Poppies and Pomegranates in Kandahar

As goes Kandahar Province, so goes Afghanistan. And as go the “paradoxes” of counterinsurgency operations – as General David Petraeus’ field manual calls the shifty phantoms that have found a fine haunt in the pomegranate orchards of Kandahar’s Arghandab River Valley – so goes the war. Last October, as American bombs fell on the sleepy village of Tarok Kolache – an orphaned ghost town under the tenancy of IED-sewing Taliban – commanding officer Lieutenant Colonel David Flynn cringed: “not because I cared about the enemy we were killing or the HME destroyed,” he said, “but I knew the reconstruction would consume the remainder of my deployed life.”

Indeed, with all the mosque groundbreakings and village ribbon-cuttings in the past month alone, reconstruction is consuming Arghandab itself. What is especially encouraging is the US army’s decentralized Hayekian approach: village shurahs, local Afghan National Security Force commanders, the district governor, the District Stabilization Team, and civilian assistance groups are carrying out their respective duties, with President Karzai’s network pointedly uninvited (though his taxmen are surely salivating at the opportunities). The pomegranate villages may not yet have been destroyed in vain.

But even as Arghandabers chisel out compensation with municipal flare, the paradox of the pomegranate raps on: Try as they might to compensate the farmer whose few mangled trees amounted to his living, ISAF’s orchard renovations and USAID’s energy Americana solar panel schemes will never compete on the market economy of Kandahar’s rural badlands. For here, in the land of Plan B “alternative livelihoods,” the Taliban cash cropper with grade-A opium poppy is king.

With poppy-based opium funding all evils in Afghanistan – from Taliban payrolls to the corruption in the Afghan Ministry of Counternarcotics itself – it is no wonder that the US allotted over $2 billion between 2005 and 2010 to stem narcotics activities in Afghanistan, according to last year’s Government Accountability Office report. Working in the shadows of the forgotten war within the forgotten war, the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), Britain's Serious Organized Crimes Agency, and the Afghan-led Major Crimes Task Force routinely score operational successes, including last October’s DEA-Russia co-nabbing of more than $60 million worth of heroin in raids on just four drug labs in northeastern Afghanistan.

Yet now in its 10^th year, the war on opium poppy is failing. The UN Office on Drugs and Crime’s December “Afghanistan Opium Survey” admitted “cause for concern” in the self-perpetuating cycle of insecurity and opium price rises. Indeed, the value of Afghan opium rose 164% in 2010 on the wings of a poppy blight, wheat drought, and rising violence. A January Washington Post article headlined “Success of Afghan drug war is waning” pointed out that more and more Afghan farmers are turning to opium poppy cultivation as an economic necessity, often paying protection taxes to the Taliban. “Most of the trafficking we see is in Kandahar,” said anti-narcotics police head Bazz Mohammed Ahmadi, “and we have no control there.”

Such dourness is strange in the context of recent Afghanistan war assessments. Afghanistan expert Ahmed Rashid suggested last November that the Taliban, far from content with their lucrative opium monopoly, are “exhausted by the war” and “would like to see peace.” The December “Responsible Transition” report by Andrew Exum and Lieutenant General (Ret.) David W. Barno – said to have strong influence on President Obama’s Afghanistan strategy – claims to outline the path to a “more sustainable U.S. and allied presence,” without ever mentioning poppy.

In Arghandab, however, where the only peace the Taliban would like to see is the peace of neo-Deobandi Shariah law, and the Taliban-warlord opium monopoly rivals the importance of Soviet-era Stinger missiles, poppy-free reconstruction plods ahead. The buzz is “alternative livelihoods,” like pomegranates, wheat, and saffron –but all are less profitable alternatives to the one crop capable of riding out the snaps and spins of the country’s security maladies. Valiant are the Afghans who reject the Taliban’s promise of poppy farm protection, and instead receive death threats when seen waiting at the district center for their $170 pomegranate tree compensation.

The poppy paradox is simple: a licensed poppy-for-medicine economy would increase poppy supply, thereby decreasing opium prices. As incomes along the value chain rise for regular Afghans – i.e. the COIN center of gravity – the insurgency’s monopoly crumbles apart. Afghans, no longer settling for “alternative” livelihoods, can now pursue “preferred” livelihoods, with no more need for Taliban protection. As the insurgency shrivels, security increases, and Afghan farmers now have the time, money, and certainty to invest in those same trusty pomegranates.

The questions beg ironies: Will licit poppy production increase the opium supply? In fact, as repeated International Council on Security and Development studies show, a poppy-for-morphine program would undercut the comparative advantage of the opium trade, diverting poppy to the licit medical market. As it is, even wounded Afghan soldiers are lucky to receive morphine, with the Army Surgeon General removed last month for siphoning off $42 million in army medicines; Will coalition partners approve? Actually, the US already buys poppy-for-morphine from Turkey and Australia, so any objections are self-serving; Will the program flop amid Afghanistan’s lawlessness? The criminal patronage networks and the Taliban already grow poppy, and only stand to lose when competitors sprout up in law-abiding pockets of the country.

Kandahar’s unusually “kinetic” winter, including the assassination of the deputy governor this week, is likely an indicator of an insurgency that feels threatened by ISAF’s population-centric reconstruction efforts, particularly in Arghandab. This makes the counter-productiveness of Afghanistan’s poppy policy all the more regretful. Reconstruction may consume the rest of the deployed life of the soldiers of Flynn's 1-320^th, and wisely so. But until such reconstruction includes mention of poppy, soldiers will continue to spend their lives deployed in Afghanistan indeed.

(Photos courtesy of Founders' Porch)

Statism fails in Afghanistan, too

At last weekend's grand Lisbon summoning of coalition commanders in Afghanistan, "progress" was the magic word. Is there enough progress to keep progressing? You see, sir, if you look at the metrics of progress...

The war in Afghanistan is a counterinsurgency (you might recall) so the only progress that really matters is the "people" progress. The NATO inquisitees probably pointed to a recently released poll showing that the percentage of Afghan people who report having "no sympathy at all for the insurgency" has risen from 36 to 55 this year. Yet in this time-warped land of peculiar values, we ought to be careful how we poll the people progress.

For in truth, one man's insurgent (to parallel the old axiom) may be another man's speed-dial godfather. This Alikozai village's Takfiri enemy may be that Ghilzai village's community chest, doling out goodies with the government's consent. Do not think the government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan or its security apparatus is exempt from such ambiguities.

And what's an Afghan fellow to say? The minister of the Hajj steals from the hajjis. The chairman of Kabul Bank, a World Series of Poker champion, gambles away depositors' livelihoods. The village teacher takes bribes from students to fix grades and distribute books. And we, the International Security Assistance Force, want to know how Afghans feel about the "insurgents"?

A counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan that focuses its metrics for "progress" on the government, rather than the people, will fail. "President Bush took his eye off of the ball in Afghanistan," goes the vague metaphor. But what is far more consequential is that we have misidentified the ball altogether. Brookings Institution scholar Michael O'Hanlon, for example, returned from an Afghanistan trip with glad tidings last month (at a time of record U.S. casualties in the nearly 10-year-old war). "Progress has been rapid this year," he wrote. He emphasized training and partnership with the Afghan government's security forces as the golden metric. The tripling of trainers, the doubling of security forces' pay and the high partnership rates signaled success.

But kick the capacity-industrial complex for a minute and think like an Afghan: From the viewpoint of, say, Paktiyans forced to pay off the chief of police, what's so special about increasing the pay of thugs? Or about the Americans partnering with the police? "The Americans are complicit with the corrupt bastards at record levels? Splendid."

The problem here is much more disturbing than "lack of capacity." You have heard that Afghanistan is hopelessly decentralized, too tribal and geographically divided to yield to higher powers. Quite the contrary: In the wake of the Kabul Bank run, the acquittal and protection of Afghanistan's slimiest "civil servants" (such as Hamid Karzai appointee Muhammad Zia Salehi), massive government land grabs and increasing signs of government profiting off of the drug trade, it is tragically plain that Afghanistan is indeed united to excess under an oligarchy of warlords and their patrons.

That President Karzai, himself a key underwriter of these networks of criminal profiteering, prefers speeding up the security-force buddy-buddying and transfer of authority should raise suspicions. Getting to the bottom if it: In Afghanistan, when you have a problem, it doesn't really matter what the famed local tribal council reckons. What matters is whether you stand in the personal favor of powerful men like Ahmed Wali Karzai, the president's brother. Indeed, the more we fuss over Afghanistan's supposed decentralized capacity, the more a few powerful personalities deepen their centralized authority.

But what did we expect? Perhaps we have grown insecure when it comes to recalling the lessons of our own republic - our Tocquevillian emphasis on solving problems through local civil society, our mistrust in central government's ability to distribute gobs of money. Still, even our statist naivete does not excuse President Karzai's recent spout of relativism on taking cash from Iran. "We are grateful for the Iranian help in this regard. The United States is doing the same thing, they're providing cash to some of our offices." Many apologies to his excellency, but until Iran sacrifices thousands of its finest for the Afghan cause, he would be well-advised to get off it. Meanwhile, we would be wise to swallow our "good war" pride and admit that it is this - the internationally agreed-upon, soft power-centric war - and not Iraq that truly risks spiraling into the gleeful hands of the Iranians and the Shariah fundamentalists.

So what is the solution? Tempting as it is to say there is not one, the solution starts with admitting that touting government progress is not the solution. The solution will be measured in people progress: To what extent are the Afghan people making local decisions, rather than USAID money-baggers with their energy Americana wind-farm schemes? How are Afghans being empowered and not the Karzai family criminal syndicate?

At his former command in Iraq, coalition commander Gen. David H. Petraeus used to inquire cryptically: "Tell me how this ends." Afghanistan is not such a riddle: We either prioritize people progress - and not, say, institutional capacity - or we watch the Taliban turn Kabul's stadiums from soccer fields back into execution chambers. With a record 83 percent of Afghan adults backing negotiations with armed, anti-government groups, the tipping point is palpable. It's best that we snap out of our sleepwalking quickly.

(Photos courtesy of Founders' Porch)