During a recent two-day trip to Colombia , General Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staffs, stated that the Colombian model for counterinsurgency and counternarcotics could be applied to Afghanistan , the world?s leading producer of opium. This statement follows the recent nomination by President George Bush of the US government?s current ambassador to Colombia as the next ambassador to Afghanistan.
Colombia and Afghanistan are suffering from similar security dilemmas, fostered by governments that lack the legitimacy or authority to project power over large segments of the country; thriving drug industries; and well-financed insurgencies, drug lords, and other malignant non-state actors. Therefore, the U.S. government understandably would suggest the application of the strategy utilized in one country (Colombia) to another (Afghanistan).
In reality, however, this strategy will do little to help Afghanistan combat insurgency or narcotics. While the idea of eliminating or reducing illicit narcotics, which have helped finance violent movements in both countries, seems like a logical step in War on Terror efforts, this strategy has met with repeated failure.
Poppy Culture and the Colombian Model
Drug money has impacted Afghanistan?s internal security, political institutions, and economic standing negatively. In addition to helping finance Taliban operations, drug money also benefits regional warlords, who finance their militias with narcotics profits. Criminal organizations and corrupt politicians utilize poppy gains to wield significant influence over Afghan politics. Large-scale drug profits grossly distort Afghanistan?s economy, contributing to inflation, speculation, and currency instability.
Despite international efforts, the opium trade is booming once again in Afghanistan, five years after the Taliban?s ouster from power. The United Nation?s Office of Drugs and Crime recorded a crop yield of 74,000 hectares in 2002. The 2006 yield was 400,000 hectares, or 92 percent of the world?s supply. This has placed strong international pressure on President Hamid Karzai?s administration to focus on the Afghanistan?s unwieldy drug problem.
Conversely, Colombia is responsible for 90 percent of the cocaine that enters the US . The US government?s decades-old counter-drug campaign in Colombia is well known to Americans and their international allies. A little-noticed clause in 2002 removed long-standing restrictions barring US funding for Colombian counterinsurgency operations, which had heretofore been barred from receiving US funding. The arguments in favor of this strategy pointed to the new international climate fostered by the attacks of 9/11 . Colombia?s entrenched insurgency, largely funded by drug profits, was viewed as a strategic threat to US national security.
Colombia?s security forces, long known for their poor human rights record, had been applying counternarcotics aid toward counterinsurgency efforts for years. The Bush administration?s announcement merely formalized a policy already in place that has witnessed some tactical successes but was by and large a strategic failure.
?Hearts and Minds? versus the War on Terror
Eradication is the preferred counternarcotics policy of the US government and is immensely unpopular in Afghanistan. This policy deprives local peasants of their only source of economic livelihood, encouraging individuals to seek the protection and economic support of regional and local warlords. This provides a challenge to ongoing counterinsurgency operations in Afghanistan that are highly dependent on local intelligence and support.
The alienation of Afghan peasants and farmers will eliminate local good will, further complicating US counterinsurgency operations. This has been witnessed in Colombia, as well as in Peru . Counterinsurgency operations rely heavily on ?hearts and minds? tactics designed to encourage support for the US government. Supply-side policies, such as eradication, do little to engender good will for US campaigns in countries economically dependent on a flourishing narcotics industry.
Conclusion
The assumptions underlying the synergy of counternarcotics and counterinsurgency are fundamentally misguided. Although it would seem logical that eliminating the funding source for an insurgency or terrorist group would be a wise course of action, this strategy, with its focus on narcotics eradication, has not encountered widespread success in Colombia. And, such a strategy has already encountered challenges in Afghanistan. A continuation of such a plan is likely to breed more conflict and violence, enacting even more barriers to successful US measures in Afghanistan. Unless the US seeks alternative tactics in its international counter-drug policy, the fusion of counternarcotics and counterinsurgency in either Colombia or Afghanistan is unlikely to result in long-term success.
