Examination of Witnesses (Questions 102-112)
DAVID MANSFIELD
AND FABRICE
POTHIER
25 MARCH 2009
Q102 Chairman: I thank the next witnesses
for waiting and welcome them. Perhaps you could introduce yourselves.
Fabrice Pothier: I am Director
of Carnegie Europe, part of the Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace. I have been working on Afghanistan for the past five years,
mostly focusing on the connections between insurgency, drugs and
the reconstruction effort.
David Mansfield: I am one of those
consultant-type characters. I come at the drugs issue from a rural
development background. I have had the joy of spending the last
11 years wandering around rural Afghanistan talking to farmers,
typically opium poppy farmers, although they are increasingly
hard to find. I do that work for a range of different bodies,
including bilaterals and NGOs.
Chairman: In this session, we are going
to concentrate on the narcotics, or drugs issue. First, I call
Sandra Osborne.
Q103 Sandra Osborne: I think that
you have made comments about the opium statistics that have been
produced, Mr. Mansfield, and the fact that the term "poppy-free"
is used as a measure of success. Can you tell me if you feel that
that is a useful measure, or does it just hide the fact that traders
have moved up the value chain from cultivation to processing,
or into cannabis and hashish?
David Mansfield: My main point
on issues around cultivation is the fact that too often we just
look at annual figures and we fail to reflect on what drives those
numbers. Be it an issue around statements on poppy-free provinces
or arguments around success and failure, they are typically based
on an annual statement about a particular province or a particular
area. They do not capture the cause and effect. For instance,
if you look at some of the areas that have reduced poppy cultivation,
we have to look at why, historically, they went into cultivation.
This is something that is often forgotten. The paper that I think
you are referring to touches on the perception that the Taliban
ban was a great success—this "resounding" success
of the Taliban ban. I was around in those days and I spent a lot
of time prior to the ban and during the ban talking to farmers
and I actually saw the ban as highly problematic. If you take
out that level of cultivation from the local economy, you drive
up the price of opium poppy and you drive up debts, which are
often held in opium poppy—monetised opium-denominated loans.
To a large extent, it was no surprise that poppy cultivation came
back in abundance in 2002. The price went up from around $50 or
$100 a kilo—depending on where you were in the country—to
about $500 a kilo. The kind of areas that I wander around, such
as Ghor, did not grow much poppy in the late 1990s—or in
2001 even. Suddenly, it was at $500 a kilo. When you are getting
only 2 kg a jerib—a jerib being a fifth of a hectare—and
when it was $50 a kilo, it was not worth it. But when it was $500
a kilo, suddenly you change the economics of it. So we saw a lot
of areas that had not touched it before go into poppy cultivation.
I still go around these areas, and you see them growing poppy.
You are that close to saying, "Look, guys, what you need
are some decent seeds, which you need to thin and weed."
What we have seen over the last few years is that poppy prices
have come down post-Taliban ban. The Government of Afghanistan
inherited the results of the ban, and I argue that in many ways
the Taliban ban made it easier to get rid of the Taliban. You
cannot alienate all the rural population all the time, and when
we were out in 2001 talking to farmers, many of them commented
on that fact. In a very subtle, often Afghan, way, you would ask
what happens if a ban goes into 2002, the second year. In the
south, many people said, "There have been many amirs in my
lifetime, and I am sure that there will be many more."—Amir
al-Mu'minin being Mullah Omar. There were some very strong undercurrents
of the threat in the east as well. The Machiavellian deals that
were struck to bring about this ban could have very easily come
unstuck—but of course, we will never find out because the
Taliban fell in November of that year. The new Government, Hamid
Karzai's Government, comes in and inherits a $500-a-kilo price.
Subsequently, many people go into opium poppy cultivation—it
suddenly becomes different. Now, prices are down to about $65
a kilo. Many of those marginal areas have very little interest
in growing poppy. We may argue that some of that is due to the
effects of governors and their efforts to reduce poppy, but when
you look at the terms of trade between wheat and poppy—they
fundamentally switched back. It now makes no sense to grow opium
poppy to buy wheat when you can get more wheat by growing it on
your land. I think the critique on the number scale, the hectarage
number, is a useful overall indicator. But unless you break it
down and look at the context—you can break it down by province,
and even within province—and look at what is driving change,
it is slightly distorted, and pursuing these annual figures can
be quite unhelpful.
Fabrice Pothier: If I may add,
poppy-free does not necessarily mean free from the opium threat.
I think that that is where the concept can be slightly ambiguous,
if not misleading. Indeed, you have 18 provinces that have a near-zero
poppy cultivation level, but that does not mean that they do not
have trafficking and processing activities. I am thinking mostly
of the western and northern regions of Afghanistan, which are
major hubs for the opium and heroin going to the destination markets.
The point that I am making is that it is important to have concepts.
We understand that the UN Office on Drugs and Crime needs some
success—it is a donors' agency and relies on yearly donations
from its donors—but it should not narrow our understanding
of the situation. Second, poppy-free does not mean that it is
free from effort. It is very important to ask ourselves the question:
how can we sustain progress in the regions that are not as affected
by the opium problem as in the south? I will finish on the broader
point that is connected to what David said earlier. The quantitative
assessment of the opium problem in Afghanistan—hectare and
tonnage, so mostly production and cultivation—is important,
but is not enough. The problem is much more comprehensive, so
you need a more comprehensive grid to analyse the problem, which
should include security, trafficking and governance data to truly
understand the context in which the opium problem is happening.
Chairman: The Division bell is about
to ring. We will have to suspend and come back. If there are two
votes, it will be around 30 minutes, unfortunately, and I apologise
for that. But as soon as we return here with a quorum, we will
continue with questions. We will be back as soon as we can.
Sitting suspended for Divisions in the House.
On resuming—
Chairman: Sandra, had you finished your
line of questioning?
Q104 Sandra Osborne: I have a question
about the overall strategy. I get the impression that you feel
the present Afghan Government strategy on drugs is not sufficient.
What do you think of the UK's role in the whole situation?
David Mansfield: One of the issues
is that counter-narcotics has too often been seen as a distinct
pillar. There has been an increasing realisation of that. It is
a bit like pursuing this hectarage target. You adopt a number
of different approaches by which to reduce hectarage. On the consequences
of reducing poppy cultivation, as we have seen in some provinces,
if you reduce it dramatically, as we saw with the Taliban ban,
you can undermine the efforts in terms of governance, security
and overall economic growth. It is about having a balance. Counter-narcotics
does not sit distinct as a separate strand from the overall effort.
It is a cross-cutting issue. I have often argued that if you look
at cultivation in the south, one of the things that would probably
deliver a greater counter-narcotics effort than anything over
and above the issues around eradication, would be dealing with
the checkpoints which are making the movement of legal goods highly
problematic. If I grow onion in Helmand and I try to take it to
the market in Kandahar, I have to go through 14 checkpoints to
get the goods to market. Everyone wants some baksheesh. By the
time I get to market I am very much a price taker and I am at
a loss. I have case studies of farmers who have gone through that
calculation. They have good land. They have enormous agricultural
potential. But when it comes to actually getting their goods to
market, it is not worth it because of the costs of checkpoints
and of moving down what is perceived to be a very dangerous road.
So people grow poppy on their land and let people come to them.
Now removing the checkpoints or, mentoring the checkpoints so
that they are not taking baksheesh, and constraining the movement
of legal goods is fundamental. No one calls that counter-narcotics,
but it would have a counter-narcotics outcome. It is similar with
local procurement: buying Afghan goods, the Afghan First initiative,
involving the UK military and other militaries—some of this
has been explored—increasing the market for Afghan goods
rather than flying goods in from overseas. We need to boost that.
The Americans have been ahead of the game on that in buying Afghan
water rather than flying water in. So, boosting the economy, building
the demand for local goods and allowing those goods to travel
freely, will all have a counter-narcotics outcome. But too often,
you have this set of distinct activities such as eradication—so-called—and
alternative livelihoods, rather than good rural development in
which the causes of cultivation are understood and integrated
into design and implementation rather than broader governance
efforts in which the impact on counter-narcotics is understood.
I think we have seen that realisation. In fact you increasingly
see the language around drugs as a cross-cutting issue recognised.
I think the UK has for a long time recognised that. Then there
is the capacity to deliver that in the face of some of the ways
that budgets are produced—particularly with the US. The
US Congress has its certification process. The drugs budget is
set by Congress as part of whether you have co-operated with the
US on anti-drugs efforts. It is a distinct budget. Now whether
that will change under the new Administration is yet to be seen.
But there is the realisation that this can no longer be dealt
with in isolation. It is part of the effort, but if you get the
balance wrong and go in too hard on counter-narcotics too quickly
you can risk the progress that has been made in some areas. I
see it quite regularly in some of the field work I do. You go
to areas where people have abandoned poppy. They are earning more
money today than they did when they grew poppy because they have
a range of different crops. They have a short season inter-crop.
They have multiple harvests and they bring in more money than
poppy, particularly at today's prices. They are quite content
that poppy has gone. They recognise it as having caused insecurity
and they have an alternative. Some people will say, "Even
if they let me grow poppy, I would not go back to it." The
problem lies in other areas where those options are not available
because we are not doing the right things in terms of investment
in economic development and easing the kind of transaction costs
and nuisance taxes that exist.
Q105 Sandra Osborne: This is probably
a naive question, but why is it so easy for the people buying
poppies to get to the farm and then get the stuff out? If there
are all these road blocks, why is it so easy for them?
David Mansfield: I was talking
to a trader not so long ago—it is a strange part of my work—and
he was expressing how, typically, he would try and avoid a road.
With opium, it is a high value, low weight product—you can
knock it about on a desert road and it is not going to perish.
It is different for tomatoes, it is different for melons; you
need stability of the road surface, otherwise you are not going
to have much of a crop left. This particular trader was commenting
on the fact that, when he travels to Government territory, or
where the Afghan National Police have checkpoints, he needs to
make sure that, if he is going through a checkpoint, he has some
kind of arrangement to facilitate the movement of goods. You do
not need to travel on the roads with opium, but you do need to
for other crops, fundamentally.
Fabrice Pothier: On effectiveness,
I would say that the problem in Afghanistan with counter-narcotics
so far, is that it is trying to be too many things at the same
time. David mentioned the fact that there were different strategies,
with different actors, going on at the same time on the ground,
so I will not elaborate on that. I think the basic problem is
that we have still not addressed the opium dilemma that we face
in Afghanistan. That is, we do not want to inflame the situation,
nor do we want to accommodate it, and we have not yet found the
right middle ground. It seems that a new approach could be to
think more in terms of cost-efficiency and risk. By cost-efficiency,
I mean how much difference do you make by investing in interdiction,
or investing in education, or investing in comprehensive rural
development? On risk, how much are your drug policies going to
help you to lower the risk that the local rural population faces
and make the risk of trafficking higher? We need to move from
the usual political wisdom that is often the basis of counter-narcotic
strategy to one based on a rational appreciation of cost-efficiency
and risk. I would give, as an example, the discussion on merging
counter-insurgency with counter-narcotics. This has been discussed
for the past year or year-and-a-half, and it is really a step
in the wrong direction. That is because, first, counter-insurgency
and counter-narcotics have very different sequencing, a very different
timeline. In counter-insurgency, you need to deliver progress
within the next few years for political reasons, not only at home
with public opinion, but also on the ground to gain the support
of the local population. In counter-narcotics—as we saw
in Thailand, Pakistan and, to a lesser extent, in Latin America—this
is a generational effort, so you do not want to link something
that is going to take 25 years, with something where you need
to deliver results in the coming years. Probably a step in a better
direction is to have a two-pronged approach. One prong is to embed
counter-narcotics within the broader comprehensive rural development
strategy. This is something that I know the UK Government are
trying to do by connecting the counter-narcotic ministry with
other ministries. That is key to understanding that drugs are
about not just crops, but a complex rural economic system. If
you want to address that, you need to set complex policy and a
complex set of incentives. The second level of this new approach
could be to really focus on the interdiction; not only interdiction
in Afghanistan, but interdiction out of Afghanistan—outside,
in the region. If you look at Colombia and at Plan Colombia that
was developed in the 1990s by the Colombian and US Governments,
what you see is that the war on land—the war on drug production
in the field—was the most inefficient part of the effort.
The most efficient was the war on the drug routes, not only the
routes inside Colombia, but also outside in the Caribbean and
reaching to the US market. Here you have an opportunity to think
more in terms of cost-efficiency, lowering the risk for the local
population and making trafficking, and also corruption, a higher-risk
enterprise.
Q106 Sir John Stanley: One point
where, inescapably, counter-insurgency and counter-narcotics come
together is on the cash front. The figure that I have—I
think that it is also a UN figure—which has been confirmed
today, is that the Taliban, in very round terms, are creaming
off about $100 million a year from the narcotics business in Afghanistan.
That is a wall of money that makes it extraordinarily easy for
them both to corrupt governmental systems and to hire their fighters
at the going rate of $10 a day. How is that money creamed off
and moved about? Is it moved around essentially in cash, or is
it moved around electronically? Do you think that there is more
that the Afghan Government, and possibly the Pakistan, British,
American and other NATO Governments, can do to try to interdict
this wall of cash, which must start out as cash, getting into
the hands of the Taliban? If it gets into the hands of the Taliban,
can they try to freeze it there? May I have your thoughts on that?
Fabrice Pothier: The right hon.
Gentleman raises a very important point about the connection between
drugs and the Taliban. It is also a very loaded point. You mentioned
that $100 million a year will flow to the Taliban from the opium
economy. That is the equivalent of 40% of the alleged Taliban
war budget, and that is the only figure that we have. I want to
raise three very strong points of caution over the concept of
a drug-Taliban nexus. First, as I mentioned earlier, there is
only one figure, which is a UNODC-produced figure. It is mostly
a statistical extrapolation over what, potentially, the Taliban
could generate by taxing up to 10% of the production in the areas
that they want control over. Therefore, the evidence is very weak
so far, and there is very little documentation about the extent
and the type of relationship between the Taliban and the drugs
economy. Are they taxing, protecting, facilitating or integrating
the drug economy in their war strategy? In Colombia, the FARC
have direct control over the drug economy because they have direct
control over the arable lands—the lands that are used to
produce opium. Is that the same with the Taliban? It seems that
the evidence points at no because the control that they exert
is much more complex and more mixed than direct territorial control.
If you look at the historic relationship between the Taliban and
drugs, it is one of ambiguity and opportunism, rather than a symbiotic
relationship. Earlier, David mentioned the Taliban ban on opium,
which shows that they go for or against opium when it serves some
higher political purpose. Therefore, we have to keep that in mind.
My second point of qualification is that looking at the financial
link, we are missing the more important political link between
drugs and the Taliban—the fact that the Taliban are using
the poppy as a political tool to have leverage over the local
population and to get involved in the local power play. It is
a call for us not only to have a PR strategy that tells the people
that we are not here to threaten them, but to integrate our counter-narcotics
strategy in our comprehensive rural one. Finally, this notion
of a link between drugs and Taliban is also a distraction from
the much more threatening systemic threat, which is the link between
drugs and governance. That is threatening the efforts of the British
and Afghan Governments and all the other donors to build a set
of Afghan institutions. If the Taliban generate $100 million from
the drugs trade, which is a questionable figure, how much is there
for the corruption system that flows into the local, regional
and national institutions? I would add a strong note of caution
on that. I agree that there is a need for thinking how we can
interdict the flow of money that is less sophisticated than the
one in Latin America because the drug economy is still at a less
sophisticated level and is not as integrated in terms of cartel
as you have in Latin America. You do not have the kind of sophisticated
transaction that you will see between Latin America and northern
America with the drug money. But some mafia are starting to build
their links in Afghanistan because increasingly more opium is
being processed into heroin, which means that you have more value
in Afghanistan now than years ago. Indeed, interdiction will be
increasingly important in the next years if we want to at least
contain the problem.
David Mansfield: I can also urge
caution about some of the numbers. In a one-week period, we saw
figures of $100 million and $250 million from UNODC, so there
are a lot of doubts about just how much it is. That is not to
say that there is not a relationship. Afghanistan works in a highly
decentralised way. I have bits of field work saying, "Ushr",
the agricultural tithe. In some cases, the Taliban take 5%; in
some cases, they take 10%. Let us look back at the Taliban ban
and how that was implemented in different ways in different parts
of the country. Who are the Taliban? Particularly today, who are
the Taliban? They are not some sort of monolith. They are not
an organisation that can impose its will across the entire country.
We have very decentralised structures. Essentially, what we always
had in relation to militias, be they Taliban or not, were local
commanders who were instructed to find money to pay for fighters,
to pay for guns, and to feed those fighters. Whatever the lootable
resource, if it was drugs, it if was onions or lapis lazuli, all
of those things got taxed as did their movement. Drugs are particularly
attractive, because they have a much higher financial worth, but
how is that tax controlled and moved up the system, or is it kept
rather localised? I suspect that it is the latter. That is not
to say that there is not a relationship. That is not to say that
certain commanders have a political advantage in adopting the
relationship locally and, particularly, in relation to portraying
themselves fundamentally as nationalists. Fabrice touched on this,
but the perception, whether right or wrong, in the south is of
a Government who are potentially more involved in the movement
of drugs than the Taliban. I do not have an evidence base for
that, but it is the perception you constantly get in discussions
with farmers.There is a degree of the politics of opium, and the
way in which it has been used in a provocative way, when Talibs
say, "Okay, we banned it in 2001, but we are good Afghans.
You are good Afghans. We understand your problems. Feel free,
grow opium." In the 1990s, I heard anecdotes from farmers
about the Taliban giving out seeds and agricultural extension
advice, but at the time I never came across that in the years
in which I was doing field work. Now you hear about something
that is definitely more of an attempt to encourage cultivation.
Is that only because of finance or is it part of a political strategy?
Is it a provocation strategy to encourage cultivation and provoke
aggressive eradication? Here would be an Afghan Government whom
the people perceive to be more involved in drugs than the Taliban
themselves; they would be perceived as corrupt in relation to
the manning of checkpoints and preventing people from moving into
legal production even if they choose to, and are essentially doing
it for western consumers who have the drugs problem. That is not
true. Afghans have a considerable drugs problem themselves, but
the way that this has been played out in the field is very much
an attempt to provoke, and we need to be cautious. Actions against
the relationship between the Taliban and drugs are right, but
similarly you need to balance them against the Government and
drugs.
Q107 Sir John Stanley: Is your evidence
that the Taliban fighters are being paid in US dollars or in Afghan
money? If they are being paid in US dollars and they are on an
annual rate of, say, $3,500 per Afghan fighter a year, where is
all the cash being held?
David Mansfield: I am way outside
my comfort zone, but how things typically work, whether people
are being paid money or whether they are being paid in kind in
terms of three meals a day, is quite an attractive option for
many Afghan rural workers, particularly in times of agricultural
underemployment. As for whether they get a cash salary or an in-kind
payment, it is probably the latter—but, as I said, to a
degree I am way outside my comfort zone.
Q108 Mr. Heathcoat-Amory: I wanted
to focus on the degree of high-level political commitment to the
anti-drugs strategy. We have heard how drugs are funding the Taliban
and subverting the Government of Afghanistan. Could it be said
that, despite what, I am sure, are sincere announcements of an
anti-narcotics drive, drugs have nevertheless achieved a degree
of tolerance by the Government? Could it also be said that because
Afghanistan, unlike Iraq, has no oil, maybe drugs are seen in
some quarters as a national source of income?
Fabrice Pothier: I will refer
to the point raised by the previous expert, Dr. Jonathan Goodhand,
about there being a functional—not to say acceptable—level
of corruption. It is obviously very hard to determine precisely,
but I think that it also applies to the question of the acceptable
or functional level of a drug economy in a country. What is the
point at which the basic institutions of the state and the market
economy are not threatened? What is the point beyond which those
institutions are threatened? Clearly, we are now in a situation
in Afghanistan where the state institutions, as well as the market
economy, are dependent on the drug economy. One needs to be mindful
when talking about eradicating the drugs problem—which is
something that everyone wishes—of the consequences of doing
so. I think that the World Bank, in one of its previous reports,
used an interesting term: "poppy shock". That means,
if you dry up all the sources of the poppy cash, you may actually
end up shocking the national economy. It is not only 30% equivalent
of GDP, it is feeding the GDP—the building sector, export-import.
It is really sitting at the core of what Afghanistan is today.
One has to apply a very smart, well-targeted strategy to progressively
contain and, hopefully, shrink this economy without causing consequences
worse than the problem itself. On the question of political will,
I totally agree. I think that this is the pillar that is missing
from the Afghan national counter-narcotics strategy. It is missing
partly because of complex Afghan political reasons, which I think
that we are all aware of, but also because of the west's own strategy
towards the drugs problem. You literally have as many strategies
as you have actors in Afghanistan. The US has its five-pillar
strategy, the UK has the maybe unlucky position of being the partner
nation on counter-narcotics, then you have the EU with its comprehensive,
rapid development strategy. So you have high fragmentation, and
that does not leave much space for true Afghan capacity to develop.
I shall conclude by referring to an example. The recent move by
NATO last October to become involved in the interdiction of drug
facilities and facilitators, however well intentioned, again reduces
the space for true Afghan capacity. What you need is an Afghan
capacity that can, for the next 10, 20 or 30 years, keep up the
pressure on the traffickers. What we are doing is importing this
capacity from abroad, and obviously within some years it will
have to leave.
David Mansfield: I deal with the
perceptions of farmers. They are the people who, fundamentally,
I spend my time with. When it comes to the discussions that we
have with farmers, you can be in the middle of nowhere, in some
remote place, and there is a perception to which they will refer:
"You kharaji"—foreigners—"all you care
about is drugs. How am I meant to give up opium poppy given my
socio-economic position?" In some cases that is true, but
in others it may not be. What am I meant to read from this when
they name various characters, locally or nationally, whom they
believe—whether right or wrong—to be involved in drugs?
The perception of the farmers themselves is of a very mixed approach
by the Government. What I have found over the years is how many
are willing to take, to some extent, the hit of action against
them if they believe that it is equitable in terms of action against
the more senior people. People in remote Badakhshan growing opium
poppy will say, "Look, they come and destroy my field, but
the white house up on the hill is owned by a local commander who
has these links. He is the guy who is more involved than anyone
in this area. Why is it always me?" I think that this whole
issue of the rural population's perception of the state being
involved in the business, and the fact that those state actors
can somehow continue, while they often perceive themselves as
the victims of counter-narcotics activity needs to be resolved.
There is no doubt about that at all. I am far more agnostic than
others on issues around NATO involvement. In the very early days—2001-02—people
often asked, "How are we meant to read the international
community's position on drugs when soldiers will walk through
a bazaar where opium is being traded and they say nothing, yet
when it comes to poppy cultivation itself, there is a feeling
that it is not acceptable." There are so many mixed messages
in how people perceive our actions as well as those of the Government
themselves. Hamid Karzai has made a lot of statements against
opium poppy, but again, the perception of farmers is that they
are only statements. It is the classic situation: these anti-drug
statements are made by the provincial shura, and it goes to the
district shura, but to some extent they are window-dressing, because
the action on the ground says something quite different.
Q109 Mr. Moss: I think that you almost
answered the question I was going to pose, which relates to eradication.
I think that Mr. Pothier was saying that there are so many different
policies that this leaves a vacuum and nothing really gets done.
How do you overcome this difference in approach and how would
you go about formulating a single policy that people can buy into,
but that is actually integrated with the Afghan Government's actions
as well?
David Mansfield: I think that
there is a single policy, which is the position on eradication.[2]
I have seen eradication work on the ground at one level and not
work on others. Is there eradication where someone has a viable
alternative? As I said earlier, you meet farmers who have adopted
a range of different crops and this diversification of cropping
systems. Because they are no longer growing poppy, which is incredibly
labour-intensive, they free up some of their labour by adopting
these other crops to go and find a job in the city. The combination
of those on-farm, off-farm, non-farm income opportunities can
be higher than poppy, but it is only available for some. In those
areas, people perceive that the threat of eradication is real,
they are near the provincial centre and it is credible. So it
acts as a catalyst. People are not thinking, "Well, if I
grow poppy and they come and destroy the crop, I will have lost
all that money from poppy." They are thinking, "I could
have grown a combination of green beans, onions and other crops,
and sent my son to the city. That is the money that I have now
lost by growing poppy and having it destroyed." There is
a real opportunity cost associated with poppy cultivation. Eradication
can therefore be catalytic. It forces people to make the decision
that, in some way, they should have done. Some of these characters
say, "Look, I recognise that the local commanders make money
out of drugs. It exacerbates insecurity. I recognise that it is
haram and I would much prefer to do something else and therefore
I have done." The problem lies in other areas, where there
is a very high population density.[3]
People essentially do not have access to the markets for other
crops—the high-value horticulture—and there are limitations
on non-farm income opportunities. So when they give up poppies
and there is a threat of eradication and all their crops being
destroyed, they can end up just growing wheat. The consequence
of that is that they do not have enough wheat to feed their family
because their landholding is too small and the yields are too
low. So you press them and when you press them, those characters
will react. There are very clear examples of that. So the eradication
strategy—the national drug control strategy—says,
"eradication where viable alternatives exist". The question
is, how do you measure where someone has a viable alternative?
This is the continuing discussion. In Helmand the perception is
that people have good landholdings—and it is true. Good
irrigation—it is true. There are large tracts of Helmand
where they have a viable alternative and therefore eradication
is a justified act.[4]
The question there lies in the issue of security and how insecurity
prevents markets from functioning.As I mentioned about the onions
earlier, the crucial issue is getting goods to market. That is
what makes the difference between a viable alternative and agricultural
potential that the farmer cannot realise. This is where there
is much discussion, and I can see it in relation to fieldwork
that was done in November. I am doing that report now, and I can
see where farmers are shifting out of poppy cultivation. They
are adopting the high-value horticulture. That is a sustainable
shift, and eradication can be catalytic in that environment, even
in parts of the south. But as soon as you get to a situation where
a farmer is getting rid of poppy and only growing wheat, you have
to be concerned about the sustainability of that, and you have
to be concerned about the role that eradication would play in
that environment in terms of deteriorating economic growth and
exacerbating the security situation.
Fabrice Pothier: I maintain that
there are too many policies and actors. We have a policy on paper,
but we do not have a policy on the ground, and what we need is
a smart policy. It seems that those who have been smartest so
far are the Taliban in using poppies to have leverage on the local
population, creating problematic situations for NATO troops in
the south. So what would be the smart policy? What would be the
kind of basic criteria it would rely on? First, I think policy
should be adapted to the local circumstances, as David just mentioned.
Some regions are remote, with poor access to markets, and basic
rural resources. Using eradication in that case would be counter-productive.
Using eradication in regions that are more connected to markets
and the main cities can be—if well-targeted—a useful
tool. That is the first criterion. It has to be adapted to local
circumstances. Secondly, you have to ask yourself the question,
can the Afghans do it? And if they cannot do it, what can we do
to help them to do it, and in the long term as well? The third
criterion would be, what resources are available? We have not
raised this point, but we do not have unlimited resources. Financially,
but also politically, the policy was that the west can invest
in such an endeavour. So we need to ask ourselves what we can
seriously do and maintain to do—not for one or two years
but for 10—that will make a positive difference. So I am
just coming back to my basic notion earlier of the cost-efficiency
notion for counter-narcotics.
Q110 Mr. Moss: Has anyone ever considered
just giving cash, like we do in Europe for all sorts of nefarious
activities now on farms? We do not pay for product—we just
give the farmers cash for doing their hedgerows or cleaning the
irrigation channels or whatever. It must cost the west a huge
amount of money—not only the cream-off the Taliban gets
and fighting the Taliban militarily, but in all sorts of other
ways. Has no one ever considered going to the farmer and saying,
"Stop growing poppies. Here is a cash payout"?
Fabrice Pothier: You are suggesting
that we implement the common agricultural policy in Afghanistan?
I understand the question. I think it has been tried, including
by the British Government earlier—I think in 2002-03—and
it was counter-productive because of the basic capacity problems
of delivering the cash to the right people in an equitable way.
More importantly, you cannot pay yourself out of the drug problem.
The basic reason is that a very complex market system operates
there. You could fix it for one year, but you would still have
a criminal system there. In Thailand, they wiped out the poppy
problem, but synthetic drugs have replaced poppies and, in fact,
they use the same criminal system that existed before. You need
a policy to dismantle the illicit market rather than trying to
pay your way out of it.
Q111 Mr. Moss: Another way around
seems to be targeting the so-called precursor chemicals. Is that
a viable alternative to the policy?
Fabrice Pothier: It is not an
alternative; it is a very important complement. Figures show that
an increasingly high quantity of those chemical precursors is
going to Afghanistan, which is an indication that the drug market
is consolidating and increasing in value. According to UNODC,
70% of heroin is now produced in Afghanistan itself. Indeed, having
a chemical precursor strategy would be an important and effective
way of trying to cut the higher-value, and therefore more threatening,
part of the drug economy.
Chairman: I am conscious of time. Do
you have anything to add, Mr. Mansfield?
David Mansfield: I wanted to say
something about buying the crop, which is a suggestion that often
comes up. One of my big issues with it is that it would stimulate
the opium market, when actually we should be investing our effort
in buying up legal crops and stimulating legal production.
Q112 Chairman: A final question.
The Committee visited Iran in 2007 and there was a lot of discussion
about the millions of people there who are taking the products
of Afghanistan and consuming them and becoming heroin addicts.
Also, the Iranians talked about the hundreds or thousands of police
officers that they had lost in battles with people in these convoys.
This stuff has to go through either Pakistan or Iran to get out.
What prospect is there for effective regional co-operation to
deal with the problem? You talked about interdiction and how to
stop the heroin getting to Europe or elsewhere.
Fabrice Pothier: That is a key
aspect that has been given too little attention. How do you involve
the destination markets? In that case, western Europe does not
count; what counts is Iran, Pakistan, Russia and, increasingly,
the central Asian markets. Some 2.8% of Iran's population are
drug users and Afghanistan is close behind, at 1.4%. Iran has
around 3 million drug users, to use a broad term—that does
not mean injection drug users; it can also mean smoking heroin
or using opium. So Iran has a huge drug problem. It has tried
to take a more innovative approach to the problem by implementing
some progressive health responses, such as a clean needle exchange
in Tehran. However, obviously, the political context in Iran is
highly unpredictable and difficult, so there are also reversals
of policy. They have a problem of drug smuggling on their eastern
border, especially with Herat, where thousands of the Iranian
border forces have been killed in clashes with drug smugglers.
That touches on the broader point of the need to involve Russia,
Iran and central Asian countries, as well as Pakistan, in thinking
about having comprehensive strategies not only in Afghanistan,
but that reconcile supply with demand. If you are successful in
Afghanistan, there will just be a balloon effect by which the
market will move to another place, such as Tajikistan. You will
still have a demon to deal with. I think the British Government
could make a very helpful contribution in advising those Governments
on how to develop more comprehensive and progressive approaches,
which you still do not see. In Russia, 80% of the HIV/AIDS-infected
people are drug users. A very comprehensive strategy is needed.
David Mansfield: When we talk
about the wider Afghan effort, we cannot ignore the regional players.
That is the same with the CN effort. When it comes to Iran, there
is always an inroad on the drugs issue because they have the 3,500
martyrs—that is how they would express it—whom they
have lost on the border. It has been easier to co-operate with
Iran on that issue than on many other issues.
Chairman: Gentlemen, thank you very much.
This has been an extremely valuable session and we are grateful
for your time.
2 <ep<nh Note by witness: The current
eradication policy is of only destroying the crop where viable
alternatives exist. Back
3
<ep<nh Note by witness: and small landholdings. Back
4
<ep<nh Note by witness: Some argue that there are
large tracts of land in Helmand where eradication is possible
as they have alternatives. I would argue insecurity means that
many farmers do not have alternatives. Back
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