Will Afghanistan be the next Colombia?

The Washington Post today provides a quick check-in on the other war, the war against Afghanistan's ousted fundamentalist Taliban regime.

Continuing with low-intensity guerrilla attacks against Afghan government and US security forces, the Taliban are a defeated but unsurrendered force. And like the rebel factions that have conducted a four decade long civil war in Colombia, they thrive in remote locales where the drug trade has created a deeply disfigured legal and social economy.

According to New Hampshire's Concord Monitor:

Three and a half years after the United States led an invasion of Afghanistan to oust the Taliban regime, the United Nations and the U.S. government warn that the country is in danger of becoming a narco-state controlled by traffickers. The State Department recently called the Afghan drug trade "an enormous threat to world stability." The United Nations estimates that Afghanistan produces 87 percent of the world's opium.

This Reuters chart provides a basic overview of opium output from Afghanistan, Burma, Laos, and the rest of the world in thousands of tons, and by regime; Kreigsherren (warlord), Taliban, Ubergangsregierung (transitional government):

The drop off in 2001 is the result of a 2000 Taliban clampdown on opium production. 2005 is expected to be a weak year in part because of eradication efforts, but more significantly because 2004 was such a strong production year that global prices fell. The US is likely to claim victory if output falls in 2005 (you'll notice that the chart is in German. This is because there appears to be a lack of English-language reporting after 2002), but 2006 is the real benchmark year by which to gauge the Karzai government's success at eradication.

Colombia's various governments have tried for years to reach a lasting peace in the nasty hydraheaded conflict that has at times left as much as 40% of the country under rebel control. Colombia's Congress finally passed an amnesty deal this week that will allow for private paramilitary militias, brutal gangs that have long been tolerated by the Colombian government, to disarm. Putting a maximum prison sentence at 8 years for disarming militia members (10 if they lie to investigators during the demobilization process), the law is widely viewed as exempting drug traffickers and narcoterrorists from extradition to the United States.

But don't feel too badly for the militia leaders. In anticipation of their new lives as peaceful citizens, they've been unloading tons of stored cocaine, and there are signs that Middle Eastern terrorist organizations like Hezbollah have made inroads with drug producers in the region to pick up new trafficking routes. Since the rebel FARC and other regional guerrilla armies aren't in on any peace deals yet, Islamic fundamentalists are moving in on a massive new revenue stream.

How can Afghanistan avoid the bloody fate of Colombia? Does anyone still believe that eradication does anything more than keep the producers on their feet?

This is the great wrench in the gears of Afghan reconstruction, and it's not at all unlike the deformed public policy of oil rich nations like Saudi Arabia. Vast sums of money can be made in the drug trade, and those who profit from it make sure to stifle competing interests that would impact their reserviour land and labor. It's likely only a matter of time before the Taliban militias evolve into 'defenders of the farmers' against Karzai's eradication policies, as FARC has tried to do in Colombia.

A populist agrarian Taliban standing up for rural people against the values of Afghanistan's cities is a potentially potent force in a weak and volatile nation. I don't see how it's possible to win both the drug war in Afghanistan and the war we continue to wage for Afghan democracy. From one of them, we have to cut and run. I suggest letting the poppy growers of Afghanistan live in peace and letting the addicts of Europe, Asia, and North America do as they will anyway.

[Author's note: This story uses media sources instead of government sources for one reason: the media sources provide a consistent picture that is at variance with DEA and White House statistics, when they are even available.]

Posted by shamanic at June 22, 2005 12:26 PM | TrackBack