Narco-Terrorism in Afghanistan
By Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy*
The illicit drug economy in Afghanistan is said to be fuelling
terrorism. During a 8-9 February conference held in Kabul, Antonio
Maria Costa, the Executive Director of the United Nations Office
on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), warned of "mounting evidence of
drug money being used to finance criminal activities, including
terrorism," and declared that "fighting drug trafficking
equals fighting terrorism." Even before that, assumptions that
“narco-terrorism” would be threatening Afghanistan seem
to have been widely taken as fact. For instance, French Defense
Minister Michèle Alliot-Marie declared in January 2003 that,
"drugs are now the principal source of funding for Osama bin
Laden's al-Qaida network." However, the concept of narco-terrorism
is itself vague, and it is unclear exactly how it applies to the
current situation in Afghanistan.
NARCO-TERRORISM
Although use of the term “narco-terrorism” only recently
occurred to characterize an alleged emerging Afghan scenario, it
seems that it was first used by former Peruvian President Belaunde
Terry in 1983 to describe terrorist-type attacks against his nation's
anti-narcotics police by the Shining Path Marxist rebels. Later,
in 1986, former US President Ronald Reagan also spoke of “narco-terrorism”
when referring to purported links between international drug trafficking
and terrorism among allies of the Soviet Union (Cuba, Nicaragua).
More recently, a high-ranking Drug Enforcement Administration
(DEA) official speaking about Afghanistan declared that "the
war on terror and the war on drugs are linked." In addition,
according to the DEA, narco-terrorism refers to terrorist acts carried
out by groups that are “directly or indirectly involved in
cultivating, manufacturing, transporting, or distributing illicit
drugs.” Narco-terrorist groups would thus be those who use
the drug trade to finance their terrorist activities. The DEA also
speaks of narco-terrorism when close links and shared goals can
be observed between drug trafficking organizations and terrorist
groups.
However, such definitions render the term narco-terrorism too
vague and counterproductive in terms of addressing either drug trafficking
or terrorism since it brings very different actors into too broad
a category: as explained by the Council on Foreign Relations, some
experts think that “while terrorists and drug traffickers
often share some short-term goals, they have different long-term
objectives (political goals for terrorists, greed for drug lords)
and shouldn’t be conflated.”
THE CASE OF AFGHANISTAN
Terrorism, the use by the weak against the strong of illegitimate
violence to reach a political goal, can also be said, according
to Peter Waldmann, to be an effort to occupy the mental space of
a society; in contrast, guerrillas try to conquer territories and
riches. Terrorist actions have regularly been perpetrated in Afghanistan
since the fall of the Taliban, notably against civilian targets
such as foreign and national NGO personnel and most likely by Taliban
remnants, al-Qaida groups, and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s Hezb-i-Islami,
that is to say by opponents of the Afghan government and the American
presence in the country.
However, an unbiased look at terrorism in Afghanistan reveals
that some of these “terrorist” people or groups once
were “freedom fighters” struggling against the Soviets
during the 1980s. Not only were they fighting what Ronald Reagan
had dubbed an Evil Empire, they were also, to some extent at least,
resorting to the already growing Afghan opium economy. It is common
knowledge nowadays that at the time both the CIA and the ISI (respectively,
American and Pakistan intelligence services) played a direct role
in funneling weapons and money to the “freedom fighters”
– the Afghan mujahideen – as well as at least an indirect
role in the local nascent trade in narcotics. Thus, the involvement
particularly of the ISI in the drug trade further complicates the
adequacy of a category such as “narco-terrorism” and
would require comparing how different actors like resistance guerrillas,
intelligence agencies, and terrorist organizations use the drug
economy.
Former US allies in what was a war against communism included
Pashtun leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and his Hezb-i-Islami fundamentalist
party. During the Afghan-Soviet war, Hekmatyar received most of
the funds supplied by the CIA (and matched by Saudi Arabia) through
the ISI, whose National Logistics Cell trucks delivered weapons
to Afghanistan and brought opium back to Pakistan. Actually, Hekmatyar’s
involvement in the illegal drug economy only really started after
1989 when the US stopped funding him and others. The main difference
between then and now is that he is no longer a US ally and no longer
referred to as a “freedom fighter” but as a “terrorist.”
Otherwise, he remains consistent in waging a war against governments
he does not recognize, be they Soviet-backed or US-backed. He also
may well have increased his participation in the drug economy.
Although some former US allies in the war against the “Evil
Empire” were clearly engaged in the illegal drug economy and
while some of these have since then become “terrorists,”
more recent allies in the “war on terrorism” have also
been said to be using opium and heroin for funding. In post-Taliban
Afghanistan, opiates continue to be produced both in areas traditionally
controlled by the United Front (Badakhshan) and in areas held by
various local commanders, whose support has been deemed strategically
necessary to fight the Taliban and al-Qaida. Even more official
allies of the US “war on terrorism” also seem to be
engaged in, or benefiting from, the drug economy. Indeed, as was
testified under oath on 20 March 2003 by Wendy Chamberlin, former
US ambassador to Pakistan, before the Subcommittee on Asia and the
Pacific of the Committee on International Relations, ISI involvement
in opium trafficking across the Afghanistan-Pakistan border has
been “substantial” during the last six years.
Thus it now seems that the long-fought “war on drugs”
comes back into force to strengthen a “war on terrorism”
that is still to be won. The war on “narco-terrorism”
would then be some kind of a new integrated approach to the security
problem that Afghanistan is facing. Yet to favor a largely military
approach to a problem, by waging wars, is to address the consequences
of a phenomenon rather that its causes. De-linking the opium economy
or terrorism from their broader and deeper contexts will only lead
to ignoring causal factors and likely to tactical and potentially
strategic failure.
NARCO-TERRORISM IN AFGHANISTAN?
In Afghanistan, but also in Burma (Myanmar), the world’s
second greatest producer of illegal opium, drug production is closely
linked to territorial control and political (il)legitimacy, as are
guerrilla warfare and terrorism. In fact, opium has long been at
stake in Afghanistan’s armed conflicts and its trade has allowed
these conflicts to flourish. In such a context, the value of a territory
increases a great deal because of the opium crops it can bear for
the benefit of those who control it. Thus, such a war economy–illicit
economy nexus would most likely benefit terrorist organizations.
However, the commercial production of opium has also been the only
means of subsistence available for many Afghan peasants, and such
an economic pattern has recently expanded to a broader part of the
country, revealing the limited writ and authority of the Afghan
government.
As far as narco-terrorism is concerned, serious evidence is still
needed that it does exist in Afghanistan. That some drug money plays
a significant role in the ongoing Afghan conflict, even by "being
used directly against the Afghan government and the international
forces," is obvious but no novelty in recent Afghan history.
Although the head of Afghanistan's Counter Narcotics Directorate
estimates that the Taliban and its allies derived more than $150
million from drugs in 2003, hard evidence linking al-Qaida directly
to the drug economy is still scarce, most investigators say.
The problems posed by the analysis of “intelligence”
and its application to policy have been summed up best by Secretary
of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on 6 June 2002 in Brussels: "The
message is that there are no knowns. There are things we know that
we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say there are things
that we now know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns.
There are things we don't know we don't know. So when we do the
best we can and we pull all this information together, and we then
say, well that's basically what we see as the situation ... There
is another way to phrase that and that is that the absence of evidence
is not evidence of absence." And so it could be that the analysis
of the “situation” regarding so-called narco-terrorism
– whatever its definition – in Afghanistan proceeds
more from political needs than from the teachings of intelligence.
In fact, if the line between Good and Evil appears to be rather
thin and easily crossed, the line between resistance and terrorism
seems to be even thinner and to be subjectively defined.
However, to overcome both opium production and terrorism in Afghanistan,
the government and the international community should focus less
on waging wars on drugs and terrorism and more on implementing a
broad program of alternative and integrated development in the whole
country. Within this, a multi-level strategy involving effective
sanctions on illicit and criminal activities is critical. Such a
program should be implemented in a progressive way so as to secure
sustainable political and territorial stability. Long-lasting peace
combined with political as well as economic development must be
achieved if Afghanistan is to be successfully rid of its illicit
drugs economy-war economy nexus.
*Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy, PhD, is a Geographer and Research Fellow
at CNRS (France).
He specializes in the geopolitics of illicit drugs with a particular
focus on Asia. He produces www.geopium.org.
