SFRC Chairman Kerry releases report examining U.S. counter-narcotics strategy in Afghanistan

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Report Examines U.S. Counter-Narcotics Strategy In Afghanistan

Afghanistan's Narco War: Breaking the Link between Drug Traffickers and Insurgents

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has issued a report titled, “Afghanistan’s Narco War: Breaking the Link between Drug Traffickers and Insurgents”, examining the new U.S. counter-narcotics strategy in Afghanistan. The Obama Administration has deemphasized opium poppy eradication and is focused for the first time on breaking the link between the narcotics trade and the Taliban. The aim is to deny money to the insurgency, which has been collecting millions of dollars a year in taxes and protection money from opium smugglers. The strategy reflects a new, interagency approach in which the military, intelligence and law enforcement agencies from the participating countries are working together to identify trafficking networks linked to the insurgency.

The report is based on research conducted by Committee staff in Afghanistan, the United Arab Emirates and the United States. Among its highlights:

• Senior military and civilian officials now believe the Taliban cannot be defeated and good government in Afghanistan cannot be established without cutting off the money generated by Afghanistan’s opium industry, which supplies more than 90 percent of the world’s heroin and generates an estimated $3 billion a year in profits.
  
  
• As part of the U.S. military expansion in Afghanistan, the Obama administration has assigned U.S. troops a lead role in trying to stop the flow of illicit drug profits that are bankrolling the Taliban and fueling the corruption that undermines the Afghan government. Simultaneously, the United States has set up an intelligence center to analyze the flow of drug money to the Taliban and corrupt Afghan officials, and a task force combining military, intelligence and law enforcement resources from several countries to pursue drug networks linked to the Taliban in southern Afghanistan awaits formal approval.
  
  
• On the civilian side, the administration is dramatically shifting gears on counter-narcotics by phasing out eradication efforts in favor of promoting alternative crops and agriculture development. For the first time, the United States will have an agriculture strategy for Afghanistan. While this new strategy is still being finalized, it will focus on efforts to increase agricultural productivity, regenerate the agribusiness sector, rehabilitate watersheds and irrigation systems, and build capacity in the Afghan Ministry of Agriculture Irrigation and Livestock.

“Just this weekend, General Stanley McChrystal, the U.S. top military commander in Afghanistan, said in an interview that the Taliban are gaining strength and that the war is at a decisive moment,” said Senator John Kerry (D-MA.), Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. “This report takes a close look at the Administration’s new counter-narcotics strategy and I hope that it will encourage a renewed national debate on the risk and rewards associated with our increasing commitment to the war in Afghanistan.”

We invite you to read the entire report at: http://www.foreign.senate.gov/afghan.pdf.

Tackling Afghanistan’s Opium Problem

Yesterday the New York Times revealed that 50 Afghan drug traffickers with ties to the Taliban were on the U.S. military’s “kill or capture” list. Today the Senate Foreign Relations Committee released http://foreign.senate.gov/afghan.pdf">the report that the Times article was based on, adding further detail.

The 50 traffickers on the 367-strong target list are not subject to “targeted assassinations,” but U.S. and NATO troops do have authorization to kill or capture them if they’re encountered on the battlefield. The ruckus over the addition of drug traffickers to the kill-or-capture list points to the increased importance of the international community’s counternarcotics effort in the renewed effort in Afghanistan.

It’s become conventional wisdom that the Taliban receive large sums of money from the drug trade – the SFRC report cites military and UN estimates of between $70 million and $125 million a year in drug income. But conventional wisdom could be wrong. Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, the United States’ Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, has stated on more than one occasion that the Taliban’s primary source of funds are sympathizers in Persian Gulf states like Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar – not the illicit opium trade.

But this uncertainty over the opium trade’s role in funding the Taliban doesn’t mean the United States should give up on trying to tackle the problem. As the SFRC report shows, the Taliban use protection of the opium trade as a critical component of their establishment of a parallel government in parts of Afghanistan. In exchange for this protection, the Taliban extract taxes from opium farmers, heroin manufacturers, and drug traffickers.

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