Through a broken glass, darkly: Drug policy and the war in Afghanistan

By Ross Eventon

Towards the end of 2014, as NATO was preparing to cease formal combat operations in Afghanistan, the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) announced Afghan farmers had cultivated a record 209,000 hectares of opium poppy over the course of the previous year. This level of production had occurred, a Reuters report commented, ’despite years of counter-narcotics efforts that have cost the United States $7.6 billion’.1 The US Department of Defense put the blame squarely on their local allies who, officials said, had not properly implemented the chosen policies. The drug policy community generally considers technical problems to have undermined ‘counternarcotics’ efforts, which are, it is commonly argued, poorly chosen, under-funded, and lacking in appreciation of local context. This conception of an occupying army committed to counter-narcotics but failing in its wellintentioned efforts has little basis in fact. It is sustained by a general tendency within the drug policy community to accept the boundaries of debate handed-down by policy-makers. Not just in Afghanistan but around the globe, investigating vitally important context such as 2 the strategic and economic objectives of the occupying powers has been considered strictly off-limits. Taking these factors into account, and locating ‘counter-narcotics’ operations within the wider war effort, suggests the picture most commonly presented has little relation to what has actually been taking place in Afghanistan over the past 14 years.

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