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“Afghanistan can neither 

be an effective vehicle for 

enforcing the current global 

drug control regime from the 

supply end, and nor can it be 

the source of innovation and 

change that would catalyze 

broader changes in the global 

narcotic control system.”

April 16, 2013

Afghanistan and the International 

Drug Control Regime

Can the “Tail” Wag the “Dog”?

Summary

•	 A variety of factors point toward increasing opium poppy cultivation and especially rising

opium and heroin production in Afghanistan over the nextseveral years.

•	 The international community needsto be prepared forsuch trends, resist the temptation to

seek simplistic and one-dimensionalsolutions, and avoid major policy blundersthat would

make the situation worse.

•	 Neither aerialspraying nor licensing of opium cultivation for medicinal purposes will work. On

the contrary, either of these extreme opposite approaches would be counterproductive and

damaging.

•	 In the absence of major changesin the current international drug control regime—which

carries high costs with uncertain and doubtful benefits and arguably is not working well—

Afghanistan can only have a marginal impact and strive for gradual improvements on the

counternarcoticsfront.

•	 Under these circumstances effective,sustained rural development is essential for enabling

farmersto move away from dependence on opium poppy cultivation over the longer term.

•	 In summary, just asthe“tail”cannot wag the“dog,”neither can Afghanistan serve as an effective vehicle for enforcing current international counternarcotics policiesfrom the supply

end, and nor can major reformsin the international drug control regime be catalyzed from

Afghanistan.

Counternarcotics Prospects in Afghanistan

Despite extensive counternarcoticsinterventions and reductionsin poppy cultivation in certain

regions, Afghanistan remains by far the largestsupplier of illicit opiates, normally accounting for

around 90 percent of global production. In 2012, the area cultivated with poppy is estimated to

have risen by 18 percent, although bad weather and other factors held down yields, and opium

production declined significantly.1

Afghanistan’s ongoing transition will have adverse implicationsfor the country’s and itsinternational partners’ability to continue implementing counternarcotics policies along the lines of the

recent past.2

William Byrd

E-mail: wbyrd@usip.org

Phone: 202-420-3856

peaceBrieF143
© USIP 2013 • All rights reserved.

Afghanistan And The International Drug Control Regime

page 2 • PB 143 • April 16, 2013

First, withdrawal of U.S. and other international military forces, especially from key opiumproducing provinceslike Helmand and Kandahar in the south, will reduce the overallsecurity

presence and associated pressure to reduce poppy cultivation. Even though international troops

are not involved in eradication of opium poppy fields, their presence has been used by Afghan officials and security forcesto dissuade local leaders and farmersfrom cultivating poppy,sometimes

including the threat to link them to the Taliban if they do not heed opium bans.3 Such threats and

pressure will increasingly lack credibility asthe drawdown continues, and nor would large-scale

ground-based eradication be a realistic option under these circumstances.

Second, financial resourcesfor counternarcotics, including for payments and provision of agricultural inputs, as well asfor othersupport at provincial and local levels, will be sharply reduced.

This will leave a much smaller“carrot”for farmers and other local actorsto go along with the“stick”

of eradication and the threat thereof.

Third, concomitant with foreign troop withdrawals and reductionsin international funding, the

political leverage to exert pressure for counternarcotics actions most likely will decline over the

nextseveral years. Moreover, the drug issue islikely to be distinctly secondary on the list of political

prioritiesfor the U.S. and other international partners. The recent retraction by the U.S. government

of the U.S. military’s ban on contracting Kam Air due to allegationsthat the airline wasinvolved in

drug transportation suggests, inter alia, that the U.S. government may not expend much political

capital on drug issues.4

Domestic political, climatic, and economic trendsin Afghanistan also may weaken the ability

to contain, let alone curtail, the opium economy. These include the upcoming 2014-2015 election cycle, distracting from drug issues and possibly leading to avoidance of politically sensitive

counternarcotics actions, weakening or removal ofsome stalwart anti-opium provincial governors,

recovery from the unusually low yieldsin 2012, and continuing fairly high pricesfor opium.

Thus overall, a variety of factors point toward increasing opium poppy cultivation and rising

opium and heroin production over the nextseveral years. While positive achievements—such

as continuing to maintain poppy cultivation bansin better-off localities, enhanced interdiction

efforts and prosecutions by special counternarcotics courts, and improvementsin the capacity of

Afghanistan’s Ministry of Counternarcotics—also need to be kept in mind, these most likely will be

far outweighed by the adverse factors discussed above. 

Policy Alternatives: No Silver Bullets

The international community needsto be prepared forsuch adverse trends and how to respond.

Previous approaches—dependent asthey were on presence of international troops, large

amounts of money, and strong political pressure—are notsustainable, and earlier achievementsin

reducing opium poppy cultivation in some provinces and in some years will no longer be replicable. What are the alternatives?

Although past experience in Afghanistan and elsewhere abundantly cautions againstsimplistic

solutions and overly ambitious expectations about what can be achieved especially in the short run,

expanding poppy cultivation may well generate temptationsto seek drastic actionsin response.

These would likely prove counterproductive and if anything make the situation even worse.

If cultivation significantly expandsthere may be renewed callsfor aerial chemicalspraying

of poppy fields, an extreme measure which has been avoided in the past. While this may seem

superficially attractive and might even appear in some quartersto provide a technologicalsolution

substituting for on-the-ground presence, there are very strong, even overwhelming arguments

against aerialspraying. First, it will notsucceed in reducing opium cultivation in a sustained
© USIP 2013 • All rights reserved.

Afghanistan And The International Drug Control Regime

page 3 • PB 143 • April 16, 2013

manner over time; as an annual crop that can be grown in a variety of climate zones, opium is

“footloose”and planting would relocate and expand in response to spraying. Second, juxtaposition

of opium poppy fields with other crops, inter-cropping, and the proximity of dwellings and villages

to poppy fields mean that it would probably be impossible to spray poppy without also spraying

other crops and dwellings. Third, aircraft conducting spraying operations might be vulnerable to

small arms fire, requiring military airsupport—whether that would be on the cards asthe security

transition proceeds may be in doubt.

Finally, there would be enormous public relations problems: Irrespective of the objective safety

of the chemicals being used, illnesses, childhood mortality, and allsorts of human and animal

health problems would be attributed by the local populace to aerialspraying, and the international community and Afghan government would be blamed;such sentiments would be exploited

by the Taliban and other anti-government forces.

At the opposite extreme, there may be renewed calls for a radically different approach involving licensing or the purchase of Afghanistan’s opium output for licit medicinal purposes. As in

the case of aerial spraying, such proposals have been made before,5 but this approach will not

work under current circumstances. First, licensing of opium production and trade, and in particular effective controls to prevent leakages into the illicit market, requires a significant degree

of government presence and capacity, rule of law, and effective governance, which are lacking

in Afghanistan’s rural areas. Thus the leakage from licensed to illicit markets would be enormous,

and Afghanistan easily could accommodate a large increase in total opium production to cater

to both legal and illegal markets. Such a situation would be completely unmanageable and

would quickly break down. Second, established licensed producers of opiates (Australia, India,

France, Turkey, and others) would strongly oppose engagement by Afghanistan in licensed

cultivation, to protect their own agricultural interests. And finally, Afghanistan does not have

a comparative advantage in licensed production, as compared with large-scale mechanized

farming of opiates in countries like Australia. 

Afghanistan and the International Drug Control Regime 6

Consideration of both of these extreme options highlightsthe more general point that Afghanistan can neither be an effective vehicle for enforcing the current global drug control regime from

the supply end, and nor can it be the source of innovation and change that would catalyze broader

changesin the global narcotic controlsystem. In summary, the“tail”cannot wag the“dog,”and in

the absence of changesin international drug control policies, Afghanistan can have only a marginal impact and strive for gradual improvements on the counternarcoticsfront.

As emphasized in a recent World Bank study,7 the costs of the current prohibitory international

drug control regime—direct enforcement costs, human costs of liveslost and ruined by incarceration, public health costs, development costs borne by low-income drug-producing countries

(despite modest incomes accruing to farmers cultivating drug crops), entrenchment of organized

crime, erosion of governance and politicalstability, and associated violent conflict—are very high

and in many respects quantifiable, whereas any benefits(for example in terms of reduced problem

drug use) are uncertain, doubtful, and hard to pin down. Thus basic cost-benefit analysisstrongly

suggeststhat the international drug control regime is not working well and that itshould be

revisited with a view to reforming it.8

In the absence of changes at the global level, countrieslike Afghanistan can only strive to make

gradual improvements and to avoid disastrous policy blundersthat could make the situation even

worse. In this context, and based on the experience of other developing countriesthat have suc-
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Afghanistan And The International Drug Control Regime

page 4 • PB 143 • April 16, 2013

About This Brief

William Byrd is a development 

economist and has worked on 

Afghanistan in various capacities over the past decade and 

longer. During 2002–2006, he was 

stationed in Kabul, Afghanistan, 

where he served as the World 

Bank’s country manager for 

Afghanistan and then as economic adviser. He is currently 

an Afghanistan Senior Expert at 

the U.S. Institute of Peace. This 

paper builds on his earlier work 

on illicit narcotics in Afghanistan 

from a development perspective, 

including several books, reports, 

and papers. The views expressed 

in this brief do not necessarily 

represent the views of the U.S. 

Institute of Peace, which does not 

take policy positions.

cessfully eliminated drug crop cultivation on a sustainable basis(e.g., Thailand and Pakistan), there

is no substitute for a long-term rural development approach to increase non-drug incomes and

livelihoods over time,9 while judiciously using law enforcement instrumentssuch as eradication as

and after rural development progressis achieved, not in its absence.10

Endnotes

1. See UNODC and Afghan Ministry of Counter Narcotics, Afghanistan Opium Survey 2012: 

Summary Findings.

2. This was discussed in William Byrd and David Mansfield,“Drugsin Afghanistan: A Forgotten

Issue?”(USIP PeaceBrief No. 126, May 2012). See David Mansfield, All Bets are Off! Prospects for (B)

reaching Agreements and Drug Control in Helmand and Nangarhar in the run up to Transition (AREU,

January 2013) for a detailed empirical analysis of these two key provinces.

3. See AREU Briefing Paper by Paul Fishstein and David Mansfield (forthcoming).

4. See, amongothers, The Wall Street Journal,January 25, 2013, andThe New York Times, February 4, 2013.

5. The Senlis Council (subsequently renamed the International Council on Security and Development) hasstrongly advocated for a licensing regime for opium in Afghanistan. See Feasibility Study 

on Opium Licensing in Afghanistan for the Production of Morphine and Other Essential Medicines—

Initial Findings (September 2005) and Afghan Poppy for Medicine Projects: An Economic Case Study

(November 2007).

6. The international conventions on narcotic drugs and their historical background are discussed in

Julia Buxton,“The Historical Foundations of the Narcotic Drug Control Regime,”in Philip Keefer and

Norman Loayza (editors), Innocent Bystanders: Developing Countries and the War on Drugs (Washington, DC: Palgrave Macmillan and The World Bank, 2010), chapter 2.

7. See Keefer and Loayza, especially chapter 1. Also see The Alternative World Drug Report: Counting 

the Costs of the War on Drugs (2012).

8. Where existing public policies carry high costs but reap uncertain benefits, a standard prescription would be to try out different approaches on a pilot basis to gain better information

about what works and what doesn’t, rather than sticking with the existing policy regime in its

entirety (Keefer and Loayza, chapter 1). The Report of the Global Commission on Drug Policy (2011)

makes a strong plea for debate and reform, arguing that the global war on drugs has failed.

9.A2008 reportoftheU.K.DepartmentforInternationalDevelopment andtheWorldBank—Afghanistan: 

Economic Incentives and Development Interventions to Reduce Opium Production—putforwardamediumtermruraldevelopmentprogramtoreduceAfghanistan’sdependenceonopiumpoppy cultivation.

10. In Afghanistan itself there are localities(typically characterized by proximity to urban markets

for agricultural products and labor, and by good per-capita land and water resources) where there

are plentiful farm and non-farm income generating opportunities and poppy bans have been

effective, that have moved away from opium poppy cultivation on a sustained basis.