Matthew C. DuPée is a research associate in the Program for Culture & Conflict Studies at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, CA. His studies focus on the narcotics industry, organized crime and conflict in Southwest Asia. The opinions expressed here are his own.
On Sept. 26, Afghan counternarcotics agents backed by their Australian counterparts seized and destroyed $350 million worth of illegal narcotics in Afghanistan’s Helmand province. The operation was the latest in a series of successes for Afghan anti-drug units. But a bureaucratic error by the U.S. government has shut down anti-drug training programs, dealing a major blow to Afghan capacity-building.
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Ten years after the United States first invaded the country, the drug menace emanating from Afghanistan remains potent, with the tsunami of Afghan-origin narcotics continuing to leave a trail of destruction across South and Central Asia's social, health and legal landscape. But a shift in anti-drug strategies in Afghanistan has succeeded in forging closer counternarcotics cooperation across the region.
moreWith the recent announcement that the U.S. and its NATO allies would begin a phased security transition to the Afghan government, many questions remain regarding the establishment of an effective Afghan counternarcotics policy. Most importantly, how will the scale-down of NATO forces and increased responsibility of Afghan security forces affect the newest iteration of U.S. anti-drug strategies in Afghanistan? more
On Oct. 17, Iranian border guards clashed with drug traffickers on the wild Iran-Afghan frontier and subsequently seized 331 lbs of narcotics contraband. The incident would be just one of many such skirmishes, were it not for one difference: The seized drugs were not the usual suspects of Afghan opium and hashish, but rather synthetic drugs, highlighting alarming changes to the Southwest Asian narcotics industry. more
A mysterious crop disease has torn through the poppy fields of southern
Afghanistan, leading the U.N. Office for Drugs
and Crime to decrease its projection for the 2010 opium harvest by an
astonishing 2,600 metric tons, or one-third of the national output. The socioeconomic impact of the failed harvest comes as thousands of international and Afghan troops are
preparing a
massive military operation in the south this summer.
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Russian officials have recently accused U.S. and NATO forces inAfghanistan of "conniving with drug producers" and urged the coalitionto pursue aggressive aerial eradication operations againstAfghanistan's opium poppy crops. The growing divide between Russian and NATO officials overAfghanistan's war on drugs once again brings a highly controversialcounternarcotics issue to the table: to spray or not to spray? more
Over the past 30 years, the poisonous effects of Afghanistan's narcotics industry have steadily transformed Iran's law enforcement and border security institutions, forcing drastic changes in the way Iran deals with what has become a burgeoning transnational narco-insurgency on its southeastern frontier with Pakistan and Afghanistan. more
Afghanistan's narcotics industry has become a familiar news story recently, but most of the media's attention has focused on the country's poppy problem. That has obscured the problems caused by another illicit crop. In areas that have become secure enough to initiate agricultural assistance, Afghan farmers have simply scrapped poppy cultivation for the equally lucrative and illicit cannabis. more