linkages, synergies, response to diversity, prioritization, and sequencing that is necessary to make the counter-narcotics strategy work effectively.

## **Box 1: National Drug Control Strategy—Objective, Priorities, Pillars**

The NDCS, which has gone through several versions and is expected to be revised again in the fall of 2007, puts forward a credible multi-dimensional approach, which is briefly summarized below. **_Overall Policy Goal:_** To secure a sustainable decrease in cultivation, production, trafficking, and consumption of illicit drugs with a view to complete and sustainable elimination. **_National Priorities:_** I. Disrupting the drugs trade by targeting traffickers and their backers and eliminating the basis for the trade. II. Strengthening and diversifying legal rural livelihoods. III. Reducing the demand for illicit drugs and treatment of problem drug users. IV. Strengthening state institutions both at the centre and in the provinces. **_Pillars of Activity:_** (1) Public Awareness: (2) International and Regional Cooperation; (3) Alternative Livelihoods; (4) Demand Reduction; (5) Law Enforcement; (6) Criminal Justice; (7) Eradication; and (8) Institution Building **_Comments:_** _Source: Afghanistan Government (2006)._

# **Experience with Different Counter-Narcotics Instruments**

Until the Taliban’s comprehensive and (in the short run) highly successful opium poppy cultivation ban imposed in 2000, counter-narcotics efforts in Afghanistan were very marginal, consisting primarily of some small-scale alternative development projects of a pilot nature. Prior to their ban, the Taliban treated opium _de facto_ as a legal commodity. Moreover, the Taliban ban applied to opium cultivation but not to trade in opium and opiates.

Efforts to shrink the size of the opium economy in the post-Taliban era have been significant but fragmented and detached from the development agenda, and unevenly applied over time and across the country. Given also the entrenched nature of the opium economy, it is no surprise that counter-narcotics efforts have failed to prevent the large increases in opium production seen in recent years. However, this experience provides useful lessons for the future. Below are brief summaries of experience with each of the main counter-narcotics instruments deployed so far in Afghanistan.

**_Eradication and enforced cultivation reductions._** This category includes reductions in opium poppy cultivation achieved through pressure, persuasion, and threat of eradication as well as from outright eradication of crops in the field.  In fact, where sharp reductions in cultivation were achieved, physical eradication accounted for only a very small proportion of the decrease in cultivated area.

The two main instruments for physical eradication of opium poppy fields have been the Central Poppy Eradication Force (CPEF) and so-called “Governor-led eradication” implemented by police and other forces at the provincial level. The CPEF has limited capacity, often faces local resistance, and, lacking local knowledge, has to rely on local guidance with respect to where to focus its eradication efforts. As a consequence, most of the limited physical eradication of poppy crops that has occurred 16