Apostasy: Something More Important Than the Drug War
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 7:53 PM

It's that little matter of winning the war in Afghanistan. A British outpost is surrounded by poppy fields. So of course, the soldiers are out in the fields, pulling up poppies and ensuring that the opium crop is not replanted, just like the head of the UN's Office on Drugs and Crime wants. Oh no, that's not right: the soldiers ignore the poppy fields and their diligent custodians:

Sometimes they even help them. When one poppy worker arrived at the camp gate suffering from heat exhaustion recently, he was referred to the main base in Garmser town, less than a mile away. He was treated by a military doctor. "We're not much interested in what they are doing with the poppy," said Sgt Russell. "We know it's going on but we're soldiers, not politicians. And we're here to do a good job."

Of course, the US and the UN haven't given up on eradication of the poppy fields. (Remember, the UN is committed to a drug-free world by...er, 2008):

US-funded efforts to destroy the crops with tractors and sticks have produced meagre results. This year's campaign left several eradication workers dead, dozens more injured and destroyed just 4,000 hectares of poppy - a sliver of the total. But officials are pleased that some major drug cultivators were hit. About a fifth of the crop of Abdul Rahman Jan - until two years ago the provincial police chief - was destroyed.

That last is quite a resounding victory in this war on an unapproved plant. Shout it from the mountaintops! One producer's output is but 80% of what it used to be! We might never achieve this level of success again.

Labels: Afghanistan, opium, UN

 
Laotian Trade Balance Suffers
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 10:29 PM

From an article in today's New York Times:

The amount of land cultivated in Laos for opium has fallen 94 percent since 1998. The country now produces so little opium that it may now be a net importer of the drug, the United Nations says.

But there's probably no reason to call for import tariffs -- it looks as if Laos just doesn't possess a comparative advantage (relative to Afghanistan) in poppy production, for agricultural reasons:

This shift to Afghanistan has had major consequences for the global heroin market: a near doubling of opium production worldwide in less than two decades. Poppies grown in the fertile valleys of southern Afghanistan yield on average four times more opium than those grown in upland Southeast Asia.

So the shift to Afghan opium seems to comport with economic efficiency.

I am of mixed mind about the article, incidentally. It has some interesting reporting, but it never notes how worldwide opium prohibition -- the completely unnecessary worldwide opium prohibition, I might add (but would not expect the article to) -- converts the growing of poppies into a Big Issue, and renders opium use almost as problematic as the prohibitionists claim it is. The article is accompanied by a worthwhile photo of Chinese "inmates" at a drug rehab center: the pictured scene doesn't give me much faith in the medical underpinnings of the "treatment" that the inmates are receiving.

Labels: Afghanistan, China, opium

 
Nadelmann on Afghan Opium
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 11:02 PM

I finally managed to read the cover story (subscribers only) in the September/October edition of Foreign Policy, in which Ethan Nadelmann of the Drug Policy Alliance makes the case for abandoning the war on drugs. Most of the arguments will be familiar and persuasive to the Vice Squad reader, whoever you are. But Dr. Nadelmann offered some insights on the situation in Afghanistan that were new to me. Who would benefit, Nadelmann asks, if opium production in Afghanistan really were to fall?:

Only the Taliban, warlords, and other black-market entrepreneurs whose stockpiles of opium would skyrocket in value. Hundreds of thousands of Afghan peasants would flock to cities, ill-prepared to find work. And many Afghans would return to their farms the following year to plant another illegal harvest, utilizing guerrilla farming methods to escape intensified eradication efforts.

The bottom line? "[M]aybe the world is better off, all things considered, with 90 percent of [heroin] coming from just one country."

Vice Squad has long been tracking the Afghan opium situation, with the most recent "contributions" occurring on July 26 and August 27. And Vice Squad once met Dr. Nadelmann.

Labels: Afghanistan, opium

 
First, World Peace; then, Opium Eradication
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 8:53 AM

Today's Baltimore Sun includes an op-ed from "the political counselor at the Embassy of Afghanistan in Washington," asking for help in weaning Afghans from growing opium. The counselor notes that "International experience has taught us that eradication in isolation is ineffective." But if all of the right pieces are in place, why then, the poppy crop will wither away.


What are some of the conditions that are required?


(1) "Counter-narcotics efforts must be enacted contemporaneously across the country in a strategic manner."

(2) "Above all else, farmers must be given the opportunity and necessary resources to grow alternative crops."

(3) Farmers must "have access to both land and alternative financing, such as widely available micro-lending."

(4) "[I]nvestments in infrastructure are needed. In addition to supplies of water, seed and fertilizer, farmers must have access to reliable farm-to-market roads or to cold-storage facilities to preserve products for later export."

(5) "To be effective, counter-narcotics efforts must target all players in the long chain of the opium trade, including traffickers, distributors and dealers, who pull in about 80 percent of the export value of Afghan narcotics. Essential to the prosecution of these kingpins is a functional justice sector, with coordinated law enforcement and judicial activities." (Please remind me again why alcohol sellers are never called kingpins?)

(6) "But even with international support, transnational drug traffickers will continue to permeate Afghanistan's borders and undermine the rule of law in the absence of coordinated prosecution and enforcement efforts among Afghanistan, its neighbors and consumer countries."

(7) "The international community must double its law-enforcement cooperation with Afghanistan and recommit to providing the country with long-term development aid to meet the farmers' demand for legal livelihoods."

Right then. We'll just take care of these seven issues and we can put the scourge of opium behind us. Oops, no, I meant Afghan opium. You don't think it might crop up elsewhere, do you?

Labels: Afghanistan, opium

 
Eradication in Afghanistan
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 10:39 AM

My English-language reading material is pretty restricted here in Tbilisi, but this means that the two New Yorker magazines I have with me are, uncharacteristically, being devoured rather thoroughly. In the July 9&16 edition, Jon Lee Anderson has a lengthy (well, New Yorker length) piece entitled “The Taliban’s Opium War.” The article is not about drug policy; it chronicles one eradication effort, without questioning whether keeping opium illegal is such a great idea in the first place, or even mentioning the Senlis alternative of legalizing the Afghan crop for pharmaceutical use. The relative lack of interest of the Dutch and other Europeans serving in Afghanistan to the US-led eradication campaign is mentioned (though not explicitly endorsed or opposed.)

Whatever the merits of eradication in Afghanistan as drug policy, as a military policy, it is leaving a lot to be desired. The farm families whose crops are destroyed do not become enamored of the US as a result – rather the reverse. (Anderson writes: “the only American a farmer ever meets might be the one who is destroying his harvest, rather than someone who is building a school or a clinic.”) The fact that eradication is sure to be quite partial also means that a decision of whom to target is also seen as being made in a partial manner. And as the areas in which Taliban influence is most intense are also the hardest for the US and allies to operate in, eradication efforts might even be partial towards the Taliban. An unsavory business all around.

Labels: Afghanistan, opium

 
Anti-Drug Counter-Advertising in Afghanistan
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 10:58 PM

The contradiction between NATO's military mission in Afghanistan and poppy eradication efforts briefly burst into the open, until the Afghan government requested that the status quo ante, the implicit contradiction, be restored. A radio advertisement, paid for by the NATO-run International Security Assistance Force (Isaf), was at the heart of the controversy. Isaf's mission is to win the hearts and minds of the Afghan people to the cause of the Afghan government and its foreign allies. Recognizing that some two million poor Afghans raise poppies for opium production, the radio advertisement, aired in a poppy-growing region of Afghanistan,

...said Isaf troops understood that most Afghan people had no source of income other than poppy production.

It [the ad] said that troops are not in Afghanistan to eradicate opium poppies, but to bring security and kill foreign militants.

The implication that it was OK to grow opium poppies was too much (too honest?) for some folks, and the advertisement was dropped. A representative from the ever-helpful UN Office on Drugs and Crime reminds us (in the linked BBC article) of the connection between the Afghan insurgents and drug traffickers -- a connection fostered by the misguided worldwide prohibition on opium, which incidentally, also is responsible for the connection in UN offices between Drugs and Crime.

Labels: Afghanistan, opium, UN

 
First Afghanistan....
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 6:16 PM

Pete Guither of Drug WarRant and many others have been protesting the DEA-sponsored exhibit at Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry. The connection between drugs and terrorism is an artifact of prohibtion -- note that there does not seem to be a connection between alcohol and terrorism. Ilya Somin at the Volokh Conspiracy has been making a similar point, arguing that prosecuting our War on Drugs in Afghanistan is bolstering the Taliban and hindering our ability to fight terrorists. Here's the final paragraph of today's post on this topic by Somin:

I recognize, of course, that it is politically unrealistic to expect the Bush Administration to abandon the War on Drugs completely. But I hope they can at least recognize the wisdom of stopping the poppy eradication campaign in Afghanistan. They need not even make a public announcement about it or admit that they were wrong. Reasonable people can differ about whether or not the War on Drugs is a good idea. But even those who support it wholeheartedly should consider whether it is really important enough to risk undermining the War on Terror.

Before I started working on vice policy I worked on Soviet/Russian reform, and one thing I learned from that exercise is that political constraints can shift quite quickly: look how many people forecast the end of communist rule in Eastern Europe even six months before it occurred. I have no insight into, or really any interest in, political strategy, but... presumably President Bush must think about his legacy. Right now it does not look as if history will treat his foreign policy as a shining success, though there are no guarantees on future judgments. What about his domestic policy legacy? Again, right now, I don't see it as being strewn with obvious success, and images of Katrina look like they will linger. In his final two years in office, why shouldn't President Bush take a few bold steps to relieve us from some of the worst of the War on Drugs? For instance, he could start by reclassifying marijuana and by calling off the DEA from harassing people operating legally under state laws with respect to medical marijuana. (OK, these aren't very bold -- they should be easy sells.) If political cover is needed, there are plenty of conservatives who are against the War on Drugs, including Milton Friedman and William F. Buckley, Jr.; indeed, de-escalating the drug war can legitimately be viewed as enhancing national security and being a form of compassionate conservatism.

Labels: Afghanistan, Drug WarRant, marijuana

 
Innovative Anti-Drug Strategy for Afghanistan
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 10:45 PM

Sure, the recent news is that attempts to eradicate the opium crop in Afghanistan were wildly unsuccessful. But sometimes it takes a crisis like this to inspire bold new policy breakthroughs. Fortunately, Mr. Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, had a burst of insight, recounted in the linked New York Times story:

“I am pleading with the government to be much tougher,” he said. A new high-security prison block would be inaugurated in a few weeks, he said. “We have room for 100 people and I am asking the government to fill it within six months,” he said.

No word on whether the prison should be filled after trials and convictions, or by some less time-consuming method. Perhaps in terms of the impact on the Afghan opium crop, the precise prison-filling mechanism is immaterial.

Hmmm, another policy reform jumps to mind. Either eliminate the UN's "Office on Drugs and Crime" while turning drug policy over to the WHO, or open an "Office on Alcohol and Crime."

Libby at Last One Speaks noted the UN's refreshing new idea, too.

Labels: Afghanistan, opium, UN

 
Apostate Cheats the Gallows
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 10:38 AM

Apparently standards have fallen to such a point that one can utter any heresy and not fear serious consequences. An Afghan court has imposed a slap on the wrist, a mere two-year jail sentence, to blasphemous magazine editor Ali Mohaqiq Nasab. This piddling sentence will be appealed, and perhaps the prosecutor's wise suggestion, that the death penalty is warranted, will receive due consideration at that stage. Mr. Nasab, you see, is the editor of a magazine that "had run two articles in its latest issue about apostasy that violated the law by saying that while apostasy was taboo, it was not a crime under Islam." Fortunately, it appears as if the authorities were able to remove copies of the offending issue of Women's Rights magazine from the newsstands.

The most recent blasphemy prosecution in the United States, which ended in dropped charges, took place in Pennsylvania in 1971.

Labels: Afghanistan, blasphemy

 
The Unfolding Afghan Anti-Opium Calamity
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 4:03 PM

Recent events:

(1) "Last week, 11 Afghans working on a U.S.-sponsored project to encourage farmers not to grow poppies were killed in two attacks."

(2) Yesterday's New York Times reports on a leaked US internal memo, dated May 13, criticizing President Karzai for not doing enough to eradicate poppy production.

(3) On Sunday and Monday, an anti-drug operation in Afghanistan nets up to 15 arrests and more than, oh, 5 tons of opium.

And as Mark Kleiman notes, all of this anti-opium frenzy will not make much difference to the drug problem in the US.

Labels: Afghanistan, Kleiman, opium

 
Afghan Opium Harvest
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 6:38 PM

Farmers are beginning to bring in the forbidden opium crop in Afghanistan, according to this AP report, "exposing the limits of a U.S.-sponsored crackdown on the world's largest narcotics industry despite claims Tuesday by President Hamid Karzai that drug cultivation was down sharply." The article claims that almost 80 percent of global (illicit) opium came from Afghanistan last year.

Labels: Afghanistan, opium

 
Drug Prohibition in Afghanistan
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 6:07 PM

No, not that drug prohibition; this one, the one against alcohol. The Afghanistan constitution bans alcohol, but businesses are licensed to sell hooch to foreigners. So there's a moral police officer who goes into the licensed establishments to ensure that they are not selling to Afghanis. With respect to both supply and enforcement, it appears that there is some complementarity between alcohol and prostitution. Today's Chicago Tribune has more.

Update: Speaking (almost) of that drug prohibition, an alleged Taliban-era Afghan drug "kingpin" was arrested on Saturday -- in New York? Thanks to D'Alliance for the pointer.

Labels: Afghanistan, alcohol, prostitution

 
The New Containment
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 1:52 PM

Eminence grise George Kennan has passed away, and his policy of containment has seen quite a decline, too. Congress is upset that the US hasn't done more to combat opium growing in Afghanistan; here's Congressman Henry Hyde going over the top: "The U.S. government has been AWOL too long in the fight against illicit drugs in Afghanistan which is part of the same war against the same enemy that is global terrorism." (He then went on to say, "Of course, it is our public policies, and not the chemical properties of illicit drugs, that establish any connection between drugs and terrorism." Oh, no, he didn't say that.)

Anyway, some DEA folks had to testify to Congressman Hyde and others at a Congressional hearing to signal how seriously we take the crop-growing habits of dirt-poor, early-perishing Afghan peasants. How serious are we? Cold War serious, that's how serious: Operation Containment. From the Voice of America:

Michael Braun, of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), says special DEA foreign-deployed agents may begin work at the end of March, supplementing an existing regional effort.

"Operation Containment is a DEA-led multinational cooperative program initiated in 2002 in an effort to place a security belt around Afghanistan that would prevent processing chemicals from entering the country and opium and heroin from leaving," he explained.

Meanwhile, other folks are hoping to get Afghanistan in on that portion of opium cultivation that receives official imprimatur.

Labels: Afghanistan, heroin, opium

 
Afghan Opium
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 5:30 AM

Greetings from Senegal. Apologies for the blogging break, but I am afraid it will continue until Monday. In the meantime, let me note an article by Christian Parenti in The Nation (January 24, 2005) on poppy production in Afghanistan. The article suggests (among other things) that the impending US crackdown on the Afghan opium crop is likely to harm the security situation. Here's an excerpt, taken from a web-based version of the article available at www.altnet.org (sorry, can't provide links from this terminal):

"It costs 1,000 rupees to plant one jerib of poppy, and that one jerib will yield at least 15 kilograms of poppy, which is worth 300,000 Pakistani rupees [$5,000], at least," says a farmer named Lal Mohammed. (Later in the central highlands, some farmers tell me they can get 28 kilos of opium per jerib.) "Wheat takes twice as long as poppy to grow, and we can buy almost ten times as much wheat as we could produce if we grow poppy instead," says Mohammed. "We have no choice but to grow poppy."

To top it all off, Afghanistan is in the midst of a hellacious six-year drought. Unlike wheat and vegetables or cotton, poppy is very drought-resistant. "All it really needs is a little water early on," says Mohammed.

The farmers confirm what I've heard elsewhere: The opium boom of the past three years has delivered many farmers from onerous debts and allowed them to keep land that they would otherwise have been forced to sell off to the local mujahedeen commanders.

Labels: Afghanistan, opium

 
Afghan Sanity
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 6:59 PM

No one is stepping up to take the credit for the recent aerial spraying of poppy fields and environs in Afghanistan, according to this article in today's New York Times. But surely we can all be pleased that the vicious criminal (impoverished) poppy growers are finally paying a price, can't we? I mean, our own drug czar wrote less than two weeks ago that:

Our fourth pillar [of our five-pronged anti-drug "assistance" to Afghanistan] will help the Afghans launch eradication programs to destroy poppy fields. Farmers in the past faced little threat from growing poppy and were able to reap three to four times more profits than those from food crops. Destroying poppy fields outright will be a powerful tool to discourage any future planting of illicit crops.

It turns out, though, that the Afghans themselves think that not all means of eradication are fair game -- at least judging by the comments of Jawed Ludin, President Karzai's spokesperson, as related in the Times article:

"We do not support aerial spraying as an instrument of eradication," Mr. Ludin said at a news briefing this week. "We have never in the past, at present, and never will in the future authorize the use of poppy-spraying chemicals."

Pete at Drug WarRant has more. And I should note that in the Drug Czar's op-ed, although he enthused about crop eradication and "Colombia's dramatic progress," he did not explicitly endorse aerial spraying.

The Times article referred to a 45-year-old Afghan poppy farmer as a "village elder". Why, he's only 45, I thought, he's practically a kid. But alas, life expectancy at birth for Afghan males: 42.27 years. Such are the folks who get to bear the burden of poppy eradication.

Labels: Afghanistan, Drug WarRant, opium

 
Imprisoning Our Way to a Better Afghanistan
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 4:12 PM

While the rest of us were loafing over the Thanksgiving holiday, our drug czar was hard at work. Last Friday he published the results of his latest ruminations in the Washington Times. The issue: how to save Afghanistan from the menace of the illegal drug trade.

Now don't go jumping to the futility claim, that there's nothing that can be done, you naysayers, you. All you need is a little strategy, the successful Colombian model, and some US assistance:

It is by no means a problem that defies solution and the Afghans have already drawn up a national drug-control strategy. Colombia's dramatic progress against a pervasive narcotics trade demonstrates the power of credible, coordinated and comprehensive policies to reduce the destabilizing threat of drugs. The United States is playing a valuable role in Colombia's progress, and now we are prepared to assist Afghanistan fight its drug war.

Oh, and you need a five-pillared plan. The pillars include a public relations campaign, perhaps teamed with an amnesty, and support for alternative crops. The other three pillars? Interdiction, eradication, and prisons, oh my! "We will help the Afghans build a special narcotics prosecution task force and aid construction of judicial and detention facilities expressly for counternarcotics cases." Afghanistan only has some 28.5 million people -- who knows, it might be possible to imprison every Afghan. I doubt that there will be any resentment, because surely the public relations campaign will explain how we are helping.

Labels: Afghanistan, Drug Czar, opium

 
Estimating Opium Production in Afghanistan
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 7:57 PM

A few days ago co-blogger Mike noted the new UN report indicating that opium production was enjoying a boom in Afghanistan. How would anyone know? Does someone collect opium production statistics?

Well, yes, as this Slate Explainer article, er, explains. Satellite photography provides the big picture -- ha! -- and then 60 surveyors went into the Afghan countryside to get the straight, er, to fill in the details. This was dangerous work, but they seem to have come out of it OK, while somehow completing their assignment: "...the field researchers managed to survey nearly 2,500 villages, where they pressed the locals on such questions as how many families were growing poppies, when the harvest was scheduled, how much opium the poppies were expected to yield, and how much opium was selling for." Despite the photos and the surveys, the UN estimates remain highly uncertain.

Labels: Afghanistan, opium, UN

 
The more things change, the more they remain the same in Afghanistan
- posted by Michael @ 5:33 PM

On Thursday, the UN released a report described in the New York Times (registration required) stating that “the fear that Afghanistan might degenerate into a narco-state is becoming a reality.” I guess the US and NATO military presence as well as elections haven’t made that much difference with respect to the drug production and trade. Markets work. As long as producing opium and heroin provides the greatest risk-adjusted returns, people are going to do it. It might be perhaps somewhat surprising that the cultivation of these drugs has apparently reached its highest level in history, according to the report. While the UN and various officials cited in the NYT article are naturally upset about the facts stated in the report, I can’t claim to be too worried about all this. It does suggest, however, that the US, NATO, and Afghan government’s control of the country is quite tenuous. The UN report states that more than 321,000 acres of land were planted with poppy in 2004, representing a 64% increase over last year. Apparently, poppy production has spread to every Afghan province. This year’s harvest was estimated at 4,200 tons, a 17% increase over last year’s output. Despite the largest ever area planted, however, this was not the highest production ever because of the draught and disease.

One good thing about the great economic achievements of the Afghan farmers is that perhaps they have lowered the price of the drugs in the US and Europe. Not having purchased any heroin lately (or ever, for that matter) I don’t know if this has actually occurred. But, assuming a relatively inelastic demand for the stuff, the price effect must be substantial.

Another good thing is that the greater supply should allow the anti-narcotics agencies around the world to report greater successes is seizing ever larger quantities of opium and heroin. In fact, recently, a Russian news website has reported the start of the trial of the “organizers of the international narco-syndicate” that supplied several Russian provinces with large shipments of Afghan heroin. The police claims to have cut this distribution channel and have confiscated about 130 kilos of heroin. Apparently, the usual shipments were about 100 kilos each. And that was in 2003. I wonder what other channels are being used to deliver the 2004 bumper crop of Afghan drugs. Somehow, I don’t think that they all stay in Afghanistan. I am sure we can expect more reports of the exploits of the anti-drug agents around the world.

Labels: Afghanistan, opium, Prohibition, UN

 
Vicewire, 6/28/2004
- posted by Ryan @ 9:37 PM

1) A new report out of the UK claims that 75% of criminalized drug users attempted to get help an average of three times before being arrested, and a third felt that committing a crime was the best way to make sure that they received treatment.

2) From Afghanistan, the BBC reports that some drug smugglers posing as aid workers have been caught recently. Afghanistan is a major producer of opiates and indeed the rise in poppy production in Afghanistan is a major factor in the increase in world production of opiates noted by the United Nations.

3) A remake of a Mozart opera featuring some of Vice Squad's favorites (prostitutes, drugs, et al.) is causing quite a stir in Berlin. The director is apparently famous for working nudity and sex into otherwise wholesome dramas.

4) And an apparent prodigal DUI/DWI offender was convicted for the 23rd time last Thursday. He has been driving without a license since 1984 and he triumphantly exclaimed after his previous arrest that he would continue to drink and even made predictions about his actions on his next chase, soon after fulfilling his previous prediction for his current chase. A policeman on the scene recognized him.

Labels: Afghanistan, alcohol, driving, Vicewire