Abdull Kazi
JF-Expert Member
- Dec 29, 2012
- 322
- 255
Chapter Six
The Modern Narcotics Economy
While it has long been a significant illicit sector in the Afghan economy, the narcotics industry is now the largest industry in Afghanistan. Poppies have become a cash crop that farmers have clung to in order to survive an increasingly harsh economy. Trafficking has become one of the few jobs that brings a reliable income to Afghans. As COVID-19 has plunged the world into a global depression, Afghanistan’s already struggling economy is being pushed towards drug trafficking even further.
The narcotics industry has grown increasingly tied to multiple sectors in the Afghan economy, and the more integrated it becomes, the harder it will be to dismantle it. In order to dismantle it, it is essential to understand how large it has become, what has enabled it to expand to its current level, and what measures have the potential to disrupt this industry.
The total size of the opiate economy in Afghanistan in 2019, including domestic sales, production, and exports, amounted to USD $1.2-2.1 billion, or 7-11% GDP. This outweighs Afghanistan’s total GDP for licit exports in the same year, which was 4.8% GDP.706 The revenue from opiates in 2019 is just slightly below that of 2018, despite the huge drop in farm-gate prices.
This stems from the consistent price of exports from 2018 to 2019, due to the fact that the effect of poppy farm-gate prices take a while to affect the price of opium-based products like heroin or morphine. That price decrease is expected to take effect over the next few years.
The total opium economy of Afghanistan breaks down into three markets: exports, domestic, and imported precursors. The exports make up the majority of the total market, with a gross value estimated between USD $1.1 to 2 billion. A much smaller fraction of revenue is generated from domestic sales, at USD $76 million.
The precursor chemical acetic anhydride (AA) is increasingly imported to Afghanistan, most likely from Pakistan, and generates USD $77 to $144 million in gross revenue. It is significant that AA is valued higher than domestic opiate consumption, which indicates a growing shift in heroin manufacturing in Afghanistan.
Within those markets, there are a number of stakeholders who benefit from the opium economy. First there’s the farmers and labourers who cultivate the opium poppies. Most of those farmers will also pay a tax to insurgent groups like the Taliban. The poppy revenue also has a knock-on effect to the local economy, where the farmers and labourers have money to purchase local goods. Next, there’s the warlords who create an enabling environment for narcotics to be trafficked through. They also tax the farmers and create a de facto regulatory system for opium production.
The third major stakeholders are Drug Trafficking Organisations (DTOs). DTOs have established a complex network of small operations of traffickers connected through kinship and tribal ties to enable a multi-tiered supply chain for inter-provincial to international trafficking.
This network includes local distributors who sell to individual consumers and domestic traffickers who smuggle the opiates to different regions in the country Th
ere’s also wholesale buyers who export the raw product or refine the product into heroin or morphine for export. The wholesalers then export the various opiates using traffickers and smugglers, who bring the opiates to international buyers around the world. Those buyers may also employ traffickers to ship the drugs to multiple destinations throughout the world. There are also of course the drug trafficking organisations that operate around the world who will operate their own domestic and global trafficking and sales.
Along the way, there will be a number of other stakeholders that benefit from the narcotics trade, including transporters (via land, sea, or air), and hawaladars who facilitate payments for the goods. The last major stakeholders are insurgent groups, like the Taliban. They are engaged with every step of the opium supply chain, from taxing poppy farmers and the UNODC (United Nations Office on Drug and Crime), Afghanistan Opium Survey 2019: Socio-Economic Survey Report: Drivers, Causes and Consequences of Opium Poppy Cultivation (Vienna, AT: UNODC Research; Kabul, AF: National Statistics and Information Authority [NSIA], Feb. 2021), entire agricultural revenue in poppy-producing villages, to demanding payment from DTOs for operating in their territory in exchange for providing security personnel to protect the narcotics in transit and provide safe passage of the drug consignment to its destination.
Opium’s Effect on the Agricultural Economy
To understand the opium economy, one needs to analyse the origin of its production: agriculture.
The agricultural sector has always been a vital part of the Afghan economy. Before the Soviet-Afghan War, Afghanistan was a leading exporter of horticultural products, which made up 48% of the country’s total export revenue. This extended to a prominent animal husbandry market, which allowed the country to be a competitive exporter of wool, carpets, and leather products.
Until the late 1970s, Afghanistan was the top raisin exporter in the world, providing 20% of the global supply. The country’s agriculture sector was so robust that it was self-sufficient in the production of meat, milk, and cereal. The Soviet-Afghan War sparked a major decline of this market, creating decades of conflict that brought on land degradation and unstable consumer markets.
Afghanistan’s leading raisin market had shrunk to just 2.3% of global exports in 2009. The total agricultural sector production had been cut in half by 2013.710 While the service sector is now Afghanistan’s largest sector in terms of GDP, the agricultural sector is still the largest employer.
Although it has diminished in the past few decades relative to other industries, agriculture still pays the wages of 40% of the workforce and 61% of households in the country. More than any other industry, agriculture affects the well-being and livelihood of the majority of Afghans. A strong agricultural industry can bring about jobs and food security throughout the country, and a weak agricultural industry invites the growth of the narcotics industry.
Any effort to combat the opium industry in Afghanistan will require a concerted focus on revitalising the licit agricultural sector, and assessing its relationship with poppy farming.711 Several factors impact a farmer’s decision of whether to cultivate opium, and many of these factors are correlated. Generally, the considerations fall under three main categories: economic security, environmental viability, and level of insecurity. If cultivating opium poppies is the most economically viable path for farmers, they are unlikely to be swayed towards any alternative. Conversely, if there are alternatives that offer competitive job prospects, poppy farming is likely to be less attractive due to the inherent risk associated with the crop.
Poppy farmers are subject to crop eradication from authorities which could wipe out their family’s livelihood in one fell swoop. This is not a path that farmers take lightly. Therefore, the predominance of poppy farming in Afghanistan’s agriculture indicates the degree to which the alternatives are not sustainable enough to encourage farmers to give up their poppy farms. Environmental viability is an often-overlooked factor in poppy cultivation.
Poppies can be cultivated in a wide range of environmental conditions and do not require as much water as most other crops. In areas with significant land degradation and poor soil health, farmers may not be able to successfully plant many crops that would offer a sustainable wage other than poppies. Even when another crop may be more profitable, if the farmer is located in an area with poor soil health, they may have no option but to plant poppies.
Lastly, the level of insecurity in a region affects the ability for farmers to find a viable market to sell their products. Increased insecurity due to ethnic conflict, territorial disputes, or insurgent activity can drive away or wall-off potential markets for farmers and herders. This often leads farmers to take up poppy farming, as it is more profitable in insecure areas and it will be easier for farmers to find buyers for their products.
Economic, environmental, and security variables in Afghanistan’s agriculture can help determine a viable path towards destroying the opium economy at its root. One of the main economic factors related to poppy farming is the unemployment level. Among other reasons, this impacts the available workforce in a particular area, which is a key component to poppy farming. While poppy farms require much less land and water relative to most other crops, it is a labour-intensive crop, at least during the harvest season.
The entire harvest process takes about 8 to 12 days, in which the harvesters will lance, or cut open, the poppy capsules and collect the opium gum that is secreted the next day. Given that one capsule can be lanced about 6 times, and poppy fields have on average 29 capsules per square metre, this requires a lot of labourers to complete.
The pay is very competitive as well compared to other labour work in agriculture. Weeding the poppy fields pays on average USD $4/day, which is about the same pay one would get from other farm labour jobs. Lancing pays USD $6/day, a relatively much higher wage than other fam labour jobs.
This attracts a sizable labour force in regions with little opportunity outside the agricultural sector. Further evidence of this are the responses of poppy labourers in the UNODC’s 2019 Afghanistan opium survey. Labourers reported the income they receive from working in the poppy fields will go towards basic needs instead of investments in upward mobility. These labourers are clearly impoverished with little option for a sustainable alternative livelihood, leaving poppy field labour the most viable means of supporting their families.714 In areas with more economic opportunity in a variety of industries, the number of available labourers for poppy farming will be much lower.
The areas with higher employment not only have reduced available labour for poppy farming, but they have reduced interest in it altogether. While poppy farming can be relatively lucrative, it is a precarious industry, subject to government eradication at any moment and wildly volatile returns. Labour work for poppy farming is also infrequent, and most of the work is needed during the harvest season in those 8 to 12 days for one farm.
Most farm labourers work for, on average, 2.4 farms, and a total of 18 days per season. Even with the relatively high wages, this work is only viable for a short period of time before labourers need new sources of income.716 It is important to note that even full-time poppy farmers are generally reliant on secondary forms of income. A 2019 opium survey found that 46% of poppy farmers’ annual income was based on opium sales alone. 18% of the income came from licit crops, 4% remittances, 15% non-agricultural wages, 6% livestock and by-products, and a small percentage from salaried jobs and cannabis sales.
This highlights the lack of available sustainable work opportunities. Poppy farming and related labour is not enough to sustain a livelihood on its own, yet it is the largest sector of employment in the country. The diminishing economic opportunities in rural Afghanistan will continue to draw people towards poppy farms, even as they get increasingly less sustainable. In fact, this is likely to make it more difficult to leave the industry.
Poppy farmers are becoming poorer every year, which will make them even more reliant on it for their livelihood. They are increasingly relying on poppy revenue for daily expenses and less able to invest it towards alternative livelihoods. Farmers reported food, medical expenses, and paying off debt were the three most likely uses for their poppy revenue. This is opposed to investing it in something that would make them less reliant on poppy farming, like property, education, or towards building another business.
Additionally, full-time poppy farmers were more likely to 712 UNODC, Afghanistan Opium Survey 2019, 33. 713 Ibid., 5. 714 Ibid., 36. 715 William A. Byrd, “Ch. 8 Responding to the Challenge of Afghanistan’s Opium Economy: Development Lessons and Policy Implications,” in Innocent Bystanders: Developing Countries and the War on Drugs, ed. Philip Keefer and Norman Loayza (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 2010), 314-315. 716 UNODC, Afghanistan Opium Survey 2019, 33-34. 717 Ibid., 23. 128 rely on poppy revenue for daily expenses than part-time poppy farmers.
Part-time poppy farmers were more likely to use their poppy revenue for educational expenses or other expenses that may enable an alternative livelihood. This shows that poppy farming is the refuge for farmers who are struggling to survive. This disparity, however, has lessened compared to previous years. This would suggest that more part-time poppy farmers are reliant on poppies for survival than before, and that there may be less opportunities for upward mobility to achieve an alternative livelihood.
A major indicator of the pervasive poverty among poppy farmers is the selling pattern of poppies. In 2019, poppy farmers sold the vast majority of their opium immediately after the harvest. Opium can remain fresh for over a year, and farmers could theoretically store their harvest until the farmgate price increases, but they are instead selling it off immediately.
Since poppy farmers don’t have enough financial security to store the poppies for greater gains later, they need to settle for low prices in order to survive and provide for their families. Given how poppy farming is still the most lucrative crop in Afghanistan’s agricultural sector, this shows the dire circumstances of the agricultural economy.
Despite the increasing economic issues within poppy farming, it is still one of the most attractive employment opportunities in Afghanistan. The UNODC’s 2019 Afghanistan opium survey reported that opium harvesting provides the equivalent of 119,000 full-time jobs to local and migrant labourers hired by farmers. A 2014 study showed that the opium economy as a whole directly created 411,000 full-time jobs, while contributing to indirect job creation in the narcotics industry.
Few industries in Afghanistan offer that level of economic opportunity. This is a particularly significant issue in rural regions of the country. 70% of Afghans live in rural areas with few options in the job market besides farming. Meanwhile, Afghanistan’s youth population is growing, and those in rural areas have extremely high levels of unemployment. Currently, over 50% of Afghan youth living in rural areas work in agriculture and livestock, with the majority of them unpaid, working on family farms.
Without enough licit sector jobs in rural communities to sustain the growth in the workforce, the Afghan youth are likely to be enticed towards the opium economy. The overreliance on opium in the Afghan economy has severe consequences for the wider economy. This leads to what is known as the ‘Dutch disease’ effect. This phenomenon is named after an event in 1959 when The Netherlands discovered huge natural gas deposits in the North Sea.
This caused a rapid appreciation of the Dutch currency which led to other markets in the Netherlands becoming uncompetitive and left the country’s economy less resilient due to the consolidation of the country’s economy into one resource.723 In the case of Afghanistan, the natural resource that is destabilising the market is opium.
As opium has quickly risen to the most valuable commodity in Afghanistan, it is encouraging farmers and traders to engage in this market, while abandoning other markets with relatively less revenue. This leads to a less diversified economy, which makes the Afghan economy less resilient to market fluctuations. A diversified economy does not alter much from the shifting value of one particular commodity, but a consolidated economy is extremely vulnerable to commodity price fluctuation. A change in the price of opium, either positive or negative, leads to major volatility in the Afghan economy.Another consequence of an overreliance of opium is that it makes any other agricultural activity unaffordable for farmers and herders.
As the price of opium goes up relative to other crops, the cost to rent farmland goes up, reducing the returns for non-poppy cultivating farmers, and forcing them to take up poppy farming, further exacerbating the market disparity. This affects more than just rural communities. The Dutch disease effect of the opium economy raises real exchange rates and the prices of nontradable goods. This means the cost for producing goods increases relative to the world market, and Afghan manufacturers would need to raise the price of their exports to maintain their returns.
This would make exports less competitive and weaken all Afghan exports, hurting numerous industries, most significantly the manufacturing industry. This will in turn lead to deindustrialisation, as there is less incentive to engage in any sector outside of opium. This further weakens the economy and leads it to be even more reliant on opium in a vicious cycle.724 Efforts to encourage licit agriculture are key to dismantling the opium economy.
The health of Afghanistan’s agricultural sector is more closely correlated with the opium economy than any other industry in the country. The weakening sector led many farmers to turn to poppy cultivation for their livelihood, and alternatively a weakening opium sector is likely to do the opposite. However, attempts to weaken poppy farming directly are unlikely to achieve desired results. Measures such as opium bans or poppy eradication have done little to stem the illicit industry.
In order to entice farmers away from poppy farming, licit agriculture needs to be strengthened and developed to the extent that poppies are no longer the most economically viable crop to cultivate. In general, poppy cultivation has been largely resilient to attempts at opium bans. Due to the varying level of government control in different provinces in Afghanistan and the massive demand for opium, provincial bans have been quickly offset by increases in production in other provinces. A great example of this occurred in 2005.
Provincial authorities in Nangarhar launched a strong offensive against the narcotics industry, reducing production by a remarkable 96% within a year. Yet, this ended up having little effect on the opium production in the country as a whole. Other provinces where the Afghan government had less control, like Kandahar, Balkh, and Farah, massively stepped up their production to account for the shortfall in Nangarhar.
The opium business is well cemented in the fabric of Afghanistan, and drug trafficking organisations operating there are able to quickly adapt to shifting supply, tapping into the vast connections and procurements they are sure to have made throughout the country. Eradication efforts in the past have not resulted in a sustainable reduction in opium production or narcotics activity.
It is important to consider the multitude of variables in a local economy when utilising tools like eradication. A major reduction in cultivation will subsequently increase the value of the available poppy supply, boosting the farm-gate price and enticing people to enter the opium economy. The 2000 poppy ban by the Taliban is a perfect example.
This resulted in a 1000% increase in value of available opium, which is largely believed to have been the intention of the Taliban in the first place, having stockpiled a significant supply of opium prior to the ban. The ripple effects spanned out from there, incentivizing farmers in Ghor province, which was not under control of the Taliban, to massively expand their poppy harvesting.726 One method to eradicate poppies that has thus far failed to achieve reduction in poppy cultivation is compensated eradication. This is an attempt to encourage cooperation by poppy farmers to allow authorities to destroy their poppies in exchange for sufficient compensation.
The UK attempted such a measure in 2002, with Operation Drown, where they offered Afghan farmers USD $1,750/hectare to allow them to destroy their crops. This ironically led to reports of increased poppy production from farmers who quickly ramped up cultivation ahead of the planned eradication to get a bigger payoff.
This type of eradication effort required a significant level of regulation that was difficult to implement, leading some farmers to take advantage of the overwhelmed UK 724 Byrd, “Afghanistan’s Opium Economy,” military by secretly harvesting the opium gum before surrendering their field for eradication. UK troops ended up destroying an already-spent harvest.
There were also issues with many farmers not receiving their promised compensation, plunging them into economic misfortune that was sure to lead them back towards poppy farming.727 Later efforts at eradication faced additional hurdles and failed to lead to sustained reduction in poppy cultivation.
In 2004, the US State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL) paid a multi-million-dollar contract to US defence contractor DynCorp to launch a 1000-person eradication force. This effort was costly, slow, and ineffective. By the end of 2005, only 210 hectares of poppies were destroyed. On top of this, they faced severe opposition by angry farmers who would set up blockades around their plots to stop their harvest from getting destroyed. Most significantly, it was impossible to administer these efforts consistently through the country.
They were unable to access the areas held by the Taliban, so would in effect only punish the farmers living in government-controlled areas. Several more attempts were made over the years, dealing with a slew of issues, from funding, to administration, to political will. Eradication efforts have all but stopped, with only 21 hectares eradicated in 2019.
Governments have realised the benefits to eradication are nil, while the costs are numerous. For farmers to stop planting opium, they need to be able to invest in other agricultural products that will enable them to support their families. Initiatives designed to encourage agricultural development need to be diversified. Many of the current projects have been concentrated on subsidising wheat cultivation as an alternative to farming poppies.
However, this has had the unintended consequence of overproduction of wheat, which has devalued the crop. Areas that have focused on offering wheat as an alternative to poppy farming have paradoxically seen a rise in poppy farming as wheat farming has become less profitable.729 A 2015 UNODC study showed how an Afghan farmer in the same area could make $3,434 annually on a poppy farm compared to $2,946 on a wheat farm.730 This was hardly an incentive to give up poppy cultivation.
Another problem with the predominant focus on wheat production as an alternative livelihood to poppy farming is it does not create as many jobs as other agricultural markets. Incentivizing the cultivation of fruits and nuts, as well as animal husbandry, would create significant industry growth through the numerous sub-products of each, including meat and dairy value chains.
The World Bank’s 2014 Agricultural Sector Review (ASR), Revitalizing Agriculture for Economic Growth, Job Creation and Food Security, reported that shifting crops from wheat to a variety of horticultural crops could increase job creation by 300-400%. This approach is another potential tool to depress the opium economy. The Afghan agricultural economy can be strengthened through investing in the development of agricultural value chain infrastructure. This is an interconnected network of resources associated with a particular crop/livestock and its customer base.
This network includes all investments that expand the markets rooted in local farming and animal husbandry. For instance, pomegranate farming involves much more than the farmer who plants the pomegranate seeds. This value chain involves input suppliers, like the seed provider and fertiliser seller, intermediate service providers, like transporters to transport the harvested pomegranates to other markets, and then on to retailers, wholesalers, and distributors.
Increasing the linkages between sections of this network will allow small markets to expand and create a multitude of jobs along the value chain. A recent study analysing Afghanistan’s agricultural sector from 2013 to 2018 found that the creation of 10 jobs SIGAR (Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction), Counternarcotics: Lessons from the U.S. Experience in Afghanistan (Arlington, VA: SIGAR, Jun. 2018), in the fruit processing sector created an additional eight jobs downstream along the network.
While this is a positive indicator for job growth, the return on investment could be much higher if the value chain was developed to include a larger network. Value chain development could include infrastructure projects like developing roads that grant small farmers access to larger markets, providing sustainable energy sources for small farms and ranches, providing transportation to get farmers’ products to a wider marketplace, and investing in information technology to allow smallholder farmers to reach more consumers. Such investments would grow agribusinesses and businesses along the supply chain, such as wool distributors, dairy product producers, and vegetable wholesale
Environmental Impacts on the Opium Economy
A major reason for the decline of the agricultural industry is the degradation of the country’s soil health and biodiversity. It was mentioned in the first chapter how the Helmand and Arghandab Valley Authority (HAVA) project in the 1950s had the perverse effect of degrading the soil in Afghanistan and making large swathes of land inhospitable to most vegetation, leaving the resilient poppy crop as the only option for many farmers.
Today, a majority of Afghanistan is classified as having “degraded soil” and 80% of all land is at risk of soil erosion, which would make the land completely infertile. The degradation today is due largely to deforestation and overgrazing, which has directly caused desertification of the land. 75% of Afghanistan’s northern, western, and southern regions are rapidly turning into desert, which poses an imminent threat to over 80% of Afghans who depend on livestock grazing for their livelihood.
This threat will only get worse in the coming years, as climate change continues to reduce the amount of rainfall every year, leaving more land inhospitable to vegetation and livestock. The importance of soil health to the stability and economy of Afghanistan cannot be overstated. Not only does it impact farmers’ ability to produce needed crops and raise livestock, but the decrease in arable land has a ripple effect stretching throughout the economy.
Livestock-related industries from sub-products, like wool, carpets, rugs, and clothing industries, are impacted by the diminishing pastures that limit the potential size of the herd. Shrinking pastures lead to overgrazing, which can further degrade the land in a vicious cycle that will continually reduce available resources. Adding to this cycle, as pastureland is reduced, herders have had to cultivate wheat straw on rangelands, which has left the soil degraded. As the land continues to degrade, trees are cut down to make room for cultivation and grazing.
This leads to an unsustainable use of diminishing forests for fuelwood. The resulting deforestation in the past few decades has been staggering. From 2000-2005, Afghanistan’s forests declined at a rate of 3% per year.737 The United Nations Environmental Programme reported in 2013 that Afghanistan lost half of its forests in the last 30 years.
This overall reduction in vegetation cover increases the rate of soil-moisture evaporation, which in turn means less water infiltration in the soil, increasing runoff and erosion, which further reduces arable land. In addition to the endless cycle of arable land destruction, this has a knock-on effect of bringing about conflict among farmers and herders fighting over the limited resources, further destabilising the country.
The region particularly at risk of rapid soil degradation is eastern Afghanistan. While the region has the highest level of irrigation in the country, a multitude of environmental and social factors are Nick Cullather, The provinces that have been significantly affected through recent loss of available arable land are Khost, Laghman, and Nuristan provinces.
The rising temperature from climate change is projected to affect eastern Afghanistan disproportionately from the rest of the country, which will increase desertification. This region also commonly experiences various natural disasters, like landslides, erosion, and drought. This will impact the ability to raise livestock and hurt agricultural production. This coincides with an increase in conflict from the Taliban and Islamic State – Khorasan Province (IS-KP) in eastern Afghanistan.
The Taliban has engulfed Waigal, one of the main districts in Nuristan Province, and government forces have had to fend off Taliban incursion on a daily basis. This has no doubt disrupted farmers and herders from productive use of the degrading land. IS-KP has also stepped up their efforts in multiple eastern provinces, directed at both government forces and the Taliban, to grow their territory.
This has included suicide bombings targeting civilians and insurgent attacks against the Afghan military and the Taliban. This, of course, destabilises the entire region, leaving the agricultural sector precarious, either by the shifting territorial control, or by a shrinking consumer market to purchase goods from farmers and herders.
There are numerous examples showing how environmental factors affecting agricultural productivity have led to the growth of poppy farming. A 2006-2007 study on the major opium-producing areas in Balkh Province reported that a reduction in water availability increased poppy cultivation in the region.
This reduction of water availability was caused by a sudden influx in population growth due to the return of previously displaced people which put a strain on the already limited water resources. These resources had already been limited because of the degradation of local irrigation systems. These factors culminated in increasing desertification of the region from less access to water, which made the land inhospitable to most crops, except of course the resilient poppies. Environmental factors have influenced both farmers and herders towards poppy cultivation.
In the late 1990s, Ghor Province experienced a period of severe drought which led to a wide scale loss of livestock. With their herd dying out, ranchers and traders had little choice but to start planting poppies to survive.743 Afghanistan has the potential to reverse the increasing degradation of its soil health.
The country is home to five major river basins with an overall surface water availability of 2,775 cubic metres per capita per year. The issue is not the amount of available water, but the uneven distribution of water accessibility throughout the country. The Northern River Basin, for instance, makes up 20% of total irrigated land in Afghanistan.
However, it only has access to 3% of the country’s total available water resources through its hydrological borders. This was the problem that the HAVA project aimed to rectify, but failed in its poor implementation and infrastructure. Authorities need to invest in equitable expansion of irrigation systems that ensure the regions that have been hardest hit by land degradation and desertification have access to a water source.
There is substantial evidence that an increase in irrigated areas is correlated with higher levels of productivity, employment, and income. The World Bank’s 2014 ASR estimated that irrigating arable land would lead to 33-60% more jobs per hectare than rain-fed farming.746 The increase in income and expanded labour market will no doubt hurt the opium market and deter farmers from planting poppies.
The Vicious Cycle of Insecurity and Agricultural Decline
Insecurity is the third main factor affecting the agricultural sector. Afghanistan’s agricultural sector has continually declined since the Soviet-Afghan War, evidencing a clear negative correlation between the agricultural sector and insecurity.
When an area becomes precarious, through internal conflict, insurgency, shifting territorial control, etc., the agricultural producers are likely to lose their customer base. This is due to a variety of factors, such as being cut off from government-controlled towns, which would have typically consumed those products, or due to residents fleeing the conflict, reducing available consumers.
Insecurity also brings poverty in general due to a loss of jobs because of the factors just mentioned, and there will be less ability for residents to pay for agricultural goods. Furthermore, Insecure regions are more difficult to transport agricultural produce from, as there is high risk of theft or attack along the route, as well as the potential to be walled-off from villages controlled by the opposing forces of the region the farmer inhabits.
While insecurity hurts other agricultural products, it seems to have the inverse effect on poppy farming. Where the government has less control, the narcotics industry thrives, becoming a preeminent employer for those with few alternative prospects. Poppy farmers in precarious areas believe they are less likely to have their crops eradicated by law enforcement, while the narcotics traffickers, who purchase the poppies from the farmers, are more able to operate openly, without concern of arrest.
This is supported by the UNODC’s 2019 Afghanistan opium survey, where 47% of villages without poppies believed they would be very likely or likely to face legal consequences for cultivation, compared to only 32% of poppy-producing villages. This perception outweighs the reality, as mentioned earlier, poppy eradication has reduced in recent years due to the cost and the limited success of actions.
Still, the perception is an indicator of how insecurity impacts farmers’ decision to cultivate poppies or not, and the impact that a level of government control has on that decision as well. High insecurity reduces farmers’ options to poppy farming, which will be a high-demand product in those regions, as militant groups use the crop to produce heroin and fund their activities. This relationship between insecurity and poppy farming was evidenced in southern Helmand Province in 2005. Right when the Taliban insurgency was gaining ground and destabilising the region, there was a massive growth in poppy farming.
Today, poppy cultivation is unsurprisingly much more common in villages that are under nonstate actor control. In the UNODC’s 2019 Afghanistan opium survey, 83% of poppy-producing villages reported being under the control of the Taliban or other non-state actors. Conversely, villages that do not produce poppies are unlikely to be controlled by non-state actors, with only 44% of these villages under non-state actor control.
This gives credence to the vicious cycle of poppy farming and insecurity. The insecurity caused by non-state actors controlling a region encourages poppy production by driving out alternative industries as well as encouraging DTO activity, which funds militant and terrorist groups. On the other end, poppy farming attracts militant groups who seek to control the plants for revenue, which leads to insecurity.
This association between insecurity and poppy farming is well-established in the data. 36% of poppy-growing villages were reported as either “very insecure” or “insecure”, while only 21% of villages without poppies were reported to have any level of insecurity. Village leaders were also asked to assess changes in security: whether it deteriorated, improved, or had no change. In villages without poppy cultivation, 19% of village leaders reported deteriorating security conditions, compared to 26% in poppy cultivating villages. Conversely, 22% of villages without poppies reported improved security, compared to 15% of villages with poppies.
Not only does this data show that more insecure areas are more likely to cultivate poppies, but it shows how engagement in the poppy industry is an immediate 747 Byrd, “Afghanistan’s Opium Economy,” 316. 748 UNODC, Afghanistan Opium Survey 2019, 45. 749 Byrd, “Afghanistan’s Opium Economy,” 316. 750 UNODC, Afghanistan Opium Survey 2019, 44. 134 response to deteriorating security conditions. Poppies are a cash crop, and unlike most crops, are able to be sold directly at the farm-gate for a quick influx of money.
Farmers in recently precarious villages may see poppy farming as an emergency measure to secure a livelihood for their family in an uncertain situation.
Opium Market Volatility and the Afghan economy
The Dutch disease effect in Afghanistan has created a situation where the entire Afghan economy is at the whim of the opium economy. Because so much of the economy is connected to opium, any variation in the price of opium ripples out through the entire country’s economy. This is especially true in recent years with the rapidly shifting supply of opium. Extreme variations in weather patterns from 2015 to 2018 has created a volatile market for opium poppies in Afghanistan.
The poppy fungus of 2015 diminished the crop by half of the previous year. Then 2016 saw a minor improvement, followed by an extremely favourable harvest season in early 2017 which led to a massive growth in areas under poppy cultivation and total opium production.
The late 2017 drought hit during the usual wet season, which led to major decline in areas under poppy cultivation in 2018. This drought affected nearly 70% of agricultural land in the country, leading many regions to give up on the crop altogether. In Jawzjan Province in northern Afghanistan, the area under cultivation decreased by 90% as a result of the drought.
It could be that those poppy farmers moved to other areas where they would not be as dependent on irrigation, or perhaps they could not afford the risk of another failed harvest, so they found some other means of labour. Whatever the reason, the following year, in 2019, the total area under opium poppy cultivation was 163,000 hectares (402,800 acres), compared to 263,000 the previous year, a 38% decrease. This is the lowest area of poppy farming since 2013. The number of provinces eliminating poppy cultivation had also increased.
While there were 10 provinces without any cultivation in 2018, three more provinces have been added to the list, totaling 13 provinces. There was also a reduction in part-time poppy cultivation. Many farmers in Afghanistan have cultivated poppies once every couple of years in tandem with harvesting other crops more regularly. This type of farming has reduced significantly, now only making up about 25% of poppy farming, with the other 75% harvesting poppies as their main income.
This means that poppy farming is becoming less prevalent as a secondary income and is more concentrated among full-time poppy farmers.753 Despite the reduction in areas under poppy cultivation, opium production has been steady since 2018. The 2019 harvest had unusually optimal weather conditions, with an abundance of rain during the wet season and an absence of any plant diseases, which made up for the loss of 80,000 hectares of poppies, resulting in a yield of 6,400 metric tons of opium, the same amount produced the previous year.754 A record-breaking high yield of poppies at 9,000 metric tons in 2017 created a surplus of opium that has significantly diminished the farm-gate price of opium to this day.
Even with the 2017-2018 drought and the subsequent reduction in production, opium’s yearlong shelf-life coupled with the recovery of the harvest the following year kept the supply of opium fairly high. Because of this consistent surplus, the farm-gate price of opium has been on a downward trend since 2017.
Opium Production in Afghanistan Remained the Same in 2019” Afghanistan Analysts Network, Jun. 25, 2020, https://www.afghanistan-analysts.or...ion-in-afghanistan-remained-the-same-in-2019/. 135 2019, the farm-gate price for opium in Afghanistan dropped to USD $63/kg, 33% less than its price the previous year. This is the lowest price for the crop in decades.
This has major repercussions for farmers who relied on poppy sales for survival in an already struggling agricultural sector, which can have a ripple effect for the communities in the poppy producing regions as well as every sector connected to opium sales
C OVID-19 and the resurgence of the Opium Economy
Although the numbers are not known yet, it is expected that poppy farming increased significantly in 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic hit Afghanistan in March 2020, right at the start of the poppy harvest season. The cost for essential goods rose dramatically, leaving the most impoverished less able to provide for their basic needs.
From just March to November 2020, the average price for flour increased by 11%, wheat increased by 18%, rice rose by 15%, and the price for cooking oil rose by a drastic 29%. This rapid price increase left many impoverished communities unable to sustain their livelihood. As in the rest of the world, it caused massive unemployment and failed businesses, leading many to take up poppy farming as a cash crop for survival.
The wives and children of poppy farmers and labourers are increasingly engaging in farm labour themselves, which has enabled an uninterrupted poppy harvest in 2020 despite the pandemic. According to the Head of Publications and Communications for the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC), “Afghan kids do hard labour, especially during the quarantine when poverty has affected families.
Poor families and those with no adult breadwinners have to send their children to work on farms, which is against conventions and laws that protect children’s rights and is extremely concerning.” With schools shut down and higher financial insecurity in families, children spend their days working the fields, with some getting paid USD 65 cents/day or getting paid in opium to go to their neighbours’ farms to lance poppies and collect opium.
This trend is expected to continue as Afghanistan, like most countries, are facing continued unemployment increases, reduction in welfare assistance and government services, and increased food insecurity. The pandemic followed several years of bad luck for Afghan farmers, considering the drought of 2018 and floods in 2019 which has worsened soil health and reduced crop yield, leading to widespread hunger and malnutrition, as well as growing debt. All of these factors compound to encourage more poppy farming in rural areas of Afghanistan for survival. The devastation of COVID-19 has affected more than just the farming communities of Afghanistan.
According to the World Food Programme, 16 million people across Afghanistan survived on unsustainable livelihood before the pandemic, meaning many of them may lose their means of survival from the pandemic’s fallout. Researchers have already seen the ramifications of the pandemic on poppy farming. Many poppy harvesters in the 2020 season have reported that economic hardship they experienced from COVID-19 was the direct cause for taking up poppy farming.75
The Symbiotic Relationship of Warlords and Opium
Another major stakeholder in the Afghan narcotics economy are warlords. Warlords control numerous areas around Afghanistan based on tribal or ethnic divisions. They are also heavily involved in providing security to narcotics traffickers. This creates a significant threat to maintaining stability in Afghanistan. Warlords by their nature undermine national security.
They either subvert governmental authority or they co-opt it. Warlords exploit areas with weak government author UNODC, Afghanistan Opium Survey 2019, 14. 757 “With Schools Shut, Afghan Children Work The Poppy Fields,” Jul. 14, 2020, discussed on Radio Free Afghanistan, https://gandhara.rferl. org/a/with-schools-shut-afghan-children-work-the-poppy-fields/30726508.html. 758 UNODC, Afghanistan Opium Survey 2019, 6, 50. 136 ity, establishing their own de facto sovereignty and limiting the central government’s ability to secure various regions of the country.
The narcotics industry similarly destabilises the country for reasons identified previously. Therefore, the insecurity brought about by warlords facilitates the narcotics industry, and vice-versa. These factors both lead to the weakening of the state, which further grows the vicious cycle of the growth of the narcotics industry and increased power of warlords.
This relationship was evidenced in the years immediately following the Taliban’s opium ban in 2000. The price for opium shot up and greatly benefitted warlords, who largely operated out of the dominion of the Taliban. They gave narcotics traffickers safe haven to smuggle narcotics through their territory in exchange for a generous payment.
Warlords are often the bridge connecting local government to the narcotics industry. They will seek local government jobs to maintain their illicit activities without oversight. Their drug money will be a valuable resource in ‘greasing palms’ and gaining support for political office. Once elected, they can use their newfound authority to allow narcotics trafficking to be conducted unabated by law enforcement.
The growth in narcotics activity will weaken the state authority even further, limiting the central government’s ability to deter the warlord-turned-politician’s illicit activities.760 There have been a number of examples where the opium industry has embedded itself within local government to become a de facto regulated industry.
In the Garmsir district in Helmand Province, poppy cultivation is taxed by the local government. This industry is so profitable relative to other industries in the district that the government has become reliant on its revenue to fund government functions. Opium profits are regulated through a network of village leaders who tax the farmers and pass the revenue up to provincial and district-level officials. Poppy cultivation is measured by mirabs, who are the local officials responsible for managing the water supply in villages.
They survey the size of each farmer’s poppy output and collect taxes from them accordingly to pass to the local government. Poppy farmers stated they paid about USD $40/acre in 2015, resulting in a total of almost USD $3 million in tax revenue for the district. The Garmsir district governor and police chief were allocated the majority of the profits from the poppy taxes, and the rest was split between local officials and local police.
Even with the exorbitant rate that farmers were charged for their poppies, they still earned more than they would have harvesting cotton or wheat. Garmsir’s regulated poppy industry came to a halt when two members of parliament discovered the arrangement and demanded a cut, according to Afghan officials. When they weren’t included, they reported the illicit operation to the central government.
Kabul officials responded by firing the district governor, police chief, and intelligence director, who were all allegedly involved in the operation. Other districts in Helmand Province have established similar de facto regulatory systems for poppy farming.
Nad Ali and Marja districts require poppy farmers to pay a flat tax based on their poppy output. One elder in Marja district described the situation in his village that made poppy farming too lucrative to pass up. He represented a group of sharecroppers who collectively cultivated 44 acres (17 hectares) of poppies. The 44 acres amounted to USD $62,000, with a tax of $60 per acre, leaving a net profit of USD $59,000. According to the elder, “Most other crops would have earned about $20,000 for 44 acres.” This was in a year where a poppy fungus reduced the harvest output by half.
Even with that, poppy farmers earned vastly more than their counterparts harvesting licit crops. Byrd, “Afghanistan’s Opium Economy,” 318. 760 Ibid., 319. 761 Azam Ahmed, “Tasked with Combating Opium, Afghan Officials Profit From It,” The New
The Lure and Viability of the Drug Trafficking Economy
The most significant stakeholder in the Afghanistan narcotics economy are the drug trafficking organisations (DTOs), and the people who choose to participate in this illicit line of work. Like poppy farmers, there are numerous factors that inform their decision to engage in narcotics trafficking, and understanding them is key to dismantling this industry.
As with farmers, many join DTOs because of a lack of licit economic opportunities. However, it is not only the destitute that find themselves attracted to DTOs. Narcotics trafficking is a potentially highly profitable line of work in Afghanistan, so even people with relatively decent wages and a secure line of work can be attracted to drug trafficking.
Social ties are another main factor for people joining DTOs. Afghan-based DTOs are particularly based around families and tribes, utilising close familial and neighbourly connections to ensure trust.763 By far the most compelling reason for involvement in DTOs is to improve their financial situation. In a UNODC survey of drug traffickers in 2020, 63% said they started trafficking narcotics to earn money. Of course, this may include people who were impoverished and needed a stable income, as well as those who may have some level of financial security, but could earn more through trafficking.
However, many who were surveyed also claimed some level of financial insecurity as their motivation for trafficking. 34% of traffickers said that a lack of licit employment opportunities left them with little choice but to traffic narcotics. 10% specifically stated that poverty motivated them to join a DTO, and 2% stated they had no other option but to traffic narcotics. It is clearly evident that a lack of licit employment opportunities for Afghans leaves many with little choice other than drug trafficking to provide for their families.
Even before the pandemic affected Afghanistan in early 2020, a quarter of the Afghan labour force was unemployed, and 80% of employment was insecure. We have yet to see the full extent to which this pandemic will damage the Afghan economy, forcing an even larger portion of the labour force into the illicit economy to survive.
Those who engage in DTOs because of financial insecurity are likely to continue involvement even after they have improved their finances. The narcotics industry has earned a reputation for providing quick opportunities to gain wealth. When asked by the UNODC why they began trafficking narcotics, one trafficker said, “The profit from drug trafficking is very good. It requires very little investment and is an easy job.”
There are few industries available in Afghanistan with the potential to bring wealth as quickly and easily as drug trafficking. This is an industry that requires no training, no education, and no financial investment. Whereas, other industries in Afghanistan that can bring relative wealth, like the construction, mining, or real estate industries, require some kind of technical training, university degrees, or significant investments that are inaccessible for the majority of the populace.
In contrast, DTOs offer the chance of upward mobility. Someone with no education or wealth can start as a smuggler and rise through the ranks in a DTO to become wealthy.765 Attraction to drug trafficking goes beyond just providing an easy path towards gaining wealth. One trafficker who was asked why he got into the business stated, “I know people who were broke before being involved in drug trafficking and after getting into this business now they are rich, influential and have a lot of support and that is why I wanted to do this business.”
People see the industry as a way to gain power and influence, which may not have been possible for many without the right familial connections or educational background. Drug trafficking provides anyone, regardless of their background, the opportunity to become powerful figures in their communities.
In a society where many have experienced decades of poverty and have been under the dominion UNODC (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime), Afghan Opium Trade Project (AOTP) Update: “Voices of the Quchaqbar” – Understanding Opiate Trafficking in Afghanistan from the Perspective of Drug Traffickers of a rotating gallery of insurgents or political actors, it is likely very appealing to consider the possibility of accruing your own power. DTOs provide the chance for self-determination and gaining respect in one’s community.
This is no doubt a compelling reason for long term engagement in DTOs.766 Drug trafficking is a business that relies on kinship and trust, encouraging people to invite friends, neighbours, and family into the business. The illicit nature of the industry means that trust is essential to any successful DTO. One trafficker explained, “drug trade is a business that you do with friends and people you know and trust. There are people from different tribes and also friends and relatives that I work with.” Traffickers are likely concerned about government informants, or the chance for operatives to skim profits off of the revenue that is meant to be distributed through the organisation.
This is why DTOs in Afghanistan are predominantly made up of family members, friends, people of the same tribe, or some other connection that enables operatives to trust each other. This also means that the reason many enter the industry is they were invited to by a family member or friend. Being invited into an organisation by a trusted peer is likely to diminish any doubts or fears one may have about entering an illicit industry.
They trust that their peers would not lead them down a dangerous path, and believe they are looking out for their best interests. One trafficker explained how he began working for a DTO, recounting, “A friend of mine is a major drug trafficker. I used to work for his real estate agency and as we developed trust, he told me his real business and told me if I am interested, he can teach me how to do the business.”
This illustrates a prime scenario for recruitment into a DTO. The real estate business owner used the business as a front for narcotics trafficking, which, as illustrated previously, is a common money laundering tactic. They made sure they could trust their employee before revealing the true nature of the business. Then, after trust has been built between the employer and employee, the employer invites the employee to join the DTO with the chance to earn much more than would be possible in the real estate business.
The employee now has a trusted friend and boss inviting them to join this industry and show them how to be successful in it. They are unlikely to question the risk, as they already know that their boss was able to be successful in the industry. Through these connections, DTOs are able to organically grow their businesses with operatives who are trusted and trusting of the business.
Opium Trafficking as a Franchise Industry DTOs in Afghanistan are fairly cooperative, and multiple organisations will take part in joint trafficking operations for mutual benefit. DTOs will often share opiates, the precursor chemical AA, and access to heroin-refining labs with different DTOs in exchange for a share of the profit.
Over the decades of trafficking activity, DTO networks have become more integrated with a wider array of organisations, enabling the sharing of resources, trafficking routes, and profits. Competition has become increasingly rare, as DTOs see the mutual benefit of cooperating with the multitude of DTOs in the region to increase their market reach and profits.
Most DTOs in Afghanistan are small organisations of 6-10 people, made up of family members or people from their tribe, who are connected with a larger network of traffickers. Most are not directly involved in cross-border trafficking, and are more likely to smuggle narcotics across provinces to larger DTOs for global export.
These organisations usually have one manager who liaises with other DTOs regarding logistics, security, and finding customers. This includes signing official agreements with other DTOs over the handling of consignments and the shared percentages of profits. 766 Ibid., 11. 767 Ibid. 768 Ibid., 8. 139 As many DTOs are family businesses, it is usually led by the eldest male.
The leader of the DTO is also responsible for settling disputes with other DTOs. DTOs generally hold mutual agreements to be binding, and any perceived breach of an agreement is taken very seriously, with a mediation held between the two organisations.
Impartial third-party mediators are often brought in to settle disputes between two DTOs. Violent confrontation over disagreements between DTOs are the last resort after all mediation attempts have failed, and are exceedingly rare. DTO networks enable individual DTOs to handle varied demand if there is a supply shortage. DTOs generally do not have a system for anticipating demand, and traffic narcotics on an ad-hoc basis.
In the instances when they run out of their reserves, they connect with another DTO in their network to fulfil the request. The ease of access to opiate supply leads many DTOs to not carry substantial reserves, as they can easily meet requests through their network. The larger DTOs are likely to carry a significant portion stockpiled for about 6 months to fulfil demand from smaller DTOs.
Within an interconnected network of DTOs, some organisations work to transit narcotics across borders while others focus on interprovincial trafficking. Many of the smaller DTOs will work to transit narcotics through their province to a larger DTO operating out of a different province that has access to the international market.
Another motivation for interprovincial trafficking is higher demand and price in various provinces. Traffickers monitor price levels in different provinces or different countries and adjust their trafficking destinations accordingly. There is also a degree of variation in the quality of heroin based on which province it is processed in. Badakhshan, for instance, produces some of the highest quality heroin in Afghanistan. Traffickers may bring their raw opium through Badakhshan to be processed there instead of in another province where the refineries are worse and the end-product will be less valued.
This also leads traffickers to buy heroin from Badakhshan over other provinces and then traffic to other provinces for higher returns. Trafficking between provinces has also been used as a measure to evade law enforcement, circumventing areas with higher law enforcement presence. Traffickers will seek to coordinate with insurgent groups like the Taliban to provide security along their route. Given the shifting security environment in some parts of Afghanistan, traffickers will change up their route in real time based on where they can count on receiving protection, or where they are likely to run into Afghan law enforcement.
This is where cooperation between DTOs really benefits trafficking efforts, as different DTOs will share intelligence on law enforcement locations and activity, enabling trafficking operations to adeptly change course to evade capture. Usually, small-scale narcotics traders will purchase the opium from poppy farmers directly. They then sell the opium to mid-level traffickers who smuggle the narcotics between provinces.
Mid-level traffickers hand off the drugs to the senior-level traffickers who handle the international exports. At multiple points in this supply chain, traffickers will take the raw opium to a drug laboratory to refine the opium into heroin, or will sell the raw opium to the lab owners themselves to then sell the refined heroin to larger DTOs for provincial or international smuggling.
Most traffickers do not own a lab themselves. Of the traffickers interviewed by the UNODC in their 2020 survey, 83% were not part of a DTO that owned a lab, and would either buy heroin from labs directly or send their raw opium to labs for a fee to then traffic the newly refined heroin themselves. Heroin labs in Afghanistan vary in size, output, and production quality. These factors depend on location, security, demand, chemist experience, and finances.
The more professional-grade facilities are usually located in rural areas, whereas urban areas with less capacity and more concerns of security harbour smaller operations. While difficult to determine the true output average of heroin.
This was consistent with many provincial estimates, including Badakhshan, Farah, and Nimroz. The provinces with higher estimated output, like Helmand and Kandahar, were said to produce between 61-180 kg/ month of heroin. This is consistent with earlier estimates from 2011 of an average of 100 kg/month in Helmand and Kandahar. Balkh and Herat provinces’ estimates varied considerably, from 1-180 kg, so it is difficult to make an assessment of their likely output.
Heroin labs require a number of different positions to operate. These include chemists, cooks, security, and workers to manage the supply of materials. Labs require at least 10-20 people to operate, with the largest-scale labs using upwards of 80 workers. Chemists play the most pivotal role in producing high-quality heroin or morphine, and DTOs take the most care in finding experienced and knowledgeable chemists. Chemists have some formal education in chemistry and have at least a basic understanding of chemical processes.
Cooks are generally less knowledgeable than chemists, but have some foundational knowledge of the refining process or experience manufacturing opiates. Heroin labs may hire their own security guards or may contract with insurgent groups like the Taliban in exchange for a cut of the narcotics or proceeds from the narcotics.
There are additionally a number of workers tasked with maintaining the necessary materials needed to refine the opium. DTOs recruit chemists within Afghanistan as well as in the surrounding region, like Pakistan, Iran, and Turkey. Most chemists outside of Afghanistan come from Pakistan or Iran, which have a long track record of opium refining. Pakistani chemists are perceived to be the most highly skilled, and are the most sought-after in Afghanistan.
One trafficker remarked, “Pakistanis are more experts, the waste from the production made by a Pakistani is less than a Helmandi cook.” Beyond chemists, DTOs make a number of other considerations around recruitment to their organisations. One is finding Afghans with dual nationality.
These operatives are vital to DTOs ability to establish international networks and smuggle drugs abroad. Afghanistan-based DTOs especially seek to employ operatives with dual nationality in North America or Europe, two of the biggest drug markets. Afghan operatives will often recruit family members who have lived in North America or Europe for several years, since they can trust them and they have an ease of travel to and from a major narcotics market.
The profits from the drug trade in Afghanistan flow to a variety of sectors, depending on the wealth of the organisation or individual involved. For small operations or individual traffickers, revenue most likely goes towards daily living expenses. As stated prior, many engage in trafficking to provide for themselves and their families in an increasingly worsening economy.
This includes purchasing staple foods like wheat and materials like cooking oil. Beyond that, once the impoverished traffickers’ basic needs are met, drug revenue is likely to go towards savings, to have some financial security in an unstable economy, or for familial expenses, like weddings, or a private education for a family member.
Larger operations involved in the narcotics industry have very different investment choices. Larger DTOs are likely to invest their revenue in real estate, both inside and outside Afghanistan. As discussed in Chapter 4, these real estate investments help DTOs to launder their funds to appear licit and avoid being seized by the government. They also create more opportunities to grow revenue beyond the narcotics industry alone, in a sector with relatively much less risk. Additionally, revenue for DTOs will go towards growing the DTO operations, investing in more traffickers, refineries, and opium harvesters. Finally, drug revenue is used to protect the DTO business itself, through zakat or ushr payments towards insurgent groups for “protection”, or to bribe public officials to enable smuggling abroad
Opium Trafficking as a Franchise Industry
DTOs in Afghanistan are fairly cooperative, and multiple organisations will take part in joint trafficking operations for mutual benefit. DTOs will often share opiates, the precursor chemical AA, and access to heroin-refining labs with different DTOs in exchange for a share of the profit.
Over the decades of trafficking activity, DTO networks have become more integrated with a wider array of organisations, enabling the sharing of resources, trafficking routes, and profits. Competition has become increasingly rare, as DTOs see the mutual benefit of cooperating with the multitude of DTOs in the region to increase their market reach and profits.
Most DTOs in Afghanistan are small organisations of 6-10 people, made up of family members or people from their tribe, who are connected with a larger network of traffickers. Most are not directly involved in cross-border trafficking, and are more likely to smuggle narcotics across provinces to larger DTOs for global export.
These organisations usually have one manager who liaises with other DTOs regarding logistics, security, and finding customers. This includes signing official agreements with other DTOs over the handling of consignments and the shared percentages of profits. As many DTOs are family businesses, it is usually led by the eldest male.
The leader of the DTO is also responsible for settling disputes with other DTOs. DTOs generally hold mutual agreements to be binding, and any perceived breach of an agreement is taken very seriously, with a mediation held between the two organisations.
Impartial third-party mediators are often brought in to settle disputes between two DTOs. Violent confrontation over disagreements between DTOs are the last resort after all mediation attempts have failed, and are exceedingly rare. DTO networks enable individual DTOs to handle varied demand if there is a supply shortage.
DTOs generally do not have a system for anticipating demand, and traffic narcotics on an ad-hoc basis. In the instances when they run out of their reserves, they connect with another DTO in their network to fulfil the request. The ease of access to opiate supply leads many DTOs to not carry substantial reserves, as they can easily meet requests through their network.
The larger DTOs are likely to carry a significant portion stockpiled for about 6 months to fulfil demand from smaller DTOs. Within an interconnected network of DTOs, some organisations work to transit narcotics across borders while others focus on interprovincial trafficking. Many of the smaller DTOs will work to transit narcotics through their province to a larger DTO operating out of a different province that has access to the international market.
Another motivation for interprovincial trafficking is higher demand and price in various provinces. Traffickers monitor price levels in different provinces or different countries and adjust their trafficking destinations accordingly. There is also a degree of variation in the quality of heroin based on which province it is processed in. Badakhshan, for instance, produces some of the highest quality heroin in Afghanistan. Traffickers may bring their raw opium through Badakhshan to be processed there instead of in another province where the refineries are worse and the end-product will be less valued.
This also leads traffickers to buy heroin from Badakhshan over other provinces and then traffic to other provinces for higher returns. Trafficking between provinces has also been used as a measure to evade law enforcement, circumventing areas with higher law enforcement presence. Traffickers will seek to coordinate with insurgent groups like the Taliban to provide security along their route. Given the shifting security environment in some parts of Afghanistan, traffickers will change up their route in real time based on where they can count on receiving protection, or where they are likely to run into Afghan law enforcement.
This is where cooperation between DTOs really benefits trafficking efforts, as different DTOs will share intelligence on law enforcement locations and activity, enabling trafficking operations to adeptly change course to evade capture. Usually, small-scale narcotics traders will purchase the opium from poppy farmers directly. They then sell the opium to mid-level traffickers who smuggle the narcotics between provinces.
Mid-level traffickers hand off the drugs to the senior-level traffickers who handle the international exports. At multiple points in this supply chain, traffickers will take the raw opium to a drug laboratory to refine the opium into heroin, or will sell the raw opium to the lab owners themselves to then sell the refined heroin to larger DTOs for provincial or international smuggling.
Most traffickers do not own a lab themselves. Of the traffickers interviewed by the UNODC in their 2020 survey, 83% were not part of a DTO that owned a lab, and would either buy heroin from labs directly or send their raw opium to labs for a fee to then traffic the newly refined heroin themselves.
Heroin labs in Afghanistan vary in size, output, and production quality. These factors depend on location, security, demand, chemist experience, and finances. The more professional-grade facilities are usually located in rural areas, whereas urban areas with less capacity and more concerns of security harbour smaller operations.
While difficult to determine the true output average of heroin survey respondents claimed an average of 1-60 kg/month. This was consistent with many provincial estimates, including Badakhshan, Farah, and Nimroz. The provinces with higher estimated output, like Helmand and Kandahar, were said to produce between 61-180 kg/ month of heroin.
This is consistent with earlier estimates from 2011 of an average of 100 kg/month in Helmand and Kandahar. Balkh and Herat provinces’ estimates varied considerably, from 1-180 kg, so it is difficult to make an assessment of their likely output. Heroin labs require a number of different positions to operate.
These include chemists, cooks, security, and workers to manage the supply of materials. Labs require at least 10-20 people to operate, with the largest-scale labs using upwards of 80 workers. Chemists play the most pivotal role in producing high-quality heroin or morphine, and DTOs take the most care in finding experienced and knowledgeable chemists.
Chemists have some formal education in chemistry and have at least a basic understanding of chemical processes. Cooks are generally less knowledgeable than chemists, but have some foundational knowledge of the refining process or experience manufacturing opiates. Heroin labs may
The Modern Narcotics Economy
While it has long been a significant illicit sector in the Afghan economy, the narcotics industry is now the largest industry in Afghanistan. Poppies have become a cash crop that farmers have clung to in order to survive an increasingly harsh economy. Trafficking has become one of the few jobs that brings a reliable income to Afghans. As COVID-19 has plunged the world into a global depression, Afghanistan’s already struggling economy is being pushed towards drug trafficking even further.
The narcotics industry has grown increasingly tied to multiple sectors in the Afghan economy, and the more integrated it becomes, the harder it will be to dismantle it. In order to dismantle it, it is essential to understand how large it has become, what has enabled it to expand to its current level, and what measures have the potential to disrupt this industry.
The total size of the opiate economy in Afghanistan in 2019, including domestic sales, production, and exports, amounted to USD $1.2-2.1 billion, or 7-11% GDP. This outweighs Afghanistan’s total GDP for licit exports in the same year, which was 4.8% GDP.706 The revenue from opiates in 2019 is just slightly below that of 2018, despite the huge drop in farm-gate prices.
This stems from the consistent price of exports from 2018 to 2019, due to the fact that the effect of poppy farm-gate prices take a while to affect the price of opium-based products like heroin or morphine. That price decrease is expected to take effect over the next few years.
The total opium economy of Afghanistan breaks down into three markets: exports, domestic, and imported precursors. The exports make up the majority of the total market, with a gross value estimated between USD $1.1 to 2 billion. A much smaller fraction of revenue is generated from domestic sales, at USD $76 million.
The precursor chemical acetic anhydride (AA) is increasingly imported to Afghanistan, most likely from Pakistan, and generates USD $77 to $144 million in gross revenue. It is significant that AA is valued higher than domestic opiate consumption, which indicates a growing shift in heroin manufacturing in Afghanistan.
Within those markets, there are a number of stakeholders who benefit from the opium economy. First there’s the farmers and labourers who cultivate the opium poppies. Most of those farmers will also pay a tax to insurgent groups like the Taliban. The poppy revenue also has a knock-on effect to the local economy, where the farmers and labourers have money to purchase local goods. Next, there’s the warlords who create an enabling environment for narcotics to be trafficked through. They also tax the farmers and create a de facto regulatory system for opium production.
The third major stakeholders are Drug Trafficking Organisations (DTOs). DTOs have established a complex network of small operations of traffickers connected through kinship and tribal ties to enable a multi-tiered supply chain for inter-provincial to international trafficking.
This network includes local distributors who sell to individual consumers and domestic traffickers who smuggle the opiates to different regions in the country Th
ere’s also wholesale buyers who export the raw product or refine the product into heroin or morphine for export. The wholesalers then export the various opiates using traffickers and smugglers, who bring the opiates to international buyers around the world. Those buyers may also employ traffickers to ship the drugs to multiple destinations throughout the world. There are also of course the drug trafficking organisations that operate around the world who will operate their own domestic and global trafficking and sales.
Along the way, there will be a number of other stakeholders that benefit from the narcotics trade, including transporters (via land, sea, or air), and hawaladars who facilitate payments for the goods. The last major stakeholders are insurgent groups, like the Taliban. They are engaged with every step of the opium supply chain, from taxing poppy farmers and the UNODC (United Nations Office on Drug and Crime), Afghanistan Opium Survey 2019: Socio-Economic Survey Report: Drivers, Causes and Consequences of Opium Poppy Cultivation (Vienna, AT: UNODC Research; Kabul, AF: National Statistics and Information Authority [NSIA], Feb. 2021), entire agricultural revenue in poppy-producing villages, to demanding payment from DTOs for operating in their territory in exchange for providing security personnel to protect the narcotics in transit and provide safe passage of the drug consignment to its destination.
Opium’s Effect on the Agricultural Economy
To understand the opium economy, one needs to analyse the origin of its production: agriculture.
The agricultural sector has always been a vital part of the Afghan economy. Before the Soviet-Afghan War, Afghanistan was a leading exporter of horticultural products, which made up 48% of the country’s total export revenue. This extended to a prominent animal husbandry market, which allowed the country to be a competitive exporter of wool, carpets, and leather products.
Until the late 1970s, Afghanistan was the top raisin exporter in the world, providing 20% of the global supply. The country’s agriculture sector was so robust that it was self-sufficient in the production of meat, milk, and cereal. The Soviet-Afghan War sparked a major decline of this market, creating decades of conflict that brought on land degradation and unstable consumer markets.
Afghanistan’s leading raisin market had shrunk to just 2.3% of global exports in 2009. The total agricultural sector production had been cut in half by 2013.710 While the service sector is now Afghanistan’s largest sector in terms of GDP, the agricultural sector is still the largest employer.
Although it has diminished in the past few decades relative to other industries, agriculture still pays the wages of 40% of the workforce and 61% of households in the country. More than any other industry, agriculture affects the well-being and livelihood of the majority of Afghans. A strong agricultural industry can bring about jobs and food security throughout the country, and a weak agricultural industry invites the growth of the narcotics industry.
Any effort to combat the opium industry in Afghanistan will require a concerted focus on revitalising the licit agricultural sector, and assessing its relationship with poppy farming.711 Several factors impact a farmer’s decision of whether to cultivate opium, and many of these factors are correlated. Generally, the considerations fall under three main categories: economic security, environmental viability, and level of insecurity. If cultivating opium poppies is the most economically viable path for farmers, they are unlikely to be swayed towards any alternative. Conversely, if there are alternatives that offer competitive job prospects, poppy farming is likely to be less attractive due to the inherent risk associated with the crop.
Poppy farmers are subject to crop eradication from authorities which could wipe out their family’s livelihood in one fell swoop. This is not a path that farmers take lightly. Therefore, the predominance of poppy farming in Afghanistan’s agriculture indicates the degree to which the alternatives are not sustainable enough to encourage farmers to give up their poppy farms. Environmental viability is an often-overlooked factor in poppy cultivation.
Poppies can be cultivated in a wide range of environmental conditions and do not require as much water as most other crops. In areas with significant land degradation and poor soil health, farmers may not be able to successfully plant many crops that would offer a sustainable wage other than poppies. Even when another crop may be more profitable, if the farmer is located in an area with poor soil health, they may have no option but to plant poppies.
Lastly, the level of insecurity in a region affects the ability for farmers to find a viable market to sell their products. Increased insecurity due to ethnic conflict, territorial disputes, or insurgent activity can drive away or wall-off potential markets for farmers and herders. This often leads farmers to take up poppy farming, as it is more profitable in insecure areas and it will be easier for farmers to find buyers for their products.
Economic, environmental, and security variables in Afghanistan’s agriculture can help determine a viable path towards destroying the opium economy at its root. One of the main economic factors related to poppy farming is the unemployment level. Among other reasons, this impacts the available workforce in a particular area, which is a key component to poppy farming. While poppy farms require much less land and water relative to most other crops, it is a labour-intensive crop, at least during the harvest season.
The entire harvest process takes about 8 to 12 days, in which the harvesters will lance, or cut open, the poppy capsules and collect the opium gum that is secreted the next day. Given that one capsule can be lanced about 6 times, and poppy fields have on average 29 capsules per square metre, this requires a lot of labourers to complete.
The pay is very competitive as well compared to other labour work in agriculture. Weeding the poppy fields pays on average USD $4/day, which is about the same pay one would get from other farm labour jobs. Lancing pays USD $6/day, a relatively much higher wage than other fam labour jobs.
This attracts a sizable labour force in regions with little opportunity outside the agricultural sector. Further evidence of this are the responses of poppy labourers in the UNODC’s 2019 Afghanistan opium survey. Labourers reported the income they receive from working in the poppy fields will go towards basic needs instead of investments in upward mobility. These labourers are clearly impoverished with little option for a sustainable alternative livelihood, leaving poppy field labour the most viable means of supporting their families.714 In areas with more economic opportunity in a variety of industries, the number of available labourers for poppy farming will be much lower.
The areas with higher employment not only have reduced available labour for poppy farming, but they have reduced interest in it altogether. While poppy farming can be relatively lucrative, it is a precarious industry, subject to government eradication at any moment and wildly volatile returns. Labour work for poppy farming is also infrequent, and most of the work is needed during the harvest season in those 8 to 12 days for one farm.
Most farm labourers work for, on average, 2.4 farms, and a total of 18 days per season. Even with the relatively high wages, this work is only viable for a short period of time before labourers need new sources of income.716 It is important to note that even full-time poppy farmers are generally reliant on secondary forms of income. A 2019 opium survey found that 46% of poppy farmers’ annual income was based on opium sales alone. 18% of the income came from licit crops, 4% remittances, 15% non-agricultural wages, 6% livestock and by-products, and a small percentage from salaried jobs and cannabis sales.
This highlights the lack of available sustainable work opportunities. Poppy farming and related labour is not enough to sustain a livelihood on its own, yet it is the largest sector of employment in the country. The diminishing economic opportunities in rural Afghanistan will continue to draw people towards poppy farms, even as they get increasingly less sustainable. In fact, this is likely to make it more difficult to leave the industry.
Poppy farmers are becoming poorer every year, which will make them even more reliant on it for their livelihood. They are increasingly relying on poppy revenue for daily expenses and less able to invest it towards alternative livelihoods. Farmers reported food, medical expenses, and paying off debt were the three most likely uses for their poppy revenue. This is opposed to investing it in something that would make them less reliant on poppy farming, like property, education, or towards building another business.
Additionally, full-time poppy farmers were more likely to 712 UNODC, Afghanistan Opium Survey 2019, 33. 713 Ibid., 5. 714 Ibid., 36. 715 William A. Byrd, “Ch. 8 Responding to the Challenge of Afghanistan’s Opium Economy: Development Lessons and Policy Implications,” in Innocent Bystanders: Developing Countries and the War on Drugs, ed. Philip Keefer and Norman Loayza (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 2010), 314-315. 716 UNODC, Afghanistan Opium Survey 2019, 33-34. 717 Ibid., 23. 128 rely on poppy revenue for daily expenses than part-time poppy farmers.
Part-time poppy farmers were more likely to use their poppy revenue for educational expenses or other expenses that may enable an alternative livelihood. This shows that poppy farming is the refuge for farmers who are struggling to survive. This disparity, however, has lessened compared to previous years. This would suggest that more part-time poppy farmers are reliant on poppies for survival than before, and that there may be less opportunities for upward mobility to achieve an alternative livelihood.
A major indicator of the pervasive poverty among poppy farmers is the selling pattern of poppies. In 2019, poppy farmers sold the vast majority of their opium immediately after the harvest. Opium can remain fresh for over a year, and farmers could theoretically store their harvest until the farmgate price increases, but they are instead selling it off immediately.
Since poppy farmers don’t have enough financial security to store the poppies for greater gains later, they need to settle for low prices in order to survive and provide for their families. Given how poppy farming is still the most lucrative crop in Afghanistan’s agricultural sector, this shows the dire circumstances of the agricultural economy.
Despite the increasing economic issues within poppy farming, it is still one of the most attractive employment opportunities in Afghanistan. The UNODC’s 2019 Afghanistan opium survey reported that opium harvesting provides the equivalent of 119,000 full-time jobs to local and migrant labourers hired by farmers. A 2014 study showed that the opium economy as a whole directly created 411,000 full-time jobs, while contributing to indirect job creation in the narcotics industry.
Few industries in Afghanistan offer that level of economic opportunity. This is a particularly significant issue in rural regions of the country. 70% of Afghans live in rural areas with few options in the job market besides farming. Meanwhile, Afghanistan’s youth population is growing, and those in rural areas have extremely high levels of unemployment. Currently, over 50% of Afghan youth living in rural areas work in agriculture and livestock, with the majority of them unpaid, working on family farms.
Without enough licit sector jobs in rural communities to sustain the growth in the workforce, the Afghan youth are likely to be enticed towards the opium economy. The overreliance on opium in the Afghan economy has severe consequences for the wider economy. This leads to what is known as the ‘Dutch disease’ effect. This phenomenon is named after an event in 1959 when The Netherlands discovered huge natural gas deposits in the North Sea.
This caused a rapid appreciation of the Dutch currency which led to other markets in the Netherlands becoming uncompetitive and left the country’s economy less resilient due to the consolidation of the country’s economy into one resource.723 In the case of Afghanistan, the natural resource that is destabilising the market is opium.
As opium has quickly risen to the most valuable commodity in Afghanistan, it is encouraging farmers and traders to engage in this market, while abandoning other markets with relatively less revenue. This leads to a less diversified economy, which makes the Afghan economy less resilient to market fluctuations. A diversified economy does not alter much from the shifting value of one particular commodity, but a consolidated economy is extremely vulnerable to commodity price fluctuation. A change in the price of opium, either positive or negative, leads to major volatility in the Afghan economy.Another consequence of an overreliance of opium is that it makes any other agricultural activity unaffordable for farmers and herders.
As the price of opium goes up relative to other crops, the cost to rent farmland goes up, reducing the returns for non-poppy cultivating farmers, and forcing them to take up poppy farming, further exacerbating the market disparity. This affects more than just rural communities. The Dutch disease effect of the opium economy raises real exchange rates and the prices of nontradable goods. This means the cost for producing goods increases relative to the world market, and Afghan manufacturers would need to raise the price of their exports to maintain their returns.
This would make exports less competitive and weaken all Afghan exports, hurting numerous industries, most significantly the manufacturing industry. This will in turn lead to deindustrialisation, as there is less incentive to engage in any sector outside of opium. This further weakens the economy and leads it to be even more reliant on opium in a vicious cycle.724 Efforts to encourage licit agriculture are key to dismantling the opium economy.
The health of Afghanistan’s agricultural sector is more closely correlated with the opium economy than any other industry in the country. The weakening sector led many farmers to turn to poppy cultivation for their livelihood, and alternatively a weakening opium sector is likely to do the opposite. However, attempts to weaken poppy farming directly are unlikely to achieve desired results. Measures such as opium bans or poppy eradication have done little to stem the illicit industry.
In order to entice farmers away from poppy farming, licit agriculture needs to be strengthened and developed to the extent that poppies are no longer the most economically viable crop to cultivate. In general, poppy cultivation has been largely resilient to attempts at opium bans. Due to the varying level of government control in different provinces in Afghanistan and the massive demand for opium, provincial bans have been quickly offset by increases in production in other provinces. A great example of this occurred in 2005.
Provincial authorities in Nangarhar launched a strong offensive against the narcotics industry, reducing production by a remarkable 96% within a year. Yet, this ended up having little effect on the opium production in the country as a whole. Other provinces where the Afghan government had less control, like Kandahar, Balkh, and Farah, massively stepped up their production to account for the shortfall in Nangarhar.
The opium business is well cemented in the fabric of Afghanistan, and drug trafficking organisations operating there are able to quickly adapt to shifting supply, tapping into the vast connections and procurements they are sure to have made throughout the country. Eradication efforts in the past have not resulted in a sustainable reduction in opium production or narcotics activity.
It is important to consider the multitude of variables in a local economy when utilising tools like eradication. A major reduction in cultivation will subsequently increase the value of the available poppy supply, boosting the farm-gate price and enticing people to enter the opium economy. The 2000 poppy ban by the Taliban is a perfect example.
This resulted in a 1000% increase in value of available opium, which is largely believed to have been the intention of the Taliban in the first place, having stockpiled a significant supply of opium prior to the ban. The ripple effects spanned out from there, incentivizing farmers in Ghor province, which was not under control of the Taliban, to massively expand their poppy harvesting.726 One method to eradicate poppies that has thus far failed to achieve reduction in poppy cultivation is compensated eradication. This is an attempt to encourage cooperation by poppy farmers to allow authorities to destroy their poppies in exchange for sufficient compensation.
The UK attempted such a measure in 2002, with Operation Drown, where they offered Afghan farmers USD $1,750/hectare to allow them to destroy their crops. This ironically led to reports of increased poppy production from farmers who quickly ramped up cultivation ahead of the planned eradication to get a bigger payoff.
This type of eradication effort required a significant level of regulation that was difficult to implement, leading some farmers to take advantage of the overwhelmed UK 724 Byrd, “Afghanistan’s Opium Economy,” military by secretly harvesting the opium gum before surrendering their field for eradication. UK troops ended up destroying an already-spent harvest.
There were also issues with many farmers not receiving their promised compensation, plunging them into economic misfortune that was sure to lead them back towards poppy farming.727 Later efforts at eradication faced additional hurdles and failed to lead to sustained reduction in poppy cultivation.
In 2004, the US State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL) paid a multi-million-dollar contract to US defence contractor DynCorp to launch a 1000-person eradication force. This effort was costly, slow, and ineffective. By the end of 2005, only 210 hectares of poppies were destroyed. On top of this, they faced severe opposition by angry farmers who would set up blockades around their plots to stop their harvest from getting destroyed. Most significantly, it was impossible to administer these efforts consistently through the country.
They were unable to access the areas held by the Taliban, so would in effect only punish the farmers living in government-controlled areas. Several more attempts were made over the years, dealing with a slew of issues, from funding, to administration, to political will. Eradication efforts have all but stopped, with only 21 hectares eradicated in 2019.
Governments have realised the benefits to eradication are nil, while the costs are numerous. For farmers to stop planting opium, they need to be able to invest in other agricultural products that will enable them to support their families. Initiatives designed to encourage agricultural development need to be diversified. Many of the current projects have been concentrated on subsidising wheat cultivation as an alternative to farming poppies.
However, this has had the unintended consequence of overproduction of wheat, which has devalued the crop. Areas that have focused on offering wheat as an alternative to poppy farming have paradoxically seen a rise in poppy farming as wheat farming has become less profitable.729 A 2015 UNODC study showed how an Afghan farmer in the same area could make $3,434 annually on a poppy farm compared to $2,946 on a wheat farm.730 This was hardly an incentive to give up poppy cultivation.
Another problem with the predominant focus on wheat production as an alternative livelihood to poppy farming is it does not create as many jobs as other agricultural markets. Incentivizing the cultivation of fruits and nuts, as well as animal husbandry, would create significant industry growth through the numerous sub-products of each, including meat and dairy value chains.
The World Bank’s 2014 Agricultural Sector Review (ASR), Revitalizing Agriculture for Economic Growth, Job Creation and Food Security, reported that shifting crops from wheat to a variety of horticultural crops could increase job creation by 300-400%. This approach is another potential tool to depress the opium economy. The Afghan agricultural economy can be strengthened through investing in the development of agricultural value chain infrastructure. This is an interconnected network of resources associated with a particular crop/livestock and its customer base.
This network includes all investments that expand the markets rooted in local farming and animal husbandry. For instance, pomegranate farming involves much more than the farmer who plants the pomegranate seeds. This value chain involves input suppliers, like the seed provider and fertiliser seller, intermediate service providers, like transporters to transport the harvested pomegranates to other markets, and then on to retailers, wholesalers, and distributors.
Increasing the linkages between sections of this network will allow small markets to expand and create a multitude of jobs along the value chain. A recent study analysing Afghanistan’s agricultural sector from 2013 to 2018 found that the creation of 10 jobs SIGAR (Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction), Counternarcotics: Lessons from the U.S. Experience in Afghanistan (Arlington, VA: SIGAR, Jun. 2018), in the fruit processing sector created an additional eight jobs downstream along the network.
While this is a positive indicator for job growth, the return on investment could be much higher if the value chain was developed to include a larger network. Value chain development could include infrastructure projects like developing roads that grant small farmers access to larger markets, providing sustainable energy sources for small farms and ranches, providing transportation to get farmers’ products to a wider marketplace, and investing in information technology to allow smallholder farmers to reach more consumers. Such investments would grow agribusinesses and businesses along the supply chain, such as wool distributors, dairy product producers, and vegetable wholesale
Environmental Impacts on the Opium Economy
A major reason for the decline of the agricultural industry is the degradation of the country’s soil health and biodiversity. It was mentioned in the first chapter how the Helmand and Arghandab Valley Authority (HAVA) project in the 1950s had the perverse effect of degrading the soil in Afghanistan and making large swathes of land inhospitable to most vegetation, leaving the resilient poppy crop as the only option for many farmers.
Today, a majority of Afghanistan is classified as having “degraded soil” and 80% of all land is at risk of soil erosion, which would make the land completely infertile. The degradation today is due largely to deforestation and overgrazing, which has directly caused desertification of the land. 75% of Afghanistan’s northern, western, and southern regions are rapidly turning into desert, which poses an imminent threat to over 80% of Afghans who depend on livestock grazing for their livelihood.
This threat will only get worse in the coming years, as climate change continues to reduce the amount of rainfall every year, leaving more land inhospitable to vegetation and livestock. The importance of soil health to the stability and economy of Afghanistan cannot be overstated. Not only does it impact farmers’ ability to produce needed crops and raise livestock, but the decrease in arable land has a ripple effect stretching throughout the economy.
Livestock-related industries from sub-products, like wool, carpets, rugs, and clothing industries, are impacted by the diminishing pastures that limit the potential size of the herd. Shrinking pastures lead to overgrazing, which can further degrade the land in a vicious cycle that will continually reduce available resources. Adding to this cycle, as pastureland is reduced, herders have had to cultivate wheat straw on rangelands, which has left the soil degraded. As the land continues to degrade, trees are cut down to make room for cultivation and grazing.
This leads to an unsustainable use of diminishing forests for fuelwood. The resulting deforestation in the past few decades has been staggering. From 2000-2005, Afghanistan’s forests declined at a rate of 3% per year.737 The United Nations Environmental Programme reported in 2013 that Afghanistan lost half of its forests in the last 30 years.
This overall reduction in vegetation cover increases the rate of soil-moisture evaporation, which in turn means less water infiltration in the soil, increasing runoff and erosion, which further reduces arable land. In addition to the endless cycle of arable land destruction, this has a knock-on effect of bringing about conflict among farmers and herders fighting over the limited resources, further destabilising the country.
The region particularly at risk of rapid soil degradation is eastern Afghanistan. While the region has the highest level of irrigation in the country, a multitude of environmental and social factors are Nick Cullather, The provinces that have been significantly affected through recent loss of available arable land are Khost, Laghman, and Nuristan provinces.
The rising temperature from climate change is projected to affect eastern Afghanistan disproportionately from the rest of the country, which will increase desertification. This region also commonly experiences various natural disasters, like landslides, erosion, and drought. This will impact the ability to raise livestock and hurt agricultural production. This coincides with an increase in conflict from the Taliban and Islamic State – Khorasan Province (IS-KP) in eastern Afghanistan.
The Taliban has engulfed Waigal, one of the main districts in Nuristan Province, and government forces have had to fend off Taliban incursion on a daily basis. This has no doubt disrupted farmers and herders from productive use of the degrading land. IS-KP has also stepped up their efforts in multiple eastern provinces, directed at both government forces and the Taliban, to grow their territory.
This has included suicide bombings targeting civilians and insurgent attacks against the Afghan military and the Taliban. This, of course, destabilises the entire region, leaving the agricultural sector precarious, either by the shifting territorial control, or by a shrinking consumer market to purchase goods from farmers and herders.
There are numerous examples showing how environmental factors affecting agricultural productivity have led to the growth of poppy farming. A 2006-2007 study on the major opium-producing areas in Balkh Province reported that a reduction in water availability increased poppy cultivation in the region.
This reduction of water availability was caused by a sudden influx in population growth due to the return of previously displaced people which put a strain on the already limited water resources. These resources had already been limited because of the degradation of local irrigation systems. These factors culminated in increasing desertification of the region from less access to water, which made the land inhospitable to most crops, except of course the resilient poppies. Environmental factors have influenced both farmers and herders towards poppy cultivation.
In the late 1990s, Ghor Province experienced a period of severe drought which led to a wide scale loss of livestock. With their herd dying out, ranchers and traders had little choice but to start planting poppies to survive.743 Afghanistan has the potential to reverse the increasing degradation of its soil health.
The country is home to five major river basins with an overall surface water availability of 2,775 cubic metres per capita per year. The issue is not the amount of available water, but the uneven distribution of water accessibility throughout the country. The Northern River Basin, for instance, makes up 20% of total irrigated land in Afghanistan.
However, it only has access to 3% of the country’s total available water resources through its hydrological borders. This was the problem that the HAVA project aimed to rectify, but failed in its poor implementation and infrastructure. Authorities need to invest in equitable expansion of irrigation systems that ensure the regions that have been hardest hit by land degradation and desertification have access to a water source.
There is substantial evidence that an increase in irrigated areas is correlated with higher levels of productivity, employment, and income. The World Bank’s 2014 ASR estimated that irrigating arable land would lead to 33-60% more jobs per hectare than rain-fed farming.746 The increase in income and expanded labour market will no doubt hurt the opium market and deter farmers from planting poppies.
The Vicious Cycle of Insecurity and Agricultural Decline
Insecurity is the third main factor affecting the agricultural sector. Afghanistan’s agricultural sector has continually declined since the Soviet-Afghan War, evidencing a clear negative correlation between the agricultural sector and insecurity.
When an area becomes precarious, through internal conflict, insurgency, shifting territorial control, etc., the agricultural producers are likely to lose their customer base. This is due to a variety of factors, such as being cut off from government-controlled towns, which would have typically consumed those products, or due to residents fleeing the conflict, reducing available consumers.
Insecurity also brings poverty in general due to a loss of jobs because of the factors just mentioned, and there will be less ability for residents to pay for agricultural goods. Furthermore, Insecure regions are more difficult to transport agricultural produce from, as there is high risk of theft or attack along the route, as well as the potential to be walled-off from villages controlled by the opposing forces of the region the farmer inhabits.
While insecurity hurts other agricultural products, it seems to have the inverse effect on poppy farming. Where the government has less control, the narcotics industry thrives, becoming a preeminent employer for those with few alternative prospects. Poppy farmers in precarious areas believe they are less likely to have their crops eradicated by law enforcement, while the narcotics traffickers, who purchase the poppies from the farmers, are more able to operate openly, without concern of arrest.
This is supported by the UNODC’s 2019 Afghanistan opium survey, where 47% of villages without poppies believed they would be very likely or likely to face legal consequences for cultivation, compared to only 32% of poppy-producing villages. This perception outweighs the reality, as mentioned earlier, poppy eradication has reduced in recent years due to the cost and the limited success of actions.
Still, the perception is an indicator of how insecurity impacts farmers’ decision to cultivate poppies or not, and the impact that a level of government control has on that decision as well. High insecurity reduces farmers’ options to poppy farming, which will be a high-demand product in those regions, as militant groups use the crop to produce heroin and fund their activities. This relationship between insecurity and poppy farming was evidenced in southern Helmand Province in 2005. Right when the Taliban insurgency was gaining ground and destabilising the region, there was a massive growth in poppy farming.
Today, poppy cultivation is unsurprisingly much more common in villages that are under nonstate actor control. In the UNODC’s 2019 Afghanistan opium survey, 83% of poppy-producing villages reported being under the control of the Taliban or other non-state actors. Conversely, villages that do not produce poppies are unlikely to be controlled by non-state actors, with only 44% of these villages under non-state actor control.
This gives credence to the vicious cycle of poppy farming and insecurity. The insecurity caused by non-state actors controlling a region encourages poppy production by driving out alternative industries as well as encouraging DTO activity, which funds militant and terrorist groups. On the other end, poppy farming attracts militant groups who seek to control the plants for revenue, which leads to insecurity.
This association between insecurity and poppy farming is well-established in the data. 36% of poppy-growing villages were reported as either “very insecure” or “insecure”, while only 21% of villages without poppies were reported to have any level of insecurity. Village leaders were also asked to assess changes in security: whether it deteriorated, improved, or had no change. In villages without poppy cultivation, 19% of village leaders reported deteriorating security conditions, compared to 26% in poppy cultivating villages. Conversely, 22% of villages without poppies reported improved security, compared to 15% of villages with poppies.
Not only does this data show that more insecure areas are more likely to cultivate poppies, but it shows how engagement in the poppy industry is an immediate 747 Byrd, “Afghanistan’s Opium Economy,” 316. 748 UNODC, Afghanistan Opium Survey 2019, 45. 749 Byrd, “Afghanistan’s Opium Economy,” 316. 750 UNODC, Afghanistan Opium Survey 2019, 44. 134 response to deteriorating security conditions. Poppies are a cash crop, and unlike most crops, are able to be sold directly at the farm-gate for a quick influx of money.
Farmers in recently precarious villages may see poppy farming as an emergency measure to secure a livelihood for their family in an uncertain situation.
Opium Market Volatility and the Afghan economy
The Dutch disease effect in Afghanistan has created a situation where the entire Afghan economy is at the whim of the opium economy. Because so much of the economy is connected to opium, any variation in the price of opium ripples out through the entire country’s economy. This is especially true in recent years with the rapidly shifting supply of opium. Extreme variations in weather patterns from 2015 to 2018 has created a volatile market for opium poppies in Afghanistan.
The poppy fungus of 2015 diminished the crop by half of the previous year. Then 2016 saw a minor improvement, followed by an extremely favourable harvest season in early 2017 which led to a massive growth in areas under poppy cultivation and total opium production.
The late 2017 drought hit during the usual wet season, which led to major decline in areas under poppy cultivation in 2018. This drought affected nearly 70% of agricultural land in the country, leading many regions to give up on the crop altogether. In Jawzjan Province in northern Afghanistan, the area under cultivation decreased by 90% as a result of the drought.
It could be that those poppy farmers moved to other areas where they would not be as dependent on irrigation, or perhaps they could not afford the risk of another failed harvest, so they found some other means of labour. Whatever the reason, the following year, in 2019, the total area under opium poppy cultivation was 163,000 hectares (402,800 acres), compared to 263,000 the previous year, a 38% decrease. This is the lowest area of poppy farming since 2013. The number of provinces eliminating poppy cultivation had also increased.
While there were 10 provinces without any cultivation in 2018, three more provinces have been added to the list, totaling 13 provinces. There was also a reduction in part-time poppy cultivation. Many farmers in Afghanistan have cultivated poppies once every couple of years in tandem with harvesting other crops more regularly. This type of farming has reduced significantly, now only making up about 25% of poppy farming, with the other 75% harvesting poppies as their main income.
This means that poppy farming is becoming less prevalent as a secondary income and is more concentrated among full-time poppy farmers.753 Despite the reduction in areas under poppy cultivation, opium production has been steady since 2018. The 2019 harvest had unusually optimal weather conditions, with an abundance of rain during the wet season and an absence of any plant diseases, which made up for the loss of 80,000 hectares of poppies, resulting in a yield of 6,400 metric tons of opium, the same amount produced the previous year.754 A record-breaking high yield of poppies at 9,000 metric tons in 2017 created a surplus of opium that has significantly diminished the farm-gate price of opium to this day.
Even with the 2017-2018 drought and the subsequent reduction in production, opium’s yearlong shelf-life coupled with the recovery of the harvest the following year kept the supply of opium fairly high. Because of this consistent surplus, the farm-gate price of opium has been on a downward trend since 2017.
Opium Production in Afghanistan Remained the Same in 2019” Afghanistan Analysts Network, Jun. 25, 2020, https://www.afghanistan-analysts.or...ion-in-afghanistan-remained-the-same-in-2019/. 135 2019, the farm-gate price for opium in Afghanistan dropped to USD $63/kg, 33% less than its price the previous year. This is the lowest price for the crop in decades.
This has major repercussions for farmers who relied on poppy sales for survival in an already struggling agricultural sector, which can have a ripple effect for the communities in the poppy producing regions as well as every sector connected to opium sales
C OVID-19 and the resurgence of the Opium Economy
Although the numbers are not known yet, it is expected that poppy farming increased significantly in 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic hit Afghanistan in March 2020, right at the start of the poppy harvest season. The cost for essential goods rose dramatically, leaving the most impoverished less able to provide for their basic needs.
From just March to November 2020, the average price for flour increased by 11%, wheat increased by 18%, rice rose by 15%, and the price for cooking oil rose by a drastic 29%. This rapid price increase left many impoverished communities unable to sustain their livelihood. As in the rest of the world, it caused massive unemployment and failed businesses, leading many to take up poppy farming as a cash crop for survival.
The wives and children of poppy farmers and labourers are increasingly engaging in farm labour themselves, which has enabled an uninterrupted poppy harvest in 2020 despite the pandemic. According to the Head of Publications and Communications for the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC), “Afghan kids do hard labour, especially during the quarantine when poverty has affected families.
Poor families and those with no adult breadwinners have to send their children to work on farms, which is against conventions and laws that protect children’s rights and is extremely concerning.” With schools shut down and higher financial insecurity in families, children spend their days working the fields, with some getting paid USD 65 cents/day or getting paid in opium to go to their neighbours’ farms to lance poppies and collect opium.
This trend is expected to continue as Afghanistan, like most countries, are facing continued unemployment increases, reduction in welfare assistance and government services, and increased food insecurity. The pandemic followed several years of bad luck for Afghan farmers, considering the drought of 2018 and floods in 2019 which has worsened soil health and reduced crop yield, leading to widespread hunger and malnutrition, as well as growing debt. All of these factors compound to encourage more poppy farming in rural areas of Afghanistan for survival. The devastation of COVID-19 has affected more than just the farming communities of Afghanistan.
According to the World Food Programme, 16 million people across Afghanistan survived on unsustainable livelihood before the pandemic, meaning many of them may lose their means of survival from the pandemic’s fallout. Researchers have already seen the ramifications of the pandemic on poppy farming. Many poppy harvesters in the 2020 season have reported that economic hardship they experienced from COVID-19 was the direct cause for taking up poppy farming.75
The Symbiotic Relationship of Warlords and Opium
Another major stakeholder in the Afghan narcotics economy are warlords. Warlords control numerous areas around Afghanistan based on tribal or ethnic divisions. They are also heavily involved in providing security to narcotics traffickers. This creates a significant threat to maintaining stability in Afghanistan. Warlords by their nature undermine national security.
They either subvert governmental authority or they co-opt it. Warlords exploit areas with weak government author UNODC, Afghanistan Opium Survey 2019, 14. 757 “With Schools Shut, Afghan Children Work The Poppy Fields,” Jul. 14, 2020, discussed on Radio Free Afghanistan, https://gandhara.rferl. org/a/with-schools-shut-afghan-children-work-the-poppy-fields/30726508.html. 758 UNODC, Afghanistan Opium Survey 2019, 6, 50. 136 ity, establishing their own de facto sovereignty and limiting the central government’s ability to secure various regions of the country.
The narcotics industry similarly destabilises the country for reasons identified previously. Therefore, the insecurity brought about by warlords facilitates the narcotics industry, and vice-versa. These factors both lead to the weakening of the state, which further grows the vicious cycle of the growth of the narcotics industry and increased power of warlords.
This relationship was evidenced in the years immediately following the Taliban’s opium ban in 2000. The price for opium shot up and greatly benefitted warlords, who largely operated out of the dominion of the Taliban. They gave narcotics traffickers safe haven to smuggle narcotics through their territory in exchange for a generous payment.
Warlords are often the bridge connecting local government to the narcotics industry. They will seek local government jobs to maintain their illicit activities without oversight. Their drug money will be a valuable resource in ‘greasing palms’ and gaining support for political office. Once elected, they can use their newfound authority to allow narcotics trafficking to be conducted unabated by law enforcement.
The growth in narcotics activity will weaken the state authority even further, limiting the central government’s ability to deter the warlord-turned-politician’s illicit activities.760 There have been a number of examples where the opium industry has embedded itself within local government to become a de facto regulated industry.
In the Garmsir district in Helmand Province, poppy cultivation is taxed by the local government. This industry is so profitable relative to other industries in the district that the government has become reliant on its revenue to fund government functions. Opium profits are regulated through a network of village leaders who tax the farmers and pass the revenue up to provincial and district-level officials. Poppy cultivation is measured by mirabs, who are the local officials responsible for managing the water supply in villages.
They survey the size of each farmer’s poppy output and collect taxes from them accordingly to pass to the local government. Poppy farmers stated they paid about USD $40/acre in 2015, resulting in a total of almost USD $3 million in tax revenue for the district. The Garmsir district governor and police chief were allocated the majority of the profits from the poppy taxes, and the rest was split between local officials and local police.
Even with the exorbitant rate that farmers were charged for their poppies, they still earned more than they would have harvesting cotton or wheat. Garmsir’s regulated poppy industry came to a halt when two members of parliament discovered the arrangement and demanded a cut, according to Afghan officials. When they weren’t included, they reported the illicit operation to the central government.
Kabul officials responded by firing the district governor, police chief, and intelligence director, who were all allegedly involved in the operation. Other districts in Helmand Province have established similar de facto regulatory systems for poppy farming.
Nad Ali and Marja districts require poppy farmers to pay a flat tax based on their poppy output. One elder in Marja district described the situation in his village that made poppy farming too lucrative to pass up. He represented a group of sharecroppers who collectively cultivated 44 acres (17 hectares) of poppies. The 44 acres amounted to USD $62,000, with a tax of $60 per acre, leaving a net profit of USD $59,000. According to the elder, “Most other crops would have earned about $20,000 for 44 acres.” This was in a year where a poppy fungus reduced the harvest output by half.
Even with that, poppy farmers earned vastly more than their counterparts harvesting licit crops. Byrd, “Afghanistan’s Opium Economy,” 318. 760 Ibid., 319. 761 Azam Ahmed, “Tasked with Combating Opium, Afghan Officials Profit From It,” The New
The Lure and Viability of the Drug Trafficking Economy
The most significant stakeholder in the Afghanistan narcotics economy are the drug trafficking organisations (DTOs), and the people who choose to participate in this illicit line of work. Like poppy farmers, there are numerous factors that inform their decision to engage in narcotics trafficking, and understanding them is key to dismantling this industry.
As with farmers, many join DTOs because of a lack of licit economic opportunities. However, it is not only the destitute that find themselves attracted to DTOs. Narcotics trafficking is a potentially highly profitable line of work in Afghanistan, so even people with relatively decent wages and a secure line of work can be attracted to drug trafficking.
Social ties are another main factor for people joining DTOs. Afghan-based DTOs are particularly based around families and tribes, utilising close familial and neighbourly connections to ensure trust.763 By far the most compelling reason for involvement in DTOs is to improve their financial situation. In a UNODC survey of drug traffickers in 2020, 63% said they started trafficking narcotics to earn money. Of course, this may include people who were impoverished and needed a stable income, as well as those who may have some level of financial security, but could earn more through trafficking.
However, many who were surveyed also claimed some level of financial insecurity as their motivation for trafficking. 34% of traffickers said that a lack of licit employment opportunities left them with little choice but to traffic narcotics. 10% specifically stated that poverty motivated them to join a DTO, and 2% stated they had no other option but to traffic narcotics. It is clearly evident that a lack of licit employment opportunities for Afghans leaves many with little choice other than drug trafficking to provide for their families.
Even before the pandemic affected Afghanistan in early 2020, a quarter of the Afghan labour force was unemployed, and 80% of employment was insecure. We have yet to see the full extent to which this pandemic will damage the Afghan economy, forcing an even larger portion of the labour force into the illicit economy to survive.
Those who engage in DTOs because of financial insecurity are likely to continue involvement even after they have improved their finances. The narcotics industry has earned a reputation for providing quick opportunities to gain wealth. When asked by the UNODC why they began trafficking narcotics, one trafficker said, “The profit from drug trafficking is very good. It requires very little investment and is an easy job.”
There are few industries available in Afghanistan with the potential to bring wealth as quickly and easily as drug trafficking. This is an industry that requires no training, no education, and no financial investment. Whereas, other industries in Afghanistan that can bring relative wealth, like the construction, mining, or real estate industries, require some kind of technical training, university degrees, or significant investments that are inaccessible for the majority of the populace.
In contrast, DTOs offer the chance of upward mobility. Someone with no education or wealth can start as a smuggler and rise through the ranks in a DTO to become wealthy.765 Attraction to drug trafficking goes beyond just providing an easy path towards gaining wealth. One trafficker who was asked why he got into the business stated, “I know people who were broke before being involved in drug trafficking and after getting into this business now they are rich, influential and have a lot of support and that is why I wanted to do this business.”
People see the industry as a way to gain power and influence, which may not have been possible for many without the right familial connections or educational background. Drug trafficking provides anyone, regardless of their background, the opportunity to become powerful figures in their communities.
In a society where many have experienced decades of poverty and have been under the dominion UNODC (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime), Afghan Opium Trade Project (AOTP) Update: “Voices of the Quchaqbar” – Understanding Opiate Trafficking in Afghanistan from the Perspective of Drug Traffickers of a rotating gallery of insurgents or political actors, it is likely very appealing to consider the possibility of accruing your own power. DTOs provide the chance for self-determination and gaining respect in one’s community.
This is no doubt a compelling reason for long term engagement in DTOs.766 Drug trafficking is a business that relies on kinship and trust, encouraging people to invite friends, neighbours, and family into the business. The illicit nature of the industry means that trust is essential to any successful DTO. One trafficker explained, “drug trade is a business that you do with friends and people you know and trust. There are people from different tribes and also friends and relatives that I work with.” Traffickers are likely concerned about government informants, or the chance for operatives to skim profits off of the revenue that is meant to be distributed through the organisation.
This is why DTOs in Afghanistan are predominantly made up of family members, friends, people of the same tribe, or some other connection that enables operatives to trust each other. This also means that the reason many enter the industry is they were invited to by a family member or friend. Being invited into an organisation by a trusted peer is likely to diminish any doubts or fears one may have about entering an illicit industry.
They trust that their peers would not lead them down a dangerous path, and believe they are looking out for their best interests. One trafficker explained how he began working for a DTO, recounting, “A friend of mine is a major drug trafficker. I used to work for his real estate agency and as we developed trust, he told me his real business and told me if I am interested, he can teach me how to do the business.”
This illustrates a prime scenario for recruitment into a DTO. The real estate business owner used the business as a front for narcotics trafficking, which, as illustrated previously, is a common money laundering tactic. They made sure they could trust their employee before revealing the true nature of the business. Then, after trust has been built between the employer and employee, the employer invites the employee to join the DTO with the chance to earn much more than would be possible in the real estate business.
The employee now has a trusted friend and boss inviting them to join this industry and show them how to be successful in it. They are unlikely to question the risk, as they already know that their boss was able to be successful in the industry. Through these connections, DTOs are able to organically grow their businesses with operatives who are trusted and trusting of the business.
Opium Trafficking as a Franchise Industry DTOs in Afghanistan are fairly cooperative, and multiple organisations will take part in joint trafficking operations for mutual benefit. DTOs will often share opiates, the precursor chemical AA, and access to heroin-refining labs with different DTOs in exchange for a share of the profit.
Over the decades of trafficking activity, DTO networks have become more integrated with a wider array of organisations, enabling the sharing of resources, trafficking routes, and profits. Competition has become increasingly rare, as DTOs see the mutual benefit of cooperating with the multitude of DTOs in the region to increase their market reach and profits.
Most DTOs in Afghanistan are small organisations of 6-10 people, made up of family members or people from their tribe, who are connected with a larger network of traffickers. Most are not directly involved in cross-border trafficking, and are more likely to smuggle narcotics across provinces to larger DTOs for global export.
These organisations usually have one manager who liaises with other DTOs regarding logistics, security, and finding customers. This includes signing official agreements with other DTOs over the handling of consignments and the shared percentages of profits. 766 Ibid., 11. 767 Ibid. 768 Ibid., 8. 139 As many DTOs are family businesses, it is usually led by the eldest male.
The leader of the DTO is also responsible for settling disputes with other DTOs. DTOs generally hold mutual agreements to be binding, and any perceived breach of an agreement is taken very seriously, with a mediation held between the two organisations.
Impartial third-party mediators are often brought in to settle disputes between two DTOs. Violent confrontation over disagreements between DTOs are the last resort after all mediation attempts have failed, and are exceedingly rare. DTO networks enable individual DTOs to handle varied demand if there is a supply shortage. DTOs generally do not have a system for anticipating demand, and traffic narcotics on an ad-hoc basis.
In the instances when they run out of their reserves, they connect with another DTO in their network to fulfil the request. The ease of access to opiate supply leads many DTOs to not carry substantial reserves, as they can easily meet requests through their network. The larger DTOs are likely to carry a significant portion stockpiled for about 6 months to fulfil demand from smaller DTOs.
Within an interconnected network of DTOs, some organisations work to transit narcotics across borders while others focus on interprovincial trafficking. Many of the smaller DTOs will work to transit narcotics through their province to a larger DTO operating out of a different province that has access to the international market.
Another motivation for interprovincial trafficking is higher demand and price in various provinces. Traffickers monitor price levels in different provinces or different countries and adjust their trafficking destinations accordingly. There is also a degree of variation in the quality of heroin based on which province it is processed in. Badakhshan, for instance, produces some of the highest quality heroin in Afghanistan. Traffickers may bring their raw opium through Badakhshan to be processed there instead of in another province where the refineries are worse and the end-product will be less valued.
This also leads traffickers to buy heroin from Badakhshan over other provinces and then traffic to other provinces for higher returns. Trafficking between provinces has also been used as a measure to evade law enforcement, circumventing areas with higher law enforcement presence. Traffickers will seek to coordinate with insurgent groups like the Taliban to provide security along their route. Given the shifting security environment in some parts of Afghanistan, traffickers will change up their route in real time based on where they can count on receiving protection, or where they are likely to run into Afghan law enforcement.
This is where cooperation between DTOs really benefits trafficking efforts, as different DTOs will share intelligence on law enforcement locations and activity, enabling trafficking operations to adeptly change course to evade capture. Usually, small-scale narcotics traders will purchase the opium from poppy farmers directly. They then sell the opium to mid-level traffickers who smuggle the narcotics between provinces.
Mid-level traffickers hand off the drugs to the senior-level traffickers who handle the international exports. At multiple points in this supply chain, traffickers will take the raw opium to a drug laboratory to refine the opium into heroin, or will sell the raw opium to the lab owners themselves to then sell the refined heroin to larger DTOs for provincial or international smuggling.
Most traffickers do not own a lab themselves. Of the traffickers interviewed by the UNODC in their 2020 survey, 83% were not part of a DTO that owned a lab, and would either buy heroin from labs directly or send their raw opium to labs for a fee to then traffic the newly refined heroin themselves. Heroin labs in Afghanistan vary in size, output, and production quality. These factors depend on location, security, demand, chemist experience, and finances.
The more professional-grade facilities are usually located in rural areas, whereas urban areas with less capacity and more concerns of security harbour smaller operations. While difficult to determine the true output average of heroin.
This was consistent with many provincial estimates, including Badakhshan, Farah, and Nimroz. The provinces with higher estimated output, like Helmand and Kandahar, were said to produce between 61-180 kg/ month of heroin. This is consistent with earlier estimates from 2011 of an average of 100 kg/month in Helmand and Kandahar. Balkh and Herat provinces’ estimates varied considerably, from 1-180 kg, so it is difficult to make an assessment of their likely output.
Heroin labs require a number of different positions to operate. These include chemists, cooks, security, and workers to manage the supply of materials. Labs require at least 10-20 people to operate, with the largest-scale labs using upwards of 80 workers. Chemists play the most pivotal role in producing high-quality heroin or morphine, and DTOs take the most care in finding experienced and knowledgeable chemists. Chemists have some formal education in chemistry and have at least a basic understanding of chemical processes.
Cooks are generally less knowledgeable than chemists, but have some foundational knowledge of the refining process or experience manufacturing opiates. Heroin labs may hire their own security guards or may contract with insurgent groups like the Taliban in exchange for a cut of the narcotics or proceeds from the narcotics.
There are additionally a number of workers tasked with maintaining the necessary materials needed to refine the opium. DTOs recruit chemists within Afghanistan as well as in the surrounding region, like Pakistan, Iran, and Turkey. Most chemists outside of Afghanistan come from Pakistan or Iran, which have a long track record of opium refining. Pakistani chemists are perceived to be the most highly skilled, and are the most sought-after in Afghanistan.
One trafficker remarked, “Pakistanis are more experts, the waste from the production made by a Pakistani is less than a Helmandi cook.” Beyond chemists, DTOs make a number of other considerations around recruitment to their organisations. One is finding Afghans with dual nationality.
These operatives are vital to DTOs ability to establish international networks and smuggle drugs abroad. Afghanistan-based DTOs especially seek to employ operatives with dual nationality in North America or Europe, two of the biggest drug markets. Afghan operatives will often recruit family members who have lived in North America or Europe for several years, since they can trust them and they have an ease of travel to and from a major narcotics market.
The profits from the drug trade in Afghanistan flow to a variety of sectors, depending on the wealth of the organisation or individual involved. For small operations or individual traffickers, revenue most likely goes towards daily living expenses. As stated prior, many engage in trafficking to provide for themselves and their families in an increasingly worsening economy.
This includes purchasing staple foods like wheat and materials like cooking oil. Beyond that, once the impoverished traffickers’ basic needs are met, drug revenue is likely to go towards savings, to have some financial security in an unstable economy, or for familial expenses, like weddings, or a private education for a family member.
Larger operations involved in the narcotics industry have very different investment choices. Larger DTOs are likely to invest their revenue in real estate, both inside and outside Afghanistan. As discussed in Chapter 4, these real estate investments help DTOs to launder their funds to appear licit and avoid being seized by the government. They also create more opportunities to grow revenue beyond the narcotics industry alone, in a sector with relatively much less risk. Additionally, revenue for DTOs will go towards growing the DTO operations, investing in more traffickers, refineries, and opium harvesters. Finally, drug revenue is used to protect the DTO business itself, through zakat or ushr payments towards insurgent groups for “protection”, or to bribe public officials to enable smuggling abroad
Opium Trafficking as a Franchise Industry
DTOs in Afghanistan are fairly cooperative, and multiple organisations will take part in joint trafficking operations for mutual benefit. DTOs will often share opiates, the precursor chemical AA, and access to heroin-refining labs with different DTOs in exchange for a share of the profit.
Over the decades of trafficking activity, DTO networks have become more integrated with a wider array of organisations, enabling the sharing of resources, trafficking routes, and profits. Competition has become increasingly rare, as DTOs see the mutual benefit of cooperating with the multitude of DTOs in the region to increase their market reach and profits.
Most DTOs in Afghanistan are small organisations of 6-10 people, made up of family members or people from their tribe, who are connected with a larger network of traffickers. Most are not directly involved in cross-border trafficking, and are more likely to smuggle narcotics across provinces to larger DTOs for global export.
These organisations usually have one manager who liaises with other DTOs regarding logistics, security, and finding customers. This includes signing official agreements with other DTOs over the handling of consignments and the shared percentages of profits. As many DTOs are family businesses, it is usually led by the eldest male.
The leader of the DTO is also responsible for settling disputes with other DTOs. DTOs generally hold mutual agreements to be binding, and any perceived breach of an agreement is taken very seriously, with a mediation held between the two organisations.
Impartial third-party mediators are often brought in to settle disputes between two DTOs. Violent confrontation over disagreements between DTOs are the last resort after all mediation attempts have failed, and are exceedingly rare. DTO networks enable individual DTOs to handle varied demand if there is a supply shortage.
DTOs generally do not have a system for anticipating demand, and traffic narcotics on an ad-hoc basis. In the instances when they run out of their reserves, they connect with another DTO in their network to fulfil the request. The ease of access to opiate supply leads many DTOs to not carry substantial reserves, as they can easily meet requests through their network.
The larger DTOs are likely to carry a significant portion stockpiled for about 6 months to fulfil demand from smaller DTOs. Within an interconnected network of DTOs, some organisations work to transit narcotics across borders while others focus on interprovincial trafficking. Many of the smaller DTOs will work to transit narcotics through their province to a larger DTO operating out of a different province that has access to the international market.
Another motivation for interprovincial trafficking is higher demand and price in various provinces. Traffickers monitor price levels in different provinces or different countries and adjust their trafficking destinations accordingly. There is also a degree of variation in the quality of heroin based on which province it is processed in. Badakhshan, for instance, produces some of the highest quality heroin in Afghanistan. Traffickers may bring their raw opium through Badakhshan to be processed there instead of in another province where the refineries are worse and the end-product will be less valued.
This also leads traffickers to buy heroin from Badakhshan over other provinces and then traffic to other provinces for higher returns. Trafficking between provinces has also been used as a measure to evade law enforcement, circumventing areas with higher law enforcement presence. Traffickers will seek to coordinate with insurgent groups like the Taliban to provide security along their route. Given the shifting security environment in some parts of Afghanistan, traffickers will change up their route in real time based on where they can count on receiving protection, or where they are likely to run into Afghan law enforcement.
This is where cooperation between DTOs really benefits trafficking efforts, as different DTOs will share intelligence on law enforcement locations and activity, enabling trafficking operations to adeptly change course to evade capture. Usually, small-scale narcotics traders will purchase the opium from poppy farmers directly. They then sell the opium to mid-level traffickers who smuggle the narcotics between provinces.
Mid-level traffickers hand off the drugs to the senior-level traffickers who handle the international exports. At multiple points in this supply chain, traffickers will take the raw opium to a drug laboratory to refine the opium into heroin, or will sell the raw opium to the lab owners themselves to then sell the refined heroin to larger DTOs for provincial or international smuggling.
Most traffickers do not own a lab themselves. Of the traffickers interviewed by the UNODC in their 2020 survey, 83% were not part of a DTO that owned a lab, and would either buy heroin from labs directly or send their raw opium to labs for a fee to then traffic the newly refined heroin themselves.
Heroin labs in Afghanistan vary in size, output, and production quality. These factors depend on location, security, demand, chemist experience, and finances. The more professional-grade facilities are usually located in rural areas, whereas urban areas with less capacity and more concerns of security harbour smaller operations.
While difficult to determine the true output average of heroin survey respondents claimed an average of 1-60 kg/month. This was consistent with many provincial estimates, including Badakhshan, Farah, and Nimroz. The provinces with higher estimated output, like Helmand and Kandahar, were said to produce between 61-180 kg/ month of heroin.
This is consistent with earlier estimates from 2011 of an average of 100 kg/month in Helmand and Kandahar. Balkh and Herat provinces’ estimates varied considerably, from 1-180 kg, so it is difficult to make an assessment of their likely output. Heroin labs require a number of different positions to operate.
These include chemists, cooks, security, and workers to manage the supply of materials. Labs require at least 10-20 people to operate, with the largest-scale labs using upwards of 80 workers. Chemists play the most pivotal role in producing high-quality heroin or morphine, and DTOs take the most care in finding experienced and knowledgeable chemists.
Chemists have some formal education in chemistry and have at least a basic understanding of chemical processes. Cooks are generally less knowledgeable than chemists, but have some foundational knowledge of the refining process or experience manufacturing opiates. Heroin labs may
