So, what were the Americans actually attacking?

Richard Holbrooke, the US special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan in 2009, called it “the most unsuccessful operation in the history of US foreign policy”. In its leak of the Afghanistan Papers, the ‘Washington Post’ said that the war on drugs was probably the “most irresponsible” failure of all. And the former president of Afghanistan Hamid Karzai claimed in 2004 that opium cultivation was more dangerous than the invasion of the Soviets, tribal fighting in the country and even terrorism.

The sudden victory of the Taliban against the Government of Kabul after the improvised withdrawal of the United States has led many to wonder how it is possible that, after 20 years on the ground, the world’s leading power has failed to weaken the Taliban. And although the complex question contains many answers, the failed war against poppies – from which opium is extracted to produce heroin, whose industry would have generated an income of $ 400 million for the Taliban according to the UN – is one of the best examples to explain everything the US has done wrong in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan produces about 90% of the world’s opium. The UN Office of Drugs and Crime said in 2018 that the country’s opioid economy hovered between 6 and 11% of GDP and exceeded “the value of exported goods and services.” However, as the vast majority of the 224,000 hectares where poppies were grown in 2020 was controlled by the Taliban, who tax the harvest and sale of opium, the insurgents have always managed to get a good cut.

Since the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, the poppy trade has played a fundamental destabilizing role, both in corrupting the Afghan government and the police and in financing the rise of the Taliban, said Gretchen Peters in the report ‘How Opium profits the Taliban‘.

Control the poppies, you’ll control Afghanistan

In three of the last four years, Afghanistan has produced the highest levels of opium on record, according to UNODC. Even with the pandemic, the increase in poppy cultivation grew by 37% in 2020. In a recent report, Reuters quoted a US official lamenting that he failed to bring down the heroin ring that has made the Taliban so rich. 

“We’ve stood by on the sidelines and, unfortunately, allowed the Taliban to become probably the largest funded non-designated terrorist organization on the globe.”

There are two main reasons why the United States has not succeeded in ending opium cultivation in the country, explains Jeffrey Clemens, an American economist who has done several studies on the drug industry in Afghanistan. 

The first is that carrying out a ban is very difficult, especially when you don’t control the entire country, as happened to the US-backed government. The second is related to the low elasticity of demand for heroin: it doesn’t matter what Whatever it costs, the traffickers will continue to buy.

Opium has been produced in poppy fields for centuries. The boom in its production took place in the 1980s, when the Mujahideen groups sought a form of financing in their fight against the Soviet Union. 

“We have to grow and sell opium to fight our holy war,” a Mujahideen leader told a New York Times reporter in 1986.

“Opium is the ideal crop in a war-torn country, as it requires little initial investment, it grows fast, it is easy to transport and it is traded well,” said a State Department report that year.

When the Taliban came to power in 1997, they vowed to end opium cultivation in order to open up to the world and receive help from international organizations. It did not happen until the arrival of the new millennium, when the guerrillas tried to put an end to it by lowering the farmland 10 times to 8,000 hectares. There is still debate among experts about whether this move was genuine and in good faith or whether it was made to save the merchandise and raise prices.

In any case, according to a UN survey, in 2001 the ban “had resulted in a serious loss of income for 3.3 million people (15% of the population)”. The report concluded that, in that sense, it would be easy for the population to rebel against the regime. It was never known if the Taliban really wanted to end opium because the US, together with the support of dozens of countries, invaded Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks.

The (failed) war against poppies

The United States has spent nearly $ 9 billion to crack down on Afghanistan’s opium industry since 2001, according to documents released in 2017 by the ‘Washington Post‘ investigation. 

American soldiers tried to give farmers cash to stop growing poppies, gassed fields with sprays, bombed laboratories, and even hand-plucked flowers. Unsuccessfully.

In many cases, as interviews with US officials, economists and academics have shown, these campaigns have had an adverse effect on what they were intended to achieve. First, because local populations who have been planting poppies for decades turned against the Kabul government supported by Washington for trying to end their way of life. Second, because, as Clemens explained earlier, US efforts ended up making the Taliban even richer.

When the US increased its efforts to end poppy cultivation, it succeeded in government-controlled areas, but ended up increasing cultivation in the Taliban areas due to a simple question of supply and demand, said Clemens. 

In addition, he added, it happened as with the prohibition of alcohol in the United States: “People do not quit drinking, but who was able to continue selling alcohol? The criminal organizations and Capone, here the same thing has happened.”

Another reason given by this economist has to do with the relative price of opium compared to the expenses it entails throughout the heroin production, shipping and sale chain. It is barely a small percentage compared to the mix to make the heroin or take it to the markets of Europe and the United States. Afghanistan is practically a monopoly in the heroin market, so buyers will be willing to pay more if there is a ‘shock’ in supply.

The US fiasco in Afghanistan to eradicate the drug business also had to do with the clash with counterinsurgency exercises. Or, as it is known in the jargon, “winning the hearts and minds”. 

“Counterinsurgency operations that relied on local citizens clashed with counter-narcotics operations that wanted to eradicate opium,” Todd Greentree, a military adviser who was in Afghanistan for four years, told the Post.

In late 2017, the United States launched Operation Iron Tempest to take down clandestine laboratories that helped finance the Taliban. More than 200 bombings later, they ended the mission due to its high cost and its ineffectiveness. 

A study by the London School of Economics concluded that this campaign had little impact and was more a loss of hundreds of thousands of dollars than anything else.

After its conquest, the Taliban assure that they will end the drug business. “I can guarantee that, from now on, Afghanistan will be a narcotics-free country,” said a spokesman for the insurgents on Tuesday, assuring that they will introduce an alternative to poppy crops. Even believing in their good faith, as the failure of the United States has shown, it will not be easy. 

“The British tried to pay double for wheat crops,” says Clemens. 

“And you know what the opium buyers did? Offer twice as much.”