 hectares in 2002 to a record 209,000 hectares (1 hectare is about 2.5 acres) in 2013, with the majority of production occurring in southern provinces of the country-- namely, Helmand and Kandahar Provinces (UNODC 2013, 5). Afghanistan now produces more than 80 percent of the world's illicit opium (UNODC 2014, 21), with revenues topping $4 billion annually (UNODC 2007a, iii). (2) As opposed to observing a shift in the Afghan economy away from opium and toward alternative, legal products, UNODC executive director Yury Fedotov noted that Afghanistan is on the verge of becoming a "fully-fledged narco-state" (qtd. in Dahl 2013).

The war on terror has produced similarly abysmal results. Examining the number of terror attacks since 2001 in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Yemen, researchers found that the number of terrorist attacks each year more than quadrupled in the decade following the attacks in the United States on September 11, 2001. Afghanistan and Pakistan accounted for more than 50 percent of all terror fatalities. Although some eighty-five countries experienced acts of terror in 2012, Afghanistan's Taliban was by far the deadliest group that year--launching some 525 separate attacks and killing 1,842 people (Burke 2013). To this day, it remains among the world's most deadly terror groups.

How is it that Afghanistan is experiencing record opium harvests and greater terror activities despite the unprecedented U.S. investment of resources intended to accomplish the opposite? The purpose of this paper is to explain why the war on drugs has failed in Afghanistan and how it has undermined counterterrorism efforts. Using the tools of economics, we explain how efforts to curtail the drug trade in Afghanistan create opportunities for terrorist groups to form, strengthen, and impede the U.S. government from achieving the stated goals of its policies.

We contribute to two strands of literature. First, we contribute to the extensive work on the economics of prohibition and the war on drugs (see, for instance, Timberlake 1963; Moore 1977; Ostrowski 1989; Thornton 1991; Miron and Zwiebel 1995; Musto 1999; Resignato 2000; Miron 2003; Becker and Murphy 2013; Boettke, Coyne, and Hall 2013; Redford and Powell 2016). This work examines the perverse effects of prohibition in a variety of different settings (usually the United States). We contribute to this literature in two ways. First, we provide insight into the specific dynamics of drug prohibition in Afghanistan. Second, we analyze international drug-interdiction policies within the context of counterterrorism and nation building.

Second, we contribute to the growing literature on the war on terror. Our work most closely relates to the work on coalition efforts in Afghanistan (see, for instance, Goodhand 1999; MacDonald and Mansfield 2001; Scott 2003; Byrd and Ward 2004; Farrell and Thorne 2005; Liddell 2008; Schweich 2008). We contribute to this literature by providing an economic analysis of the war on drugs in Afghanistan with a specific focus on the connection between antidrug efforts and counterterrorism policies.

We first examine the origins of Afghan opium production and provide a brief history of U.S. drug-interdiction policies, reviewing three distinct phases of U.S. antidrug efforts in Afghanistan from the invasion in 2001 to the present. Then we discuss five perverse, unintended consequences of these U.S. policies before drawing conclusions.

A Brief History of U.S. Drug Policy in Afghanistan

Before the U.S. Occupation

For most of its history, Afghanistan played a relatively minor role in global opium production. This changed in the 1970s following opium bans in Turkey, Iran, and Pakistan. By the end of the decade, opium poppy cultivation had spread to more than half of Afghanistan's twenty-eight provinces, though its total production remained only a fraction of global output (Cooley 1999, 131). The decade- long Soviet war in Afghanistan, starting in the late 1970s, decimated the country's legal agricultural trade network, leading many rural farmers to turn to farming opium to sustain their livelihood. By 1989, opium had become one of Afghanistan's leading exports, and roughly one-third of the world's opium was produced in Afghanistan (Cooley 1999, 131). (3)

The Taliban, which took control of the country in the mid-1990s, allowed local warlords to maintain opium production and illicit arms trading in return for their allegiance (Byrd and Ward 2004, 6). It is estimated that in its initial years in power the Taliban received $30 million per year from taxing the opium economy (Goodhand 2005, 199). By the late 1990s, however, cross-border trade between Afghanistan and Pakistan expanded significantly, totaling approximately $2.5 billion (Naqvi 1999). It is estimated that during this period the Taliban generated $75 to $100 million a year in opium tax revenue (Rashid 2000, 118; UNODC 2009, 2). In 2000, Taliban leaders issued a religious decree, or fatwa, banning opium cultivation and declaring it "un-Islamic." There is no consensus on the exact reason for the reversal of course by Taliban leaders, although one explanation is that the ban was issued to gain international credibility and foreign assistance (see Chouvy 2010, 151; Felbab-Brown 2011). Farmers who violated the prohibition often suffered public beatings and were paraded through the streets with blackened faces on "walks of shame" before being sentenced to prison terms (Komarow 2001). The ban and the significant punishments for violating the decree had the intended effect, resulting in an unprecedented 95 percent reduction in Afghan opium production the following year (UNODC 2002, 4) and a 99 percent reduction in areas under Taliban control (Farrell and Thorne 2005, 81). Globally, the result of the Taliban's opium ban was a 65 percent reduction in potential illicit heroin supply (Farrell and Thorne 2005, 81 ). (4)

Since the launch of Operation Enduring Freedom in 2001, the U.S. government has pursued a number of different strategies in its joint wars on drugs and terror in Afghanistan. These strategies are best understood as three distinct phases: (1) the early "hands-off' approach, (2) the "hands-on" approach, and (3) the current "alternative-livelihoods" approach.

The Hands-Off Approach, 2001-2002

U.S. and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) forces launched Operation Enduring Freedom on October 7, 2001, to overthrow the Taliban in Afghanistan. The fall of the Taliban resulted in an end of its short-lived ban on opium production. Afghanistan's interim government, once established and led by Hamid Karzai, implemented its own national ban on opium production in order to combat the drug trade.

Coalition forces did not initially look to eliminate the market outright. Instead of seeking to actively prohibit production and trade, the U.S. government sought to use the opium producers' interests to their advantage. Specifically, coalition forces attempted to establish military alliances with regional warlords to help defeat the Taliban. In return for their allegiance, the U.S. government in effect agreed to turn a blind eye to opium trafficking.

Barnett Rubin summarized this implicit agreement with local warlords, indicating...