In Afghanistan, it's hard to peel apart the insurgency from the opium trade. So U.S. Special Forces are trying a different approach in their war on Afghan drugs. Forget burning down the poppy fields. For months, American and Afghan commandos have been pulling off a series of truly massive busts, involving tons of opium.
In late June, Afghan National Army Commandos of the 205th Corps and coalition forces seized 350 pounds of black tar heroin. A few days later, there was an 1,100-pound opium bust. But those pale in comparison to the biggest haul of all: 202,996 pounds of opium, processed morphine, processed heroin, hashish and poppy seeds, seized over four days in the city of Marjeh. It's the largest drug seizure in Afghanistan since 2001.
Perhaps it's only a coincidence many of these hauls took place in Helmand province, in advance one of the largest American offenses of the war.
Before 2004, opium was largely seen by the American military as a domestic issue. But in past years, more and more of the Taliban's funding has come from drug trafficking, turning it from a local issue to an international security problem. Simply torching the poppy fields in a Colombian-style eradication hasn't slowed down the drug flow. Projects to pay farmers to cultivate other crops have been uneven, at best. Go back and re-read one of Sarah Chayes' heartbreaking dispatches from Kandahar in 2006 about the Alternative Livelihoods Program. She described a giant scheme run by for-profit USAID contractor Chemonics:
These days, Special Forces are trying a different tactic, by going for the big busts. U.S. troops are mixing in counterinsurgency approaches in hopes of keeping the farmers, who need the money from the drug harvest, from becoming Taliban supporters as they watch their fields burn. Essentially, the Special Forces have drawn a line between the farmers scratching out a living with Afghanistan's only cash crop and Taliban operatives.
"By the time it has been refined, we're dealing with narco-trafficers," a Special Forces officer said. The soldier asked that his name not be used for security reasons because he is currently deployed.
He added that the soldiers are trying hard to target raids so that they not only disrupt the drug trade, but also hurt the Taliban's military operations. The operation that ended in the Marjeh drug bust started months before. The Special Forces officer said they saw indicators that the Taliban felt safe in the area and leaders were coming in and meeting in the village. Besides the large drug cache, the raid also turned up weapons, bomb making materials and a trove of maps and other intelligence.
"Not only did we disrupt the drug center, but a command and control node or at least a planning center," the Special Forces officer said. He also hopes the busts will disrupt the Taliban's already-stressed supply chain. "It basically lets the water out of the pond that they are swimming in when it comes to logistics and funding."
Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently told the Senate that dismantling the Taliban's narcotics networks is crucial, but that U.S. Forces have had "almost no success" in the last eight years.
Helmand province is the center of opium production and provides almost 90 percent of the world's supply. The Taliban get 70 percent of their money to buy supplies and fund attacks from opium, according to Gretchen Peters, author of Seeds of Terror: How Heroin Is Bankrolling the Taliban and al Qaeda.
"The main problem in Afghanistan is opium and there is plenty more where that came from," said John Pike of GlobalSecurity.org. His solution is simple: buy up the crop. He thinks the U.S. government should outbid the Taliban drug kingpins.
"You price them out of the market," Pike said. "We've been having big drug busts and how much difference has it made? We seem to be disrupting and provoking them into killing each other. We've raised the level of violence, but have we diminished the cash flow? Not that I've been able to detect." Pike compared the drug war in Afghanistan to the Soviet occupation. The U.S. is facing an insurgency funded not by the people, but by an outside power. For the Soviets, it was the CIA. For U.S. forces, it is junkies worldwide.
"That is a pretty tough adversary," he added. "Those junkies are not to be denied. When they want a fix, they are going to get a fix. There is no amount of counterinsurgency that is going to solve this problem."
