BACKGROUND: Following the fall of the Taliban regime, Afghanistan’s opium production rapidly rebound, recording the second-largest harvest of 3,422 tons already in 2002. That was still lower than the 4,565 ton bumper crop of 1999, but production kept growing in 2003 to 3,600 tons, according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime. However, production figures are becoming more difficult to assess, mainly due to the security situation in the country. Some sources, including the Iranian Drug Control Headquarters, estimate 2003 production to be much higher, possibly over 4,000 tons. In Taliban days, opium production was focused on two regions of the country: Helmand and Nangarhar. These two areas alone produced up to three quarters of Afghan opium in the late 1990s. The Taliban ban led to the eradication of practically all opium in those territories, whereas production in Northern Alliance-controlled Badakhshan grew by 162% in 2001. Since then, opium production has returned to the southern areas, but the movement of opium northward was not reversed: far from it, it has consolidated. Production in Helmand and Nangarhar has gradually fallen, with Helmand’s share falling by 49% to 19% and Nagarhar’s by 4% to 27% in 2003. By contrast, Badakhshan production continued increasing, by 26% in 2002 and 55% in 2003, constituting 14% of total production. More worrying perhaps is the spread of opium production to new, previously unaffected provinces. Of Afghanistan’s 32 provinces, 18 grew opium in the boom year of 1999; at present 28 provinces – all but four – recorded opium production in 2003, in spite of President Karzai’s opium ban, and in spite of the eradication of over 21,000 ha of opium in 2003 – mainly in Nangarhar and Helmand. The areas with the largest increase in production are mainly inland in the South, and in the Northeast and Northwest. In the South, production is moving into more remote inland areas in Ghor, Uruzgan, and Farah; in the southeast, to Laghman and Kunar provinces. The trend is for production to move into less secure, less accessible areas where resistance to U.S. presence is stronger. This also makes control over the drug trade and efforts to counter it more difficult. Patterns in the northwest are slightly different: significant increases in Northern Alliance-dominated areas, including Kunduz, Balkh, Jawzjan, Badghis, and Sari Pul provinces bordering Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, as well as northeastern areas around Badakhshan. Available data from 2004 compounds this information: in spite of wide awareness of the opium ban, a UNODC survey of Afghan farmers showed that only 4% of farmers were intending to reduce opium production, while 69% planned to increase. A full 29% of farmers reported intentions to double their production levels. Importantly, the Northwestern and Northeastern parts of the country reported some of the highest intentions to increase production. While this survey should be taken with caution, it is entirely consistent with other reports from Afghanistan indicating a large-scale increase of opium production.

IMPLICATIONS: The trends in Afghanistan are worrying for at least two reasons: they point to the strengthening of a drug-terror nexus in Afghanistan, but also to an increasingly clear drug-government nexus, both of which carry large implications. In spite of efforts by the Karzai government and the international community, Afghanistan’s narcotics industry is consolidating. Although over 21,000ha of opium fields were eradicated, this was offset by even greater increases in production. The fact that these increases were largely related to a spreading out of the opium production in the country indicates the hierarchical and organized character of the drug production, implying a conscious attempt to move production to more inaccessible areas, where the insurgency is strong. The overlap of the insurgency and opium production is not coincidental: as in other parts of the world, drug production thrives in insecure, lawless and rebellious areas. Moreover, resistance groups fighting U.S. presence in Afghanistan and the Karzai government are known to finance their struggle partly through drug smuggling. Some, like Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s Hizb-e-Islami, have long-standing involvement in the drug trade in both Afghanistan and Pakistan dating to the early 1990s if not earlier. Others, like the Taliban, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, and Al Qaeda, are increasingly dependent on the drug trade given the reduction of state funds available for terrorist groups as a result of U.S. anti-terrorist financing efforts. While this is a natural conflagration, it also means that the resistance movement will remain hard to defeat, as it will remain able to keep its fighters and their families fed, and acquire weaponry and other equipment. Guerrilla and terrorist movements are not the only players involved in the drug trade: the opium economy of Afghanistan would be unthinkable without the direct involvement of Afghan officials at all levels. The problem is likely the worst at the provincial and local levels where narco-mafias have larger leverage on officialdom and where warlords need drug money to keep their large paramilitary forces, which are the basis of their power. But it obvious that elements of Afghanistan’s central government is heavily involved in the drug trade. The Northern Alliance in particular deserves scrutiny: its home turf in and around Badakhshan is the fastest-growing significant opium producing region in Afghanistan. Interestingly, it is also a region in which practically no eradication was carried out in 2003.

CONSLUSIONS: Afghanistan’s narcotics economy is becoming increasingly unmanageable, and a great opportunity to assert control over the drug trade in the country is about to be missed. U.S. Government hopes that the opium production could rapidly be reduced in a matter of a few years now seem increasingly unlikely to materialize. With the horizontal proliferation of opium production across Afghanistan’s territory and the involvement of both insurgents and government in the production and trade of opium and heroin, the reversal of the narcotization of the country’s politics and economy is becoming increasingly difficult. With upcoming elections, the economic power of the drug business in a nascent democratic process could well promote the political interests of drug lords, as has been the case in much more developed countries, like Colombia. Nor should the international community rejoice too much at the drop in opium prices resulting from the production boom. While $100 per kilogram of opium is much lower than in the past two years, it is also higher than it was at any time before December 2000, and still brings much higher revenues than any other crop.

AUTHORS’ BIO: Niklas Swanström is Executive Director at the Silk Road Studies Program at Uppsala University and a Research Fellow at the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute. Svante Cornell is Deputy Director at CACI, Editor of the CACI Analyst, and Research Director at the Silk Road Studies Program.