July 27, 2007 (the date of publication in Russian)

Elena Galkina

THE GOLEM OF HEROIN

Afghanistan as the cancer of Eurasia

THE MERCURY IS RISING

Since the intervention of the United States in Afghanistan in autumn 2001, the situation in this country has been poorly covered by mass media. The resistance of the earlier dominating Taliban Movement to the occupying powers seemed to be easily crushed, and forecasts of a protracted and bloody warfare did not come true since the army of the rivaling Northern Alliance, supported by the United States, easily overtook Kabul. Though the occupying powers failed to reach the goal which originally justified the intervention – namely, to capture the notorious Osama bin Laden, the problem of power was ostensibly solved by the selection of the Provisional Government chaired by Hamid Karzai.

However, the events of early 2007, when the supposedly exterminated Taliban took charge for a number of large-scale subversive activities, indicated that the political problems of Afghanistan are far from being solved. The failure of the US strategy in Iraq has obviously inspired the Talibs, who are trying today to use the methods of armed resistance, acquired from the experience of Palestine and Iraq, to exhaust the occupying powers and to influence public opinion of the West, in order to coerce the Western governments to withdraw their troops.

In Western media, the rising ferment of resistance in Afghanistan is widely interpreted with the dealings of the insidious Al Qaeda; similar explanations can be found in Russian media. A different, though equally biased versions surface in Arabic press. In a number of Arabic papers, Afghanistan is described as an element of the "rogue ark", involving also Syria, Lebanon, and the Shi'i population of the Gulf countries, as well as political movements in other countries, supported from Iran. In Sunni-dominated Arabic countries, some media demonize Iran, even describing the scenario of the international intervention into Afghanistan as Tehran's own sophisticated design.

These biased interpretations, largely reflecting the US-staged design of a manipulated conflict between the Sunni and Shi'i communities in the Islamic world, contradict to the political reality of Central Asia. The latest developments in Afghanistan indicate that this once artificially established country is becoming a permanent source of instability for its neighbors, and particularly for Iran.

 

THE GLOBAL CENTER OF OPIUM PRODUCTION

The political brawl in Afghanistan, largely originating from ethnic disaccord, as well as terrorist methods used in this process mostly on local levels, does not determine the political situation in the war-torn state. Similarly, projects of economic and infrastructure development, pursued by Hamid Karzai's government, are currently insufficient for building a sound and developing economy. The major result of Afghanistan's post-2001 development is transformation of the relatively small highland country into the global center of opium production.

Major statistics, characterizing Afghanistan's role in global drug business, have already been published by RPMonitor. However, the quoted report of UN Drug Control Board includes an incorrect and politically biased definition of "the Golden Crescent", applied to Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. This term was once invented as a parallel to the infamous "Golden Triangle" of Myanmar, Laos and Thailand, the once major supplier of opiates to the global shadowy market.

It is true that under the rule of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, Iran was involved in transit of Afghani drugs to the Middle East and Europe, and possessed opium plantations of its own. However, the Islamic revolution of 1979 seriously undermined this business. During the last decade, the law enforcement bodies of the Islamic Republic undertook additional measures for prevention of opium transit across its territory. Opium traders detained in Iran face death penalty.

The popular view of the Taliban-ruled Afghanistan as a "failed state", solely engaged with drug trade, is equally incorrect. According to UN's official statistics, the acreage of Afghanistan's poppy plantations in 1990s were smaller than in Burma. Production significantly increased in the aftermath of civil war, following the Soviet withdrawal, but after Taliban's takeover, the dimensions of opium growing did not plummet.

Immediately after the US intervention, Afghani opium production decreased – but only for a short time. Already in 2002 – under the conditions of military occupation, supposed to stifle illegal trade, drug industry soared. In 2006, the acreage of poppy fields twice exceeded the figure of 1999, and 4 times that of 1990. On the background of sharp decline of opium production in Myanmar, Afghanistan's share in delivery of heroin to the global shadowy market zoomed up to 82%.

Expansion of illegal production is naturally followed with expansion of smuggle. However, efficiency of law enforcement bodies, tasked to curb drug imports, depends on the approach of the particular state, the capabilities and the morale of its law enforcement bodies. The difference is striking. In 2005, 68% of the whole amount of confiscated drugs was captured by Iranian authorities. Pakistan's share did not exceed 2%. Russia and Tajikistan – despite great difference of the economic and administrative potential – display equal helplessness before the drug inflow, each confiscating not more than 0.5% of the total amount. Definitely, this modest number is the result of inefficient prevention of smuggle. According to UN estimates, 91% of the amount of heroin, crossing the Afghani-Russian border, safely penetrates into the Russian Federation. Not surprisingly, the percentage of heroin-dependent drug addicts in Russia is ten times higher than in China, and three times higher than in Pakistan.

Prevention of drug smuggle requires not only material costs but moral commitment, enabling efficient institutional mobilization for accomplishing the task. Since summer 2002, Iran's Armed Forces established special border brigades. Army officers, as well as border servicemen, frequently perish in clashes with armed gangs, arriving from Afghanistan.

 

WHO BENEFITS?

Despite Tehran's efforts, opium production in the western provinces of Afghanistan has lately increased. The tolerance of the occupying peacekeepers to illegal production, undermining development of a sound economy in Afghanistan, seems especially doubtful on the background of the officially declared international anti-terrorist campaign. It is an open secret that drugs are most frequently exchanged for weapons. Are the masterminds of the intervention interested in real eradication of terrorism and national conciliation in Afghanistan, or just in a pretext for permanent presence in the region?

The visible increase of the Afghani opium production following the US-initiated "liberation" of the country from Taliban, points at the ultimate beneficiary. Most of the Afghani-produced opium is consumed in the West. The same was true for the period when most of Asia-produced opium was grown in the "Golden triangle", where the whole production process, from the very beginning, was organized not by the local population but by the British East India Company. The only difference was that the British used China as the major market for this production, while nowadays, drugs are predominantly used by the children of the Western taxpayers, whose revenues are spent for what is officially displayed as anti-terrorist policies – or sometimes more sincerely, as an effort of deterring potential geopolitical rivals of the West.

Ironically, the Chinese revolution, which gave birth to the present Communist state, was a side effect of policies pursued by Western powers and involved private interests in the XIX century. At that time, drug addiction overtook the Celestial Empire; even Emperor Yichu (1831-1861) was an addict. The attempt of the weakened Qing Empire to cease smuggle resulted in the exhausting "opium wars", which – combined with the economic crisis and peasant insurgencies – eventually doomed the dynasty.

The next increase of the Golden Triangle's shadowy business took place in 1950-1960s, when the émigré Kuomintang activists and Burman separatists, with sponsorship from the CIA, launched large-scale production and transit of opiates across the region. Again, the official purpose of destabilizing Communist regimes in Eurasia was conveniently used by traffickers for deriving huge profits, the supervising intelligence community swiftly degenerating into an agency of international corruption.

Only in the course of recent years, due to assistance from China and India, the government of Myanmar managed to stifle most of the opium-producing clans. Immediately, Myanmar found itself in the "black list" of US mass media, while the center of drug production shifted to Afghanistan. This shift is largely related to Iran, though for far different reasons than those concocted by the promoters of an anti-Tehran Sunni alliance.

Iran's influence on the policies, economy and culture of Afghanistan has been great for historical and cultural reasons. The Afghani elite regarded itself as a part of the Persian culture, and the Dari language dominated in records management. On the other hand, Afghanistan has been traditionally perceived in Iran as a poorly educated "younger brother". This attitude, tangible both on the official and public level, generated fears of Iranian imperial expansion which determined the commitment of the Afghani establishment to trim sails between Iran and Pakistan.

The described fears increased after 1979, when Tehran viewed the neighbor state as a convenient soil for export of the Islamic revolution. Since that time, Kabul had been falling into an increased dependence from Pakistan and its intelligence community, closely cooperating with the CIA. Meanwhile, Iran, primarily for religious reasons, was opposed to the Soviet intervention into the neighbor country, and offered support to the culturally connate Tajik and Hazara minorities. These overlapping tendencies eventually resulted into a long-time split political and territorial split of Afghanistan between the Pashtun community, relying upon Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, and the Tajik-dominated territorial clans. After the arrival of Taliban, which was initially viewed as a US-backed Saudi operation, Iran even more massively supported the Tajik-dominated Northern Alliance of Ahmad Shah Masood.

However, as soon as the US leadership decided to crush Taliban, at the face of obvious cooperation of its leaders with the Al Qaeda circle, the Northern Alliance – especially after the mysterious death of Masood – fell under the US influence. Still, Tehran believed that the collapse of Taliban's dominance would potentially create a more favorable alignment of religious and political forces in the neighbor state. As it could be expected, the Americans preferred an easier option, relying upon the more powerful Pashtun clans.

Quite naturally, Tehran has been since backing the Afghani leaders, opposed to President Hamid Karzai, particularly favoring Ismail Khan, governor of the Herat province. For the above explained reasons, Tehran was mostly interested in stability of the western provinces of Afghanistan, adjacent to Iran's border. Most of Iran's business projects were concentrated in the western cities of Herat, Farah, and Nimroz.

Still, Iran's economic presence in Afghanistan falls behind the United States and Pakistan, continuing to dominate both in imports and exports. Meanwhile, Ismail Khan, after a number of assaults on his life, eventually agreed for a political career in Kabul, accepting the post of Minister of Energy and Water Resources.

Iran's assistance in education is viewed by Western advisors of Karzai's government as ideological subversion. Under this influence, the top officials of Nimroz Province confiscated school textbooks, provided by Iran on humanitarian terms, and replaced them with books in Urdu – Pakistan's official language, not common in Western Afghanistan.

 

UNFORESEEN IMPLICATIONS

In Tehran, the intervention of US troops both in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as the later Washington's flirt with the monarchies of the Gulf, is viewed as a deliberate attempt to isolate Iran from three sides. This effort, along with the international media campaign around Iran's nuclear program, was supposed to facilitate a shake-up of the government, and eventually, replacement of the unwanted Ayatollah Ali Khamenei by a convenient successor of the Shah. Iranian analysts foresaw this prospect as far back as in 2002, yet before the campaign in Iraq. Additional evidence was seen in the resumed activities of the dissident émigré circles, where Reza Pahlavi, Jr. was seen among liberal oppositionists and US "promoters of democracy".

Afghanistan's transformation into the major center of opium industry is interpreted by Iranian analysts from the same viewpoint. In any case, Washington possesses a vast experience of patronizing opium production in the countries of South-Eastern Asia, as well as knowledge of the economic situation in Afghanistan, where opium growing has become traditional, and the impoverished population does not dispose any alternative sources of income. The experience of the Shah's times, when Burman and Afghani opium was largely refined on Iran's territory, was obviously supposed to be revived as well, and used as a shadowy lever for subversive operations.

However, the US efforts to undermine the power of Iran's clerical leadership have turned the opposite. In 2002, the population of Iran, in a perfect democratic vote, expressed its confidence not to a liberal marionette of the West but to a fervid Ahmadinejad, whose open political alliance with the leftist governments of South America greatly undermined Washington's own international influence. Meanwhile, the failure of stabilization in Iraq fuelled up anti-American sentiment across the whole of the Middle East. Instead of isolating Iraq, Washington continues to isolate itself. Despite huge political and propagandist pressure from the US, Iran successfully attracts investments and boosts international trade, its national economic growth increasing in 2006 by 4.3%.

At the same time, Afghanistan's transformation into a drug-producing monopoly produces a negative impact of the relations between the United States and the European Union. During the last years, the flow of Afghani-produced opium and derivates has been increasingly feeding the shadowy markets of EU nations, along with the flows of immigrants from the impoverished nations of the East. The share of opiates in EU drug consumption has elevated to 50%.

Sober-minded Western experts insist that the United States undertake a resolute effort to eradicate the opium base of the Afghani economy, for Washington's own ultimate benefit. However, such an enterprise would require excessive costs, which are to be authorized by the US Congress, where the bipartisan lobby of drugs and arms trade remains powerful.

 

PAKISTAN AND THE PASHTUN PROBLEM

One more serious challenge for the US occupying forces in Afghanistan emerges from the ethnic Pashtun problem, rooted in the colonial era of the late XIX century when the British powers established an artificial border between India and Afghanistan along the Durand line, which separated the Pashtun population into two equal parts. That is why in 1947, when the borderline of the newly-established state of Pakistan was approved by the United Nations, Afghanistan was the only country to oppose the design – because of the Pashtun problem.

During the following decades, Kabul authorities continued to favor the project of an independent Pashtun statehood. The menace of a separatist insurgency in the West was one of the reasons for Pakistan to seek financial support from the United States, in exchange for political loyalty. This tendency produced a double effect. On the one hand, Pakistan was visibly increasing its economic potential, enabling eventually to acquire and develop nuclear technologies. On the other hand, Pakistan allowed Washington to use its territory for large-scale operations against the pro-Soviet government of Babrak Karmal, and later greeted the new government of the Talibs, despite Pashtun domination in its ranks.

As it could be expected, the Taliban government, though officially recognized by Pakistan in 1997, was not going, in exchange, to recognize the Durand line as the national border. Instead, the Taliban behaved as an expansionist power, providing support not only to the Pakistan’s 15% Pashtun minority but also to the Uighurs of China's Xinjiang, thus eventually getting into a controversy with Beijing. This flight-forward policy was significantly influenced by Talib-sympathizing warlords from Arab states, overwhelmed with the idea of the revived Caliphate and eventually establishing a network known today under the name of Al Qaeda.

Washington's decision to build up an international "anti-terrorist coalition" created serious problems for those circles in Islamabad which used to benefit from shadowy trade with the Talibs. At the same time, the collapse of the Pashtun-dominated political force was favorable for Pakistan's integrity.

The present revival of the Talib insurgency in Afghanistan is therefore a trouble not only for the US-NATO occupying force but for the neighbor countries as well. The project of an independent Pashtun state is alive, and the present upsurge of radical Islamic resistance in Pakistan encourages the separatist sentiment.

 

MUSHARRAF SHAKEN INSTEAD OF KHAMENEI

The views of Washington, Tehran and Islamabad on Afghanistan's future have significantly differed. While Iran was more interested in federalization of Afghanistan, granting a higher status of the culturally connate Tajiks and Hazara, Pakistan is focused on its own border issue, thus being interested in a dialogue with a broad and politically balanced coalitional government in Kabul, representing moderate forces of all the ethnic communities.

The strategic interests of Tehran and Islamabad meet in one major point. Both nations are interested in a stable national administration in Kabul, resistive to criminal influences and relevant foreign backing – a government with which one could establish a fruitful dialogue, avoiding the risk of an unexpected revision of its policy under pressure from the "Big Brother".

Washington, in its turn, was interested in stability in Afghanistan only to an extent enabling to efficiently use its territory for deterrence of Iran, as well as for outflanking the influence of China and Russia in Central Asia. The White House believed that this objective could be more conveniently reached by means of establishing a loose coalition, only partially controlling the country's territory and therefore permanently interested in the presence of the occupying powers. Essentially, Washington was more interested not in Afghanistan as such but in a pretext to stay in the heartland of Eurasia.

However, Washington's reliance upon a weak and factionalized regime in Kabul – a regime that wouldn't dare to follow Taliban's "rogue" path – has brought about a problem which is going to be inherited by the new US leadership from the self-discredited Republicans. In fact, the plans of Iran’s destabilization, pushed by Dick Cheney's neocons, are materializing in the country which used to serve as the key instrument of US influence in the region. The fragility of Karzai's government results in anarchy in regions adjacent to the Pakistani border, the 3-million army of Afghani refugees developing into a force of destabilization of Islamabad's government.

With its own population exceeding 110 million, Pakistan is a far poorer country than Iran. Social instability coincides with possession of nuclear weapons, a factor which is hardly predictable in case of territorial disintegration. The government of Pervez Musharraf is forced to restrict expenses for economic and social development, needing excessive financial resources for law enforcement and administrative needs. General Musharraf's credibility, which quite recently seemed infallible, is today battered, and an increasing share of the population is sympathizing with the radical Islamic opposition. The menace of civil war is quite real and can't be averted by means of palliative options like a political deal between Musharraf and ex-Premier Benazir Bhutto.

The deadlock in Iraq should thus be seen as only one of the signs of Washington's weakness in Asia. In the nearest period, the White House will be forced to revise the very essence of its strategy in the region. Otherwise, the cancer of Afghani shadowy business, favorable today only for a narrow international corruption ring, may destroy the whole geopolitical architecture of the region, with an enormous economic and human toll – and eventual overtake of influence by those very regional powers which the US neocons have been committed to deter.

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