The Afghanistan Papers, Part 6: Overwhelmed By Opium

Bottom Line: U.S. efforts to eliminate Afghan opium production through force or persuasion have failed, and if anything have made the situation worse.

In July 2000, Taliban Mullah Mohammad Omar banned Afghan farmers from growing opium. His ban worked.

But "as soon as the U.S. military invaded and toppled the Taliban in 2001, Afghan farmers resumed sowing their poppy seeds." Without the threat of the Taliban, it seemed farmers were unwilling to give up this lucrative crop. This would make it nearly impossible for the United States and its allies to end the opium trade in Afghanistan.

But that didn't stop it from trying. The United States has spent around $9 billion since 2001 to stop Afghanistan from "supplying the world with heroin." But "key players in the anti-narcotics campaign acknowledged that none of the measures have worked and that, in many cases, they have made things worse."

One former Afghan cabinet minister lays the blame with the United States' and NATO countries' inability to settle on a single anti-opium strategy, and their reliance on "a carousel of consultants who were ignorant about Afghanistan."

U.S. and British strategies were indeed problematic. The two countries "bribed farmers to stop cultivating poppies, hired mercenaries to invade poppy fields and drew up plans to spray defoliants from the sky."

The details of these plans are staggering. In 2002, British officials offered Afghan poppy farmers $700 an acre in exchange for their land. Farmers responded by planting as many poppies as they could, offering some to the British and selling the rest on the market. The $30 million plan backfired.

By 2004, American-funded units were ripping up poppy fields by hand. But even that was ineffective, and "U.S., British and U.N. officials exaggerated data to make it appear that they had destroyed far more poppy fields than they really had from 2005 to 2007."

The Obama administration abandoned the Bush-era poppy eradication program and instead attempted to persuade poppy farmers to switch to different crops. U.S. officials paid to irrigate farmland to help grow fruit and crops. Farmers used the new canals to grow poppies. USAID gave farmers millions to grow wheat. Farmers took the money and moved their poppy farms elsewhere.

After nearly two decades of anti-opium efforts, Afghanistan still has the market cornered. Poppy cultivation nearly doubled between 2010 and 2014. In 2018, Afghan farmers grew poppies "on four times as much land as they did in 2002." That same year, Afghanistan produced 82 percent of the world’s opium.

Read the summaries of Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5

Read the full report here.