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ADDICTION, CRIME AND INSURGENCY The transnational threat of Afghan opium UNITED NATIONS OFFICE ON DRUGS AND CRIME Vienna ADDICTION, CRIME AND INSURGENCY The transnational threat of Afghan opium Copyright © United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), October 2009 Acknowledgements This report was prepared by the UNODC Studies and Threat Analysis Section (STAS), in the framework of the UNODC Trends Monitoring and Analysis Programme/Afghan Opiate Trade sub-Programme, and with the collaboration of the UNODC Country Office in Afghanistan and the UNODC Regional Office for Central Asia. UNODC field offices for East Asia and the Pacific, the Middle East and North Africa, Pakistan, the Russian Federation, Southern Africa, South Asia and South Eastern Europe also provided feedback and support. A number of UNODC colleagues gave valuable inputs and comments, including, in particular, Thomas Pietschmann (Statistics and Surveys Section) who reviewed all the opiate statistics and flow estimates presented in this report. UNODC is grateful to the national and international institutions which shared their knowledge and data with the report team, including, in particular, the Anti Narcotics Force of Pakistan, the Afghan Border Police, the Counter Narcotics Police of Afghanistan and the World Customs Organization. Thanks also go to the staff of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan and of the United Nations Department of Safety and Security, Afghanistan. Report Team Research and report preparation: Hakan Demirbüken (Lead researcher, Afghan Opiate Trade Programme, STAS) Hayder Mili (Afghan Opiate Trade Programme, STAS) Jacob Townsend (UNODC Country Office in Afghanistan) Mapping support: Umidjon Rahmonberdiev (UNODC Regional Office for Central Asia) Odil Kurbanov (UNODC Regional Office for Central Asia) Editorial support and publication: Raggie Johansen (STAS) Suzanne Kunnen (STAS) Kristina Kuttnig (STAS) Supervision: Thibault Le Pichon (Chief, STAS) The preparation of this report benefited from the financial contributions of the United States of America and Turkey to the Afghan Opiate Trade Programme, and of the European Commission through UNODC Project GLOE69RU. Disclaimers This report has not been formally edited. The contents of this publication do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of UNODC or contributory organizations and neither do they imply any endorsement. The designations employed and the presentation of material in this publication do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of UNODC concerning the legal status of any country, territory or city or its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries. Photos: © UNODC, Alessandro Scotti TABLE OF CONTENTS Commentary by the Executive Director 1 Key facts 7 Executive summary 9 Introduction 21 I. THE OPIATE TRADE A. Global dimensions and flows 25 1. Overall magnitude of the problem 25 2. Demand and supply 26 3. Opiate seizures 32 4. Global opiate flows 36 5. Opiate trafficking routes 61 6. Value of the opiate trade 66 7. Afghan opiates in new markets 67 8. Precursor trafficking 67 B. The source of the trade 77 1. Opium poppy cultivation patterns: 2002-2008 77 2. Opium poppy-free provinces 89 3. Profile of opium poppy growing farmers and non-growing farmers 94 4. Poverty and motivation behind opium poppy cultivation 96 5. Farmers` income from opium in Afghanistan 98 6. Local traders and traffickers` income 98 II. THE OPIATE ECONOMY: A TRANSNATIONAL SECURITY THREAT A. Opiate economy and insurgency 101 1. Anti-Government Elements and insecurity in Afghanistan 102 2. Insurgent groups linked to Al-Qaeda and the Taliban 103 3. Organized crime 104 4. The opiate value chain and insecurity 106 5. Insurgency funding derived from trafficking 111 6. Taliban financial requirements 111 7. The opiate economy and the arms trade 112 B. Facilitating cross-border trafficking: Tribal links, insecurity and corruption 115 1. Opium cultivation and the Durrani confederation 117 2. Insurgency, tribalism and the drug trade 119 3. The Afghan-Pakistani border 120 4. The tribal areas of Pakistan 122 5. North Western Frontier Province (NWFP) 129 6. Balochistan 131 7. Refugee camps 136 8. Corruption 137 CONCLUDING REMARKS 143 COMMENTARY BY THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR In September, UNODC published its Afghan Opium Survey A. Addiction 2009 with detailed estimates of cultivation, production, labour force, revenues and domestic prices. The catalogue of casualties caused by Afghan narcotics is gruesome. We need to go back to the dramatic opium addic- This Report is a sort of a sequel: it presents a perspective tion in China a century ago to find comparable statistics. that is both deeper in scope and broader in geographical coverage. It looks at the multiple consequences of Afghan s Every year, more people die from Afghan opium drugs as they move through neighbouring states, along the than any other drug in the world: perhaps 100,000 Balkan and Eurasian routes, ending up in Europe, the Rus- globally. sian Federation, even China and India. This analysis is s The number of people who die of heroin overdoses in proposed to help the international community appreciate NATO countries per year (above 10,000) is five times the fact that we all are part of the Afghan drug problem: higher than the total number of NATO troops killed hence, we all must work for its solution, addressing all links in Afghanistan in the past 8 years, namely since the of the drug chain: (i.) assistance to farmers to reduce supply, beginning of military operations there in 2001. (ii.) drug prevention and treatment to curb demand, and (iii.) law enforcement against intermediaries. s The number of addicts in the Russian Federation has multiplied by 10 during the past 10 years, and they These intermediaries are not only shady characters linked now consume a staggering 75-80 tons/year of Afghan to international mafias. They are also (i.) white collar heroin. More Russian people die from drugs per Afghan officials, who take a cut by protecting the drug year (at present 30,000-40,000, according to govern- trade, as well (ii.) the religious fanatics and political insur- ment estimates) than the total number of Red Army gents who do the same to finance their cause. soldiers killed during the Soviet invasion and the By looking, with unprecedented detail, at the Health, Secu- ensuing 7-year Afghan campaign. rity and Stability dimensions of the Afghan drug problem, s Despite major efforts to cope with drug trafficking, this report shows what more needs to be done at a time the Islamic Republic of Iran is swamped by Afghan when, within the country, market forces have reduced opium: with its estimated 1 million opiate users, Iran domestic cultivation by 1/3 in the past 24 months. Let us faces one of the world’s most serious opiates addiction begin with the health question. problem. s Central Asia, once only a conduit for Afghan heroin, is now a major consumer – a habit that is resulting in an HIV epidemic caused by injecting drug use. 1 ADDICTION, CRIME AND INSURGENCY The transnational threat of Afghan opium These numbers show that Afghan opium is not a home- s Even worse, countries of South-Eastern Europe, made Marshall Plan, to replace (inadequate) foreign devel- including EU members like Greece, Bulgaria and opment assistance with (illegal) domestic revenues. Nor is Romania, are intercepting less than 2% of the heroin it the result of a country short on controls and long on cor- flow. ruption. Rather, these numbers suggest that the Afghan opium trade is a well-funded threat to the health of nations. There is something basically wrong with global counter- And what about security? narcotics. Why are global seizures of cocaine (from Andean countries) twice as high, in absolute and relative terms, than for opiates (from Afghanistan)? To understand the menace B. Crime resulting from this law enforcement failure, let us look at While in recent years opium has generated up to $1 billion the threat Afghan drugs pose to stability. per year to Afghan farmers, the global heroin market is worth many times that much ($65 billion). Not idly, Presi- C. Insurgency dent Karzai pointed out to me that: “we take 3% of the revenue and 100% of the blame”. This report documents the The Taliban’s relationship with opium has gone through extent to which benign neglect, incompetence and corrup- stages, each a manifestation of an opportunistic response to tion enable narcotics to move from one of the poorest the situation on the ground – within, but especially beyond, (landlocked) countries in the world, to the main streets of Afghanistan. the richest nations in Europe and (growingly) Asia. Here s When in power (in the second half of the 1990s), the are the hard facts to document this systemic failure. Taliban tolerated opium cultivation and facilitated its s While 90% of the world’s opium comes from export. In the process, through a direct taxation on Afghanistan, less than 2% is seized there. This is a farmers (ushr) they generated about $75-100 million major law enforcement defeat, as it is incomparably per year to fund a regime without alternative sources cheaper and easier to detect and interdict an illicit of foreign exchange. activity at the source, rather than at destination s In the summer of 2000, as a Security Council embar- (Colombia, the other major drug-producing country, go loomed, Mullah Omar banned opium cultivation seizes 10 times more of its dope than Afghanistan: as (but not its export). Thanks to the regime’s near total a consequence, on the high street, purity has decreased control of the territory, farmers had no option but to and prices increased) respect the decree (fatwa). In the fall of 2000, they s Most of the Afghan borders with Pakistan are wide refrained from planting; the spring 2001 harvest was open, enabling low-risk smuggling back and forth close to zero.