Counternarcotics:
Lessons from the U.S. Experience in Afghanistan

Over the course of the reconstruction effort to date, poppy cultivation rose more than 340 percent, from roughly 74,000 hectares in 2002 to an estimated 328,000 hectares in 2017. Potential opium production increased by approximately 164 percent, from 3,400 metric tons to 9,000 metric tons over the same period.

The overall growth of poppy cultivation and opium production was, in part, due to failures in the strategy, design, and implementation of counternarcotics efforts. It was also, a function of problems much larger than counterdrug programs themselves—namely, widespread insecurity, lack of licit economic opportunities, and limited government presence in areas where drug production was concentrated.

As of January 2018, approximately 14.5 percent of districts in Afghanistan were under insurgent control or influence, and 29.2 percent of districts were contested—controlled by neither the Afghan government nor the insurgency. These areas include many of the districts where opium poppy cultivation is most concentrated. Violence disrupted economic activity by preventing access to markets and destroying infrastructure that could otherwise help people pursue livelihoods in the licit economy. Persistent insecurity precluded effective law enforcement and empowered criminal actors, and drug-control efforts in insecure areas often met with significant resistance and failed to deliver lasting results.

Without a stable security environment, lasting reductions in drug-crop cultivation and drug production could not be achieved. Until this condition is met, poppy cultivation and opium production are likely to persist at high levels in Afghanistan.

The State Department produced four counternarcotics strategies between 2005 and 2012 that relied on coordinated efforts by State, DOD, USAID, and DEA. However, State lacked the ability to direct other agencies to provide the inputs called for in the strategies. U.S. counternarcotics strategies also failed to establish consensus on goals or develop the coordinating mechanisms necessary for an effective interagency effort.

The strategies called for a multi-agency, multi-pronged approach, but this was not delivered or implemented on the ground. Strategies also failed to recognize the constraints on achieving counternarcotics goals. They set forth counterdrug objectives that were outside the ability of U.S. counternarcotics institutions to achieve, did not prioritize counterdrug activities that supported wider U.S. strategic goals, and did not fully account for impacts on other reconstruction goals.

U.S. counternarcotics strategies repeatedly advocated a balance of different counterdrug interventions, particularly eradication and alternative development. According to the 2007 U.S. counternarcotics strategy, “Coercive measures, such as eradication, must be combined with both short- and long-term economic incentives in order to alter the risk/reward calculus of rural households to be in favor of licit crop cultivation.”

However, there is limited evidence of a coordinated, balanced implementation effort on the ground. GIS mapping of U.S.-funded development projects shows that many areas that experienced significant, repeated eradication efforts were both highly dependent on poppy as a livelihood and received relatively little development assistance. This frequent failure to collocate eradication and development aid reduced the chances of successful transitions away from poppy dependence and sustainable reductions in poppy cultivation.

The Afghan drug trade was generally treated as a separate concern within the reconstruction effort. Counternarcotics objectives were poorly integrated into the design and implementation of development programs, and were not sufficiently considered within the wider context of U.S. security, development, and governance strategies.

Counternarcotics goals were not integrated into Afghan national development plans or various ministries’ responsibilities. For example, the Ministry of Counter Narcotics was charged with coordinating counterdrug activities, but lacked the political capital, authority, and institutional capacity to effectively undertake a coordinating role. Nevertheless, considerable funding was allocated to MCN, while ministries that implemented programs in areas where poppy was grown, did not receive sufficient support for counternarcotics-related work.

Few U.S. ambassadors or military commanders in Afghanistan viewed counternarcotics as a priority line of effort. Some senior leaders opposed increased engagement on the issue because they viewed certain counterdrug programs as detrimental to their mission. In the absence of a sustained commitment to narcotics issues at senior levels, there was little agreement across the U.S. government on how counternarcotics goals should be pursued, prioritized, or integrated within the reconstruction effort. Lower-ranking officials and sub-agencies, were unable to lead or implement successful, coordinated counterdrug strategies.

The Afghan government, facing numerous critical challenges, did not bring consistent leadership to counternarcotics efforts. According to Mohammed Ehsan Zia, the former Minister for Rural Rehabilitation and Development, one of the main problems contributing to the failure of counternarcotics efforts was “lack of unity of purpose” within the Afghan government.

Even at its highest estimated levels, eradication never reached more than 10 percent of the poppy cultivated in Afghanistan. The emphasis on eradication was based on weak data and misguided assumptions that inflated policymakers’ expectations of what was possible, bolstered arguments for aerial eradication, and detracted from efforts to target eradication in areas with greater livelihood opportunities.

The push for eradication often reflected a single-minded focus on simply reducing cultivation levels in the short term. Eradication efforts failed to mitigate the adverse impact of crop destruction on rural communities, and officials did not fully appreciate the risk of alienating those communities. Ground-based eradication efforts were plagued by corruption, over-reporting, inconsistency in targeting, and unrealistic expectations of the hectarage that could be destroyed. Eradication efforts were often undertaken without assessing whether viable alternative livelihood options existed for affected farmers. Without alternative livelihoods, there was little chance crop destruction would lead to sustained reductions in poppy cultivation.

The INL-led push for aerial eradication was opposed by parts of the U.S. government, but gained new life in 2007 when the Bush administration advocated for aerial spraying. Yet President Karzai and the majority of key actors within the Afghan and British governments remained staunchly opposed. Aggressive U.S. advocacy for aerial eradication contributed to the lack of a unified counterdrug effort. At times, that advocacy drove a wedge in the U.S.-Afghan relationship, damaging cooperation on other fronts.

Alternative development programming was often based on a poor understanding of why poppy was grown and failed to address the multiple economic roles played by poppy in rural Afghanistan. USAID’s alternative development programs overemphasized crop substitution and did not devote sufficient resources to off-farm and non-agricultural income opportunities for rural populations. Furthermore, USAID underestimated the amount of time and investment required to establish crops that could compete with poppy.

U.S. agencies and implementing partners often failed to consider and mitigate the risk that alternative development programs could contribute to increased poppy cultivation and drug production. In some areas, alternative development programs inadvertently enabled more poppy production.

Where improvements in security were combined with the development of legal livelihood options, localized poppy crop reductions were possible. Those reductions, however, were either temporary or offset by increases in other areas. It was not possible to sustain these reductions in light of growing opposition to the government of Afghanistan and the withdrawal of U.S. forces after 2014.

The Afghan National Interdiction Unit, Technical Investigative Unit, and Sensitive Investigative Unit are regarded as some of the most trustworthy, proficient police units in the country. However, these units have not yielded large numbers of high-value target arrests or, according to recent U.S. military estimates, significantly reduced insurgency funding from the drug trade. The work of these units was repeatedly stymied by pervasive political interference and corruption in the police and judicial system as a whole.

Similarly, while the Counter Narcotics Justice Center was considered the least corrupt judicial entity in Afghanistan, political influence sometimes prevented convictions of senior drug traffickers and, if convictions were secured, even aided in their release. Afghan counterdrug units were also, at times, undercut by the conflicting relationships and approaches U.S. agencies took toward certain high-value targets.

For senior U.S. policymakers, levels of poppy cultivation came to not only describe the scale of the drug problem in Afghanistan, but also the progress toward counternarcotics and state-building objectives at the national and provincial level. In early years, estimates on cultivation diverged significantly, complicating policymakers’ task of assessing the problem.

Poppy eradication figures were similarly problematic. Many eradication forces self-reported the hectarage of crops destroyed, and their numbers were found to be grossly exaggerated. This contributed to inflated expectations of the scale of eradication possible. Those inflated expectations, in turn, led some policymakers to view eradication as a potential panacea and to pursue eradication efforts, despite serious obstacles to their effectiveness.

There was also little consistency and in-depth reporting on the estimates of drug trade revenues flowing to the Taliban and other insurgent groups. The ongoing U.S. and Afghan air interdiction campaign against opium-processing facilities is underpinned by the assumption that strikes against drug labs will prevent revenue from going to the Taliban—and those revenue losses will put added pressure on the Taliban to negotiate. If the calculation of destroyed revenues is markedly overestimated, as we believe it to be, policymakers are dealing with inaccurate information to judge the degree of harm inflicted on Taliban finances.

For U.S. policymakers, poppy cultivation served as the primary proxy indicator of the success or failure of counternarcotics efforts. The pressure to demonstrate progress, as measured by cultivation levels, led to the push for increased eradication and cultivation bans. This overemphasis on cultivation crowded out other indicators that could have given policymakers a more complete, nuanced picture of narcotics-related challenges in Afghanistan. The failure to develop a comprehensive set of indicators meant policymakers lacked accurate data on which interventions worked and which ones failed. This overwhelming focus on cultivation as a performance metric did not align well with the U.S. strategic interest in cutting off insurgent groups’ funding from the drug trade.

In a major drug-producing country, illicit drug crops may form a backbone of the economy. This complicates U.S. and host-nation efforts to combat the drug trade without further impoverishing or alienating rural populations. Drug-related corruption may touch many parts of the host-nation government, from local to national levels. This means U.S. security, development, and governance efforts must account for how the drug trade can impact those efforts, as well as how those efforts may impact the drug trade.

Given the pervasive and cross-cutting effects of illicit narcotics, combating the drug trade inherently requires a multi-sector, interagency approach. Counternarcotics activities should occur across several complementary lines of effort, including security sector assistance, development, governance, and rule of law. A cohesive strategy is needed to coordinate and prioritize these activities. This strategy should set out actionable steps that diverse stakeholders—within State, USAID, DOD, Justice, DEA, Treasury, and other agencies—can take to mitigate the negative effects of the drug trade on U.S. interests and ensure U.S. activities do not inadvertently facilitate or worsen narcotics-related threats.

Only the ambassador, as chief of mission, has sufficient authority over all agencies in country to direct those agencies toward shared counternarcotics goals. With visibility and authority over all U.S. policies and programs in a given country, the ambassador is also best placed to determine what level of counterdrug effort is appropriate and what the priorities of that effort should be For the best chance of successful implementation, a strategy requires sustained, high-level ownership—one person holding various agencies to account on coordination and learning from mistakes.

Unity of effort is critical to prevent duplicative or wasteful programs and enable U.S. agencies to coordinate with the host-nation government and other donors. Unless the ambassador and U.S. military commander agree on counternarcotics goals, and coordinate resources to achieve them, their efforts are likely to be disjointed and ineffective.

In Afghanistan, the counterdrug effort was often justified as a means to weaken insurgent groups and strengthen the Afghan government. However, counternarcotics programs were commonly implemented and assessed independent of these strategic goals. This led to programs that were at times out of sync with U.S. objectives or unrealistic given the security situation in the country.

Counternarcotics programs should aim to advance larger U.S. security and governance goals. This integration should help ensure that U.S. agencies maintain their support for counternarcotics programs over many years and thereby avoid disjointed and ineffective implementation. Incorporating a counternarcotics perspective into all development programming would better equip agencies and implementing partners to recognize the potential counternarcotics impacts of their interventions. It would also promote steps to ensure projects do not inadvertently facilitate poppy production.

Policymakers and planners must consider local context when designing counterdrug programs and evaluating their contribution to the overall reconstruction effect. In Afghanistan, policymakers sometimes falsely assumed that a counterdrug intervention—whether eradication, rural development, or interdiction—would have the same effect in different locations, regardless of local conditions. The failure to accurately evaluate the rural Afghan economy often led to overly simplistic crop replacement programs that failed to fill the economic gap left by decreased opium production or yield lasting poppy reductions.

Drug production often thrives in areas of limited state presence. Counternarcotics programs should account for that fact and be designed to bolster state influence rather than deliver short-term, unsustainable reductions in drug production.

U.S. counternarcotics strategies for Afghanistan articulated a balance of different counterdrug programs, but lacked the monitoring and evaluation mechanisms necessary to ensure that balance was achieved on the ground. Without consistent monitoring of program location policymakers are unable to assess whether complementary interventions are being implemented in the same areas. More broadly, they are unable to assess which programs deliver the best outcomes over time.

The failure to track expenditures by strategic priority made it difficult to assess whether the resource allocations matched strategic priorities. An accurate accounting of expenditures by the strategy component they support provides a valuable tool for both Congress and executive branch agencies to evaluate and adjust funding in subsequent years.

Prior to final approval of project proposals, development programs are typically required to address a number of cross-cutting issues, including human rights, poverty alleviation, gender, and the environment. In a country like Afghanistan, where the economy is highly dependent on the production and trade of illicit drugs and where the population is increasingly affected by problem drug use, this list of cross-cutting issues should include narcotics. Program designers need to consider both the intended and unintended development and counternarcotics outcomes.

Development programs should be designed to help farmers achieve a mix of income sources rather than attempting to replace poppy with another crop. Enduring reductions in drug-crop cultivation are best supported by diversifying farmers’ income sources, including increased high-value horticultural crops, reductions in dependence on staples like wheat, and non-farm income. Effective development programs must also account for all parts of the rural population that depend on drug production, not just landowners. Development assistance programs should be sustained for more than five years to allow perennial crops to reach full production potential and help communities to permanently transition away for drug-crop cultivation.

Eradication efforts must account for variations in the socioeconomic and political realities on the ground. Geospatial analysis shows that poppy crop destruction in Afghanistan failed to deliver lasting reductions in cultivation in areas where viable economic alternatives did not exist. Eradication undermined economic growth and support for the Afghan government when conducted in areas where the Afghan state had limited influence and control.

Practitioners must take a more holistic and long-term approach to assessing the effects of eradication that considers effects on other crops cultivated, economic growth, stability, and governance over the long term. When eradication is conducted in areas firmly controlled by the government and combined with alternative livelihood sources that provide sufficient replacement income, it can be an effective deterrent to drug-crop cultivation.

A push for counterdrug programs that are not widely supported—or are opposed outright—by the host-nation government or coalition partners can undermine the unity of the counternarcotics effort, damage bilateral relationships, and complicate the pursuit of U.S. objectives on other fronts. Efforts to convince the host-nation government and others to support a polarizing program can occupy time and resources that are better directed toward broadly supported initiatives, such as bolstering interdiction and anticorruption efforts.

When a host-nation government is likely to be influenced by powerful political and economic elites who are themselves invested in the drug trade, U.S. officials should use available tools and leverage to try to persuade the government to support the law enforcement effort.

The National Interdiction Unit, Sensitive Investigative Unit, and Special Mission Wing are examples of the highly capable counterdrug law enforcement units that can be stood up in places like Afghanistan. However, these units were built at significant cost to the U.S. and cannot be fully effective without more mature, non-corrupt judicial and law enforcement institutions in place. If progress in these larger institutions is not commensurate, and if counterdrug units do not have the political support and legal independence to conduct investigations, then these units have a limited ability to achieve counternarcotics goals. If a host nation is unable or unwilling to provide the necessary legal infrastructure and political support, or commit to extradite high-value targets, the United States should not make significant investments in specialized units.

Counternarcotics institutions in host nations are ill-equipped to lead a successful counterdrug effort without support from senior political leaders and agencies that control the resources necessary for that effort. Counterdrug efforts in Afghanistan were marked by the creation of institutions that often lacked the ability to achieve counternarcotics goals.

A coordinating agency that lacks the budgetary resources, implementing capacity, and political influence to direct the efforts of more powerful line ministries has limited effectiveness. U.S. counternarcotics assistance should be directed toward creating partner institutions capable of achieving positive counterdrug outcomes and strengthening the institutions that control the resources necessary for those outcomes.

The new, revised U.S. counternarcotics strategy should focus on: (1) disrupting insurgent and terrorist groups’ financing from the drug trade, informed by a robust understanding of how these networks operate at local levels; (2) advancing the development of viable alternative livelihoods in rural areas, to include steps to ensure development assistance programs do not inadvertently contribute to drug production; and (3) combating drug-related corruption within the Afghan government. All the above measures fit within and advance larger U.S. security, development, and governance goals.

Given the current security situation, entrenched nature of the drug trade, and limited mobility of U.S. and international actors in Afghanistan, it is not realistic to expect U.S. efforts to substantially reduce poppy cultivation., An overemphasis on cultivation levels skews policymakers’ attention toward measures, like eradication, that do little to address the underlying causes of cultivation and drug production and may even undermine broader U.S. goals. The United States should not establish a near-term goal of reducing overall poppy cultivation.

The funding the drug trade provides to insurgent and terrorist groups has been one of the key justifications for the U.S. counternarcotics effort in Afghanistan, yet there is limited consensus on the extent and nature of these financial flows. U.S. government officials publicly cite estimates of how much money insurgent groups obtain from the drug trade, but these estimates differ, and official statements rarely acknowledge the uncertainty around the figures. A better understanding of insurgent financing from the Afghan drug trade is critical to designing effective, sustainable efforts to cut off that financing.

This assessment should provide a consensus estimate that informs and supports ongoing U.S. military and civilian efforts to cut off insurgent financing from the drug trade. With this assessment, policymakers and implementers would be better equipped to judge whether interdiction efforts, such as air strikes on drug labs, are likely to impose significant costs on insurgent groups.

The State Department, through the U.S. ambassador, should remain the lead coordinator for U.S. counternarcotics efforts in Afghanistan, but those efforts should also be integrated into military campaign and operational plans. U.S. programs to counter the drug trade can have significant effects on the security environment and stabilization goals.

Until the United States transitions to a more traditional diplomatic and security presence in Afghanistan, Operation Resolute Support and U.S. Forces-Afghanistan will have significant influence over resources and factors that make U.S. counternarcotics efforts possible. Those efforts should be integrated into Resolute Support and USFOR-A plans. Doing so would more effectively ensure that counternarcotics programming is aligned with broader security goals and prevent duplicative or contradictory efforts.

The State Department’s annual International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR) includes a range of indicators on a country like Afghanistan’s drug-crop cultivation, drug production, and counternarcotics efforts. However, the current reporting requirements should be improved to better assess livelihood opportunities for those most dependent on opium poppy. The INCSR should include an assessment of diversification in licit agricultural products, access to off-farm income opportunities, and proximity to roads and markets. These provide a more accurate indication of the potential for longer-term transitions away from drug production than cultivation and production figures do alone.

Inclusion of these additional indicators would enable executive branch agencies and Congress to better evaluate counterdrug program effectiveness and to make more informed funding decisions.

Prior to undertaking eradication in an area, the State Department should consider factors related to alternative livelihoods including access to irrigated land, the extent and availability of high-value horticulture, and access to markets, education, microfinance.

Congress previously restricted the use of funds for eradication programs via aerial spraying of herbicides unless the State Department determined that the president of Afghanistan had requested such programs; this recommendation is modeled on that example. Where eradication is pursued, Congress should require a robust verification process that uses high-resolution imagery and field surveys. Multi-year impact monitoring should assess the overall effect of eradication on levels of poppy cultivation in subsequent growing seasons as well as determine whether eradication is leading to a deterioration in welfare, governance, and security.

In Afghanistan, counterdrug programs were often marked by a lack of unified interagency goals and little shared understanding of how those programs advanced wider U.S. objectives. Oversight was impeded by financial management practices that did not account for U.S. expenditure by year, or link resource expenditure to different elements of the counternarcotics strategy at the time.

Requiring an annual report from the Secretary of State would promote greater strategic coherence, improve interagency coordination in countries that receive significant counterdrug assistance, and provide Congress with improved tools to carry out its oversight responsibilities. The recommended report should encourage the use of counternarcotics assistance appropriated across multiple funding lines toward shared goals and help prevent non-complementary, disjointed programs.

Focusing eradication efforts in areas with improved security and where alternative livelihoods exist is more likely to achieve lasting results. Eradication metrics and development program plans should be more localized to encourage this kind of targeted intervention. Eradicating drug crops in areas where the state has a persistent presence and where there are viable alternatives to illicit incomes should also help to build popular support for the government rather than impoverishing or alienating local populations.

The U.S. ambassador is best placed to lead a cohesive, interagency strategy that coordinates all assistance around common goals and wider security, development, and governance objectives. This strategy should be tailored and resourced according to the priority given to counterdrug efforts within the overall mission and by the host-nation and partner governments. Host-nation agreement and buy-in are critical to ensuring a coordinated and viable counternarcotics effort. The U.S. ambassador should ensure that any proposed strategy aligns with host-nation goals and does not inadvertently hinder efforts to meet these goals.

Investments in agriculture, economic growth, and governance can support efforts to reduce the negative impact of the drug trade, but can also inadvertently make matters worse. To ensure current and future development programs in major drug-producing countries fully factor in how assistance could affect the production of illicit drugs, USAID should adopt counternarcotics mainstreaming guidelines similar to those included in the 2006 World Bank article, “Treating the Opium Problem in World Bank Operations in Afghanistan.” These guidelines provide an analytic framework to assess how development activities may affect the counternarcotics effort and identify any risks that need to be managed to ensure development projects do not inadvertently make matters worse.

In a challenging security environment like Afghanistan, it is extremely difficult to assess data and survey accuracy. Geospatial data derived from high-resolution imagery provide robust insights into program outputs and outcomes, including livelihood diversification, which can be used to more objectively assess the results of both rural development investments and efforts to reduce farmer dependency on opium production. USAID and State currently make very limited use of geospatial imagery as a tool for program coordination or monitoring and evaluation.

GIS imagery analysis can clearly link development program inputs with drug-crop levels in subsequent years to determine which programs contributed to reduced—or increased—cultivation. This kind of monitoring and evaluation should be required for development assistance in drug-producing regions.

All narcotics-related reporting needs to be presented to senior policy makers with the appropriate caveats and warnings about the reliability of the data, similar to the caveats required in intelligence reporting. In Afghanistan, key data sets and reports that have proven methodologically weak or inaccurate, were detrimental to policy decisions and program design. Strengthened analytic and reporting standards would help prevent such problematic data from unduly influencing U.S. counternarcotics policymaking and program design.

USAID has a comparative advantage over other U.S. agencies in managing development programs. INL and U.S. military entities should not try to duplicate the development expertise housed within USAID by administering their own development programs. INL should focus on strengthening the rule of law, reducing demand, and building law enforcement and interdiction capacity. Designating USAID as the primary agency to design and administer development programs in drug-producing countries would also encourage the agency to integrate counternarcotics measures into its wider program of activities.

Even in a contingency environment such as Afghanistan, it is possible to develop well-trained, capable counterdrug units. However, their effectiveness in combating the drug trade is likely to be hampered by a weak judicial system and insufficient support from host-nation political leaders. When supporting such units, U.S. agencies must set realistic goals and timelines that acknowledge the difficult operating environment. Ideally, U.S. support should be maintained over many years to build relationships and institutional capacity. These efforts should be coupled with and integrated into broader U.S. and international efforts to advance reform in the host nation’s law enforcement and judicial systems. Specialized units ultimately depend on larger political, judicial, and security institutions to succeed.

U.S. investments in these units should be proportionate to the host-nation government’s level of commitment to achieving counternarcotics goals. If host-nation political leaders actively work to obstruct the activities of specialized units, U.S. agencies should reconsider the extent to which they support those units.