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Contributions from
the Column
Monitor
Afghanistan: Drug economy increasingly mafia-like
Vietnam, a UN test case
UNDP focuses on Arab women
BMZ budget 2007
Financial markets: Sitting on a powder keg
Somalia: Experts fear escalation
Female genital multilation: Scarring body and soul
Informal institutions: sometimes good, sometimes bad
01/2007
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[ Afghanistan ]
Drug economy increasingly mafia-like
The fight against Afghanistan’s drug economy has been unsuccessful so far. According to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), areas under opium poppy cultivation grew by 59 % this year, and the amount of raw opium manufactured in Afghanistan increased by 49 % to 6000 tonnes. Making matters worse, the current policy against cultivation and trafficking of opium has intensified corruption, and the drug trade in Afghanistan is increasingly being controlled by a mafia-like organisation, which is led by a small cartel with good political connections. All this results from a report published by the World Bank and UNODC, based on investigations spanning the entire Afghan drug industry from poppy cultivation to money laundering.
According to the report, the main effect the drive to ban and eradicate cultivation has had so far is that production is shifting from place to place. Up to its very top, the drug cartel has become capable of reacting flexibly to political change and evading law enforcement. The Bank and UN Office report that the mafia’s nexus with politics is now inside the Ministry of the Interior, after their previous intersection, the Defence Ministry, was fundamentally reformed in recent years. At the Ministry of Interior, however, nothing similar was done, and the drug barons established themselves there.
Politics, administration and mafia intermesh from the top all the way down to the district level. According to Barnett Rubin of New York University’s Centre on International Cooperation, a virtual market for government jobs has emerged. Before a US Senate Committee last autumn, Rubin said that, for opium-growing districts, chief-of-police positions were sold to the highest bidder, with sums of $ 100,000 being paid for six-month appointments with a monthly salary of only $ 60. UNODC and the World Bank state that the police collect “protection” money from farmers, but also confiscate opium and then sell it on themselves, or are even hired by local drug traders to eliminate competitors.
According to the report, it is the poor farmers who suffer most from counter-narcotics policy. Farmers in remote regions without access to water, infrastructure or markets depend on incomes from poppy cultivation. Unlike better-off competitors, however, they cannot protect themselves. They are helplessly at the mercy of protection rackets and are often driven out of the market.
Governmental pressure ensures that both the cultivation and trade of opium is becoming monopolised by fewer and fewer actors, who have enough money and the political connections to withstand such pressure, the Bank and the UN body report. They assume that only 25 to 30 people at the top are controlling drug trafficking in Afghanistan today.
Both organisations demand that comprehensive and differentiated action be taken against the drug economy. On the one hand, alternatives to poppy cultivation should not be promoted in isolated projects. Rather, they ought to become integrated into overall reconstruction activities (“mainstreaming alternative development”).
On the other hand, the Afghan government and donors should initially focus their anti-drugs campaign on regions where farmers do not depend on poppy cultivation, but can switch to other products. As a principle, the report argues, alternatives should always be in place before repressive measures against poppy production are taken. In this respect, the report is in line with what counter-narcotics experts and development professionals have been demanding for some time (see D+C/E+Z 7/2006, p. 272).
The World Bank and UNODC assume that the fight against Afghanistan’s narcotics industry is a matter of decades, not years. Meanwhile, a joint survey by ABC and BBC, the TV broadcasters, showed that 40 % – up from 26 % last year – of Afghans consider the cultivation of opium poppy acceptable as long as there are no alternatives.
The World Bank and UNODC maintain that the fight against corruption must tackle all government levels, from the ministries down to the police. In view of the depressing trends, donor efforts to set up and strengthen Afghanistan’s police force have recently been lambasted. According to the International Herald Tribune, NATO general James Jones has repeatedly criticised German police-training activities. Germany is the donor country in charge of police issues in Afghanistan. However, US contributions have also had many shortcomings, according to a joint report by the US Departments of State and Defence. The US administration assigned the private-sector company DynCorp International with supporting the police in Afghanistan.
Joanna Nathan, an Afghanistan expert with the International Crisis Group, says: “The training and quality of Afghanistan’s police force has been one of the international community’s greatest failings.” Acting on a suggestion by NATO, the EU Commission sent a fact-finding mission to Hindu Kush in late November, to determine the need for additional assistance for the police and judiciary. Meanwhile, Germany has pledged an additional ¤ 5 million to boost the police force. (ell)
On the Internet:
The report by the World Bank and UNODC:
http://www.unodc.org/pdf/Afgh_drugindustry_Nov06.pdf
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