Since the 1970s, Afghanistan has been pummeled and torn by wars and insurgencies. Over the course of these decades, numerous political systems and regimes were tested by the victors, installed but soon to be discarded or to simply vanish. No regime was able to effectively exert control over the entire country. Crumbling from within, power for most of these political or military regimes was limited to Kabul and some provincial capitals.
In the 1980s, in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Afghans rose up in armed resistance against the Soviet army and the Afghan communist proxy regime in Kabul. In the 1990s, the last communist regime collapsed after a UN peace settlement failed to transfer power to the CIA-supported Afghan Mujahideen. In line with Afghanistan’s tradition of tumultuous and violent transfers of power, the Mujahideen leaders failed to agree on a power-sharing arrangement and civil war soon broke out.
During the civil war, no one Mujahideen faction could fully bring Kabul under its control. Instead, the leaders and their sub-commanders started to establish their own fiefdoms in different regions of Afghanistan – battling one another over regional, partisan, religious and ethnic differences. Each fiefdom was created based on the leader’s ethnic identity and the location of his “
solidarity group.” Like the ancient city-states, the local commanders of a certain Mujahideen leader would maintain security in the fiefdom, provide protection to its people, and manage its economic activity and justice system.
In each fiefdom, whether it was Hilmand province in the south or Badakhshan in the northeast, the commanders maintained their armed factions and financed their military operations against their regional rivals through the cultivation, processing and trafficking of narcotics – replacing the CIA-supplied bags of cash of the 1980s “holy war” against the Soviet army. During this period of mayhem, the drug industry flourished and these warlords turned into drug-mafia, linking up to organized crime and transnational criminals beyond Afghanistan’s borders in Central Asia, Pakistan and Iran. During the Taliban era, the Afghan drug industry became more organized and monopolized, with the proceeds used to finance the operation of the Taliban movement until a ban issued in 2000 by its leader Mullah Omar.
Following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the United States invaded Afghanistan and removed the Taliban from power. As part of the U.S. military strategy, the warlords who had failed to resist the Taliban movement were reassembled. It was the 1980s redux, but this time they were provided with bags full of American dollars and U.S. aerial and military ground support to fight the Taliban. After the fall of Taliban in late 2001, these warlords were
called the “heroes of Jihad and champions of peace.” Following the Bonn Conference, they became ministers, governors, commissioners and senior officers in the Interim Authority and Transitional Administration of Afghanistan. After the first “democratic transition of power” and the establishment of a newly elected government and parliament, the warlords filled key security positions, became members of parliament, and formed political opposition to the government. Over these years, they became rich on the largesse of the U.S. military and other contractors. They created construction and logistics companies that were contracted by the United States government agencies in Afghanistan. At the same time, and starting as early as 2002, they used their official positions in the government to immerse themselves in the cultivation and trafficking of narcotics drugs and other illicit economic activities.
There is no doubt that Afghanistan’s international reputation has been grievously harmed by the gravity of opium poppy cultivation and narcotics trafficking. Illicit drugs and its trafficking in Afghanistan pose a very real threat to the survival of Afghan state, and to regional and international security. The risks are not confined by the borders of Afghanistan. The opium cultivation and trade in Afghanistan directly finances the operations of international terrorism. In the wake of the NATO and U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan and the end of combat mission, if the Afghan government continues to disregard the extent to which its roots lie in the narcotics industry, Afghanistan will ultimately be a failed state, with most of the warlords – many of them incumbent government officials – recreating their 1990s regional narco-fiefdoms.
Villas, Guns, Uniforms and Toyota Land Cruisers
The threat of a drug industry in Afghanistan is palpable and disheartening. Over a 12-year period (2002 to 2014), the country has
reportedly cultivated 1,868,000 hectares of land and produced a total of 69,200 metric tons of opium poppy. In 2013 and 2014, the cultivation and production of opium poppy in Afghanistan reached record levels despite millions of dollars spent by the international community on eradication, alternative livelihoods, and law enforcement programs.
In Afghanistan, many sub-national government officials, particularly law enforcement agents, in key strategic border provinces and border crossing points, are inextricably associated with drug trafficking networks and transnational criminals. Given Afghanistan’s precarious situation, the central government in Kabul does not have the ability to oversee and monitor these rogue elements either in provincial capitals or at border crossing points. Many of these government officials have been able to establish their own networks of protection and patronage at the epicenter of the Afghan government, making them immune from any types of incursions intended to eradicate corruption or bad governance in certain provinces. Consequently, they continue to be involved in drug trafficking. Some of these former or incumbent sub-national government officials are warlords, maintaining their own militia and armed groups in several provinces throughout Afghanistan. Over the past 13 years, the government has systematically failed to disarm their armed groups or to dismantle their drug trafficking networks; indeed, the government, for the most part, has facilitated their growth and strength. While Taliban and other anti-government elements provide protection to the farmers to cultivate poppies in those areas that they control, in many border provinces government officials and their networks have facilitated the trafficking of narcotic drugs from Afghanistan. Many claim that the involvement of senior government officials in the drugs is more serious than the Taliban’s own connection with drug cultivation and production.
Many respondents confirmed that most of the officials who are deeply involved in illicit drugs in key border provinces are attached to the Afghanistan Border Police, Afghanistan Customs Department, and provincial police headquarters. A number of other respondents also confirmed that many officials in the local court system were also involved in narcotic drug trafficking. The indirect interaction among the rogue government elements and their networks at the sub-national level, drug traffickers, warlords, and the Taliban insurgents inside Afghanistan has sustained a cycle of violence, extremism and corruption.
In the main “opium-cultivating provinces” in the southern and western regions of Afghanistan, some of the senior law enforcement agents who are heavily involved in the trafficking of drugs and illicit economic activities have been appointed through patronage-based networks linked with highly ranked Afghan government security officials at the national level. The relationship between these officials at the sub-national level and their patrons at the higher levels is sustained through a lucrative reciprocity. The officers share the substantial amounts of money that they make from drug trafficking and other illicit economic activities with their patrons and the patrons provide job security and protection from other foes inside the government machinery at the center. A senior Afghan police officer, in charge of the operations of specialized counter narcotics units in Afghanistan’s international airports and land border crossing points, confirmed to
The Diplomat that in those provinces where drug cultivation and trafficking is extensive, you have to be part of a patronage network and involved in corruption to be appointed to a mid-level position:
“If you are to be appointed as the border crossing point commander in Spinboldak [a border crossing point in Kandahar province in southern Afghanistan], first you have to be involved in drugs, then you need to have friendly relations with the strongmen of Spinboldak and senior officials of the ministry of interior affairs and last but not least, you need to make sure that senior officials in Kandahar and Kabul get at least 50 percent of the illegal money that you make.”
During the past decade, senior government officials at the sub-national level and drug traffickers have managed to form and strengthen their own networks, stretching back to senior political officials at the center of Afghan state institutions (line ministries of the executive branch, judiciary, and parliament). Some police units and officers that were supported by the international community to fight drug trafficking either lost their jobs or were shifted to less important, administrative positions. One police officer who used to work for a counter narcotics intelligence unit in northeastern Afghanistan believed that drug-lords have the power to sack any government official or police officer involved in counter narcotics:
“In the northeast region of Afghanistan, I served as an officer in the provincial counter narcotics police unit. Based on a tip off from the international mentors my unit arrested an individual who was trafficking 10 kilograms of heroin and 15 kilograms of hashish. The next morning, I received an anonymous call. He told me that my unit had to release the individual and the contraband that we had seized otherwise I would be sacked within a week. Luckily, I was not sacked but within three days, was shifted to another unit in the counter narcotics police HQ. When I asked why I was shifted, they informed me that I was not productive in that province and that I was making trouble.”
