Afghanistan's Narco War

Below is a copy of a report to the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee regarding Afghanistan's opium addiction and its effects across the world:

Afghanistan's Narco War: Breaking the Link Between Drug Traffickers and Insurgents

Agents say DEA is forcing them illegally to work in Afghanistan

What troubles me the most is the lack of equipment the deployed SAs get... not the fact that they are serving in Afghanistan, you know, the place that produces more than 90 percent of the world's opium.

Agents said supervisors told them that working in dangerous countries is part of their job requirements, but Offield's Sacramento-based lawyer said such compulsory duty violates a 2008 federal law that requires civilian personnel to serve voluntarily.

"The DEA is not only violating the law," said attorney Richard Margarita, a former DEA agent and county prosecutor. "They could very well be sending Dan Offield to his death."

The Obama administration has said it doesn't expect problems with finding volunteers for Afghanistan missions, despite an ambitious strategy that calls for sending hundreds of additional civilian personnel. The plan already faces long odds in a country of resurgent Islamic militants, endemic corruption and widespread opium trafficking...

On longer tours, agents complain that they're not issued ammunition or magazines and are forced to borrow them from fellow agents. Ballistic vests aren't fitted for specific agents. Rifles are issued without laser sights and optics like the military has, and personal locator beacons and GPS systems are hard to come by. Some agents said they end up buying thousands of dollars of equipment themselves.

"The DEA does not have enough resources or equipment to get the job done in Afghanistan," one agent said.

Afghanistan Is in Its Worst Shape Since 2001, European Diplomat Says

From The New York Times:

One of the most experienced Western envoys in Afghanistan said Sunday that conditions there had become the worst since 2001. He urged a concerted American and foreign response, even before a new American administration took office, to avoid “a very hot winter for all of us.”

Mr. Vendrell said that nevertheless it was time not to abandon Afghanistan but to redouble efforts there, both military efforts and those to build up civilian institutions and ensure that elections are held next year. In particular, he said, the United States must develop clear standards to govern the detention of hundreds of Afghans it holds without trial.

“This is not the time to leave; we are not destined to fail, but we are far from succeeding,” he concluded.

How exactly is GEN Petraeus going to fix Afghanistan? It is a trick question. Petraeus' tactical warfighting days are now over... implementing an effective counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan falls to NATO/ISAF commander, GEN David McKiernan. Petraeus can only help influence the efforts of the commanders in theater. Since he is now exclusively at the strategic level, GEN Petraeus must focus on the big picture.

First, he must focus on the destruction of the jihadist logistics supply chain across CENTCOM's area of responsibility. This chain includes the drug trade and the money from it that goes towards purchasing weapons in addition to the movement of fighters to the conflict areas. He needs to follow the money. Disruption requires a tweak of the human intelligence targeting system at the strategic level by issuing guidance refocusing tactical units' priority intelligence requirements from the whereabouts of terrorist leaders to the whereabouts of the movers and shakers (e.g. Taliban members who speak Russian, Farsi, Arabic, French, or Chinese, and Iraqis that speak Farsi, Pashto, Russian, French, or Chinese - all of whom undoubtedly play a role as messengers or in securing weapons - yet seem to be low level jihadists, well-educated engineers who undoubtedly help teach the popular "IED Construction 101" at Helmand Community College or Alī ibn Abī Ṭālib University of Najaf - now with an extension center in Sadr City!). Killing or capturing the movers and shakers will disturb the links the Taliban needs to sustain itself and help erode the power of its well known leaders. The Taliban's strength, its ability to operate in a decentralized manner, is also its weakness in this aspect.

Second, Petraeus must be a diplomat and a military advisor. He must throw a lump of clay onto his potter's wheel and form the base needed for stability in the region for years to come... the next CENTCOM commander and president will hopefully then be able to add a few coils of clay and continue to mold the regional sculpture. One of his first acts as CENTCOM commander should be to petition outgoing President George W. Bush and whoever the incoming president is to make guarantees to the Pakistani government that we will not withdraw prematurely leaving them with the problem of the Taliban. Given that they have an inexperienced president,Asif Ali Zardari, these assurances are needed. Also, it will go a long way towards convincing Army Chief, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, that, since U.S. premature withdrawal is off the table, he needs to ensure that the ISI shares actionable intelligence on the Taliban to its infantry units and NATO/ISAF, rather than allowing the Taliban to operate in Pakistan for fear of retaliation upon U.S. withdrawal. This will also pave the way for U.S. cross border raids into Pakistani territories to eradicate the Taliban.

Third, Petraeus must also ensure that a farmer subsidy program is begun in Afghanistan by petitioning the defense secretary and president for more money so that the opium eradication is accomplished not by crop spraying, but by paying poor farmers not to grow opium, which funds the Taliban.

Finally, he must ensure that the lights are turned on across the CENTCOM area of responsibilities and that infrastructure is built linking the countries like Iraq and Afghanistan to other countries... a task more easily said than done. These are just a few things that should be on Petraeus' to-do list, but I am confident that he is already tracking.

See also:
Willing To Win in Afghanistan?

A Man, A Plan, Afghanistan

This is a wonderful outline of possible measures that could be implemented in Afghanistan to "win" the war. Outlining the deteriorating state of Afghanistan, Peter Bergen writes:

Don't be surprised. The U.S. invasion of Afghanistan achieved wonders--but only in the short term. Today, Taliban and Al Qaeda leaders are running free. Pakistan seems unable or unwilling to clamp down on leading militants on its territory, and jihadist attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan have increased enormously in the past year. More Pakistani citizens died in militant violence in 2007 than in the previous five years combined. Similarly, in Afghanistan's eastern provinces, violence is up by 40 percent in the last several months; more American soldiers are now dying in Afghanistan than in Iraq. And, as is by now well-known, U.S. intelligence assesses that Al Qaeda has regrouped along the Afghan-Pakistan border.

Citing how few security forces are present in Afghanistan, Bergen says that an Afghan draft could be used to create an Afghan National Guard with NATO taking the lead for training them. Despite this suggestion, Bergen paints a grim picture by comparing troop levels in Iraq to Afghanistan. Remember, General David Petraeus outlined a much larger force for counterinsurgency operations, what I will call the "necessary" force to "win." We still do not have the "necessary" force in Iraq, what we have is the "sufficient" force that does an adequate job of keeping the peace and treading water. In Afghanistan, we do not even have the "sufficient" force:

Iraq has around 550,000 members of the Iraqi security services and some 140, 000 American soldiers stationed there, while Afghanistan--which is one-third larger and has four million more citizens--has only 140,000 soldiers and police and around 70,000 US and NATO troops. You can't bring security to the country with those low numbers. And, without security, you can't have reconstruction.

Still, Afghanistan does not need a lot more American boots on the ground. It needs the right kind of boots. Because the U.S. military and NATO are now stretched to breaking point, the vast majority of additional soldiers and policemen must be supplied by the Afghans. To that end, the coalition must send more Special Forces and civilian advisers who specialize in the training of indigenous forces.

In addition to a draft, Afghan President Hamid Karzai has also been contemplating the formation of tribal militias in order to hurt Taliban authority:

Ordinary Afghans tend to trust their tribal shuras to solve their problems, and these "Sons of Afghanistan" would fill the security void until the Afghan army and police reached levels at which they could secure their country--many, many years from now. Such tribal militias could be paid with U.S. funds just as the Sons of Iraq are. Such a plan, though, must be implemented carefully, to avoid recreating the warlord-led militias that have been so successfully disbanded since the fall of the Taliban.

In addition to more troops, Bergen argues for three projects that the troops should be working on to complete in order to keep regular Afghans' support: 1. Fixing the electrical grid, 2. securing the Kandahar-Kabul road, and 3. "finishing the Kajaki dam in southern Afghanistan should become a top priority; when completed, it will provide electricity to some two million Afghans, most of whom live deep in Talibanland."

Finally, Bergen deals with American drug policy in Afghanistan:

Also currently feeding the Taliban's ranks is America's boneheaded counternarcotics strategy. America's primary policy prescription is poppy field eradication, and a more failed policy is hard to imagine: Afghanistan continues to produce ever-larger amounts of opium and its derivative, heroin--providing 93 percent of the world's supply--and the Taliban insurgency is financed in good part by this trade. What's more, two million Afghan farmers and their families survive on poppies, and those whose crops are destroyed are generally the poorer ones who can't pay the bribes to have their fields left alone. No surprise that those farmers are easy recruits to the Taliban cause.

Instead of penalizing these poor farmers, the United States needs to invest in the legitimate Afghan agricultural economy--though subsidies, price supports, and seeds for alternative crops--and to build roads to get those crops to market. As it did with Colombia's drug kingpins in the 1990s, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration should make use of Afghanistan's shame-based culture and make public the list of the country's top drug suspects, including government officials.

My take on this situation revolves around U.S. policy towards Pakistan. Bergen deals with this towards the end of the piece, but not at length. Though citing how the ISI tolerates the Taliban because they fear that the U.S. will make a sloppy withdrawal, Bergen makes no mention of a U.S. brokered peace between India and Pakistan in Kashmir. This should be of even greater importance to the U.S. than the Israel-Palestine situation. Pakistan has tried to embrace the United States for years, and we have turned the other way, instead embracing India more. On the Indian front, we still haven't even gotten them to crack down on the drug trade which runs through India to Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. Our neophyte policies toward the India-Pakistan conflict must stop, and hopefully will with a new administration. We could better focus our diplomatic efforts on the India-Pakistan conflict than on the Israel-Palestine situation. On a similiar note, the U.S. must also deal with that Kurdistan-Turkey problem in Iraq as well... the next administration should attempt for broker a peace deal there too. Just think, we could have four democratic, predominantly Muslim nations if we broker peace between a new Kurdistan, Turkey, Iraq (sans Kurdistan which should be given independence), and Pakistan.