St Petersburg International Conference of Afghan Studies

60 Санкт-Петербургская международная конференция по афганистике Секция 3. Общее и особенное в регионах Афганистана и трансграничных регионах... Olli Ruohomäki (The Finnish Institute of International Affairs, Helsinki, Finland) The Politics of the Afghan Narco-State The aim of this paper is to examine the politics of the Afghan narco-state. The paper takes a look at the organization of the narco-economy and the informal networks involved in the drug industry. The argument posed is that the prospect of Afghanistan’s economy being completely criminalized is more than likely, with the consequence of Afghanistan becoming a narco-state. Afghanistan is being sucked into the vortex of a violent narcotics industry. This narcotics industry is eating away at the very foundations of the state. Although the violent struggle between the Taliban insurgents and the weak Ghani-Abdullah government captures much of the attention of analysts and media, it is the drug kingpins and traffickers that use the vacuum created by the absence of security to enhance the operations of their trafficking networks. They are able to process and smuggle narcotics with impunity, thus contributing to making Afghanistan a narco-state. Afghanistan produces around 85 % of the world’s opium, and its value is well over a billion dollars. Over one third of the country’s economy is linked in one way or another to the narcotics industry. The narcotics industry fuels the insurgency and contributes to widespread insecurity. Furthermore, the narcotics industry erodes the nascent democratic institutions that were created in the wake of toppling the Taliban regime in 2001. The narco-economy resembles a pyramid-like network which has tentacles in both the licit and illicit economy. At the bottom of the pyramid are the ordinary farmers. Their estimated numbers are in the range of 350,000 individuals. They sell their produce to local entrepreneurs who also supply legal consumer goods to the needs of the rural communities. There are estimated 10,000–15,000 such entrepreneurs. They sell the harvested opium to middle-level traders, who operate in the shady grey area of the legal and illegal trade. The estimated number of these traders is around 500. The real drug dealers number around 200–250 and they are wealthy criminals who are responsible for moving the goods in the country. These criminals are loyal to one of the main drug kingpins at the apex of the pyramid. These 20 to 25 kingpins are embedded in the economic and political life of Afghanistan. They are also responsible for mobile heroin laboratories and the acquisition of precursor chemicals (acetic anhydride) needed to produce heroin from opium. Many sub-national officials, both in law enforcement and local government, are inextricably associated with trafficking networks and transnational criminals. The border police, customs officials and counter-narcotics police are rife with clientelism (wasita), corruption and nepotism. Many officials have managed to establish