Pubdate: Sun, 27 May 2012
Source: New York Times (NY)
Copyright: 2012 The New York Times Company
Website: http://www.nytimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298
Author: Alissa J. Rubin and Matthew Rosenberg

U.S. EFFORTS FAIL TO CURTAIL TRADE IN AFGHAN OPIUM

KABUL, Afghanistan - For years, American officials have struggled to
curb Afghanistan's opium industry, rewriting strategy every few
seasons and pouring in more than $6 billion over the past decade to
combat the poppies that help finance the insurgency and fuel corruption.

It is a measure of the problem's complexity that officials can find
little comfort even in the news this month that blight and bad weather
are slashing this year's poppy harvest in the south. They know from
past seasons that blight years lead to skyrocketing opium prices and
even greater planting efforts to come.

"Now I am desperate, what can I do?" said Mohammed Amin, a poppy
farmer in Tirin Kot in Oruzgan Province, who harvested only one
kilogram of opium poppy this year compared with 15 last year. "I don't
have any cash now to start another business, and if I grow any other
crops, I cannot make a profit."

The seemingly unbreakable allure of poppy profits - for producers and
traffickers, government officials and Taliban commanders alike - has
kept fighting opium at the heart of efforts to improve security. It
drove Richard C. Holbrooke, later the special envoy to Afghanistan, to
write in 2008: "Breaking the narco-state in Afghanistan is essential,
or all else will fail."

That concern is no less serious today, on the eve of the departure of
thousands of American troops. But even as American leaders continue to
emphasize the importance of the anti-opium effort, some officials are
privately conceding that there is little chance for its large-scale
success before the end of the NATO military mission in 2014.

The withdrawal is one worry. As the money from the Western military
and civilian aid programs dwindles, the relative importance of opium
to the economy is likely only to increase, said Jean-Luc Lemahieu, the
director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime in
Afghanistan.

"Some money is available through the licit economy, but less than in
the past as the Western contracts dry up, and so the importance of the
illicit, informal economy will increase: human trafficking, gems,
timber and weapons smuggling, and of course narcotics is a huge chunk
of it," he said, adding: "The prognosis post-2014 is not a positive
one."

Opium poppy, much like the coca grown in Colombia and Peru, poses a
number of problems because there is so much money to be made that
powerful political players, from police chiefs to governors,
inevitably want a cut. The Taliban also support the drug trade,
directly by protecting opium farmers, and indirectly by shielding
traffickers, who pay off everybody in order to move their products
quickly to the borders, according to narcotics experts at the United
Nations and the Afghan government.

"Drugs are not the only priority issue for Afghanistan," said William
R. Brownfield, the State Department's assistant secretary for
international narcotics and law enforcement, in an interview this
month. "But by the same token, if you do not address the drug issue
you will not succeed in the other security, stability, democracy,
prosperity objectives you are aiming for."

Despite all the effort, there are many troubling indicators.
Nationwide, the number of poppy-free provinces, which reached a high
of 20 in 2010, has now dropped to at least 17 and could be found to be
still lower once researchers finish surveying remote provinces.
Overall acres under poppy cultivation began rising again in 2009 after
a significant drop the year before, and the total has grown slowly but
steadily since.

Interdiction, while somewhat improved under new Afghan
counternarcotics leadership, nets only about 3.5 percent of the 375
tons of heroin that leaves the country every year, according to the
United Nations.

Even the success stories are unlikely to be sustainable, officials
say. The prime example is the combined American and British
counternarcotics campaign in the Helmand River Valley, in the heart of
the province that produces nearly half of Afghanistan's opium. Since
its start in 2009, the military mission has coincided with a 33
percent decrease in opium poppy cultivation in the area, and
concurrent programs to create alternative jobs and crops have had a
significant effect there.

But the troops are leaving - as many as 14,000 American Marines could
depart Helmand by the end of the year - and many of the incentive
programs are closing down unless Afghanistan's counternarcotics
minister can persuade the West to renew them.

"We have to watch the answer develop over the next 6 to 12 months,"
Mr. Brownfield said, speaking of the effects of the military
withdrawal. "That's what transition is all about - we're changing from
a known to an unknown."

This year's low opium harvest has thrown another element of
unpredictability into the picture. It has already driven a few farmers
to commit suicide and others to flee because they feared retribution
from creditors, according to the governor's office in Helmand. But
rather than serving as a disincentive, the poor crop is more likely to
prompt many to plant even more poppy next year to make up for this
year's losses. That was the pattern in previous blight seasons, like
2010.

Mr. Amin, the poppy farmer in Tirin Kot, says that despite the risks,
there is nothing to replace opium: "The poppy is always good, you can
sell it at any time. It is like gold, you can sell it whenever and get
cash."

In the meantime, the price for opium at the farm gate has soared - up
more than 50 percent from a month ago and now selling for more than
$320 per kilogram - another factor likely to spur more planting, Mr.
Lemahieu said. Traffickers, who stockpile opium from year to year, are
making a killing, he said.

On the Afghan side, the minister for counternarcotics, Zarar Ahmad
Muqbel Osmani, has increased poppy eradication efforts in areas where
farmers can grow other crops and is lobbying to expand the alternative
crop program. But he remains deeply frustrated with the overall lack
of law enforcement. Asked what it would take to affect the country's
drug problem, he answered tersely, "Political will."

Among the continuing problems with corruption: information leaks that
scuttle potential drug raids; political pressure that results in the
release of major traffickers; and local politicians and police
officers who participate in the poppy trade and use eradication
programs to attack their rivals.

The deputy interior minister for counternarcotics, Lt. Gen. Baaz
Mohammed Ahmadi, said his specialized force must still answer to local
police officials.

"Because they are dependent on the regular force for everything, for
gas for their vehicles and for the vehicles, even a very junior fuel
dispatcher will know about the details of our operations," he said.
"And when we plan an operation, we have to have approval of the local
police chief or his deputy or the zone police chief, and if one of
those people is corrupt or linked to a big trafficker, it leaks."

The Americans have taken at least three different tacks to fighting
opium poppy cultivation.

In the early days after the 2001 invasion, a little more than half the
current acreage was under cultivation, a legacy in part from the
Taliban's ban on opium, which they ignored selectively. The Western
emphasis was on driving the remaining Taliban fighters from the
country, and with that in mind the Americans made allies of many of
the old warlords who were also involved in the drug trade, entrenching
a culture of impunity.

In 2005, British forces found nearly 20,000 pounds of opium in the
office of the Helmand governor, Sher Mohammed Akhundzada, an ally of
President Hamid Karzai. He was forced out at the behest of the
British, but was later named to the Senate.

In 2006, as Americans began promoting eradication by specially trained
Afghan forces, heroin was found in a car belonging Hajji Zaher Qadir,
whom Mr. Karzai had been considering to lead the border police force.
That appointment was scrapped, but Mr. Qadir is now one of the leaders
in the lower house of Parliament. Many of the northern power brokers
are also believed to be involved in the drug trade.

In 2007, as poppy growth reached a record-high 477,000 acres, the new
American ambassador, William B. Wood, began to lobby for aerial
eradication of the kind that had been undertaken in Colombia.

Mr. Wood became such a vocal proponent that he was known in the
British press as "Chemical Bill." He once even tried to overcome
President Karzai's skepticism about spraying by offering to publicly
sit in a vat of pesticide clad only in a Speedo bathing suit to prove
the chemicals were safe, said a Western official familiar with the
discussions at the time.

Strenuous opposition from Mr. Karzai, European diplomats and some
American policy makers stopped the program from getting off the
ground. They feared it would backfire by reminding impoverished
Afghans of Soviet-era spraying and would push them further into
poverty, and into the arms of the Taliban.

In 2009, with the arrival of President Obama's team, including Mr.
Holbrooke, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal and later Gen. David H.
Petraeus, the focus turned toward a counterinsurgency strategy that
hinged on gaining acceptance from local Afghans.

Aware of how eradication deeply alienated rural Afghans who depended
on opium for their families' subsistence, the American military
distanced itself as much as possible from destroying poppy crops,
instead supporting alternative crops and livelihoods. The State
Department paid provincial governors to use Afghan forces to eradicate.

At the same time, officers from the Drug Enforcement Administration
and the Justice Department mentored the Afghan police in interdiction
and Afghan lawyers and judges in prosecuting narcotics cases.

The efforts have led to two perceived success stories: new drug
courts, and the alternative crops and jobs effort in Helmand Province.
Both initiatives have taken several years to mature. The drug courts,
in particular, are widely viewed as largely insulated from corruption
and are efficient, handling 635 cases in 2011. A few of them involved
government employees, including police officers who were smuggling
heroin. In the vast majority, the prosecutors obtained
convictions.

Still, for many Afghans in the poppy belt, the idea of placing a bet
on the government's future by cultivating anything other than poppy
seems like one of the longest of shots.

"It is not an easy choice to grow poppies," said Tahir Khan, a local
village leader in Khogyani district in the Nangarhar Province in
eastern Afghanistan. "We know the danger and threat from the
government and it is difficult, it needs hard work to recoup our
investment. But the people are poor, they have no choice."

Taimoor Shah contributed reporting from Kandahar, Afghanistan.
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