Report Says Afghan Anti-Drug Effort Lacks Strategy

Image by ChuckHolton via Flickr

By BRIAN KNOWLTON

WASHINGTON — The United States-led counternarcotics effort in Afghanistan, which is critical to hopes of cutting off the flow of money to the Taliban and curtailing rampant corruption in the central government, lacks a long-term strategy, clear objectives and a plan for handing over responsibility to Afghans, the State Department inspector general said in a report issued Wednesday.

“The department has not clarified an end state for counternarcotics efforts, engaged in long-term planning, or established performance measures,” said the 63-page report, an audit of work done by the State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs.

Among other things, the report found that the military and civilian lacked clear delineation of roles; that civilian contracts for counternarcotics work were poorly written and supervised from thousands of miles and many time zones away; and that the United States embassies in Afghanistan and Pakistan did not coordinate well on the problem.

The effectiveness of drug-control efforts is critical to President Obama plan for the Afghanistan war, which entails sending additional troops to Afghanistan.

The Taliban finance many of their operations through the illicit drug trade, forcing payments for the cultivation, processing and shipment of opium, and netting $70 million to $400 million a year, according to estimates from the U.S. Defense Department and the United Nations. Afghanistan produces roughly 90 percent of the world’s illicit opium.

The report calls it essential that the threat of eradicating that trade come from a force controlled by the Afghan government. But it adds that the State Department has no clear “strategy for transitioning and exiting from counternarcotics programs in Afghanistan.”

American officials have harshly criticized corruption in the government of President Hamid Karzai. Much of that, the officials say, has to do with officials’ enriching themselves from the flow of narcotics. Mr. Karzai has promised to prosecute people involved in the drug trade.

Despite what it says is a consensus that eradication of poppy crops is essential, the report notes that in midyear a decision was made to shift from eradication efforts to financing interdiction of drug traffickers.

While the United States military has begun engaging more heavily in counternarcotics efforts, the inspector general found that “there is no agreement on appropriate roles for either civilian agencies or the U.S. military.”

The report also found that while contractors performing counternarcotics work are generally meeting the terms of their contracts, those contracts are often “poorly written, with overly optimistic goals” and “vague performance measures.”

Partly because the United States Embassy in Kabul is shorthanded, there is no monitoring from inside the country of seven counternarcotics contracts valued at $1.8 billion, the report said. Instead, monitoring is conducted “many thousands of miles away in a different time zone.”

The report, initiated by the Middle East branch of the inspector general’s office, said coordination in the Kabul embassy of the various entities involved in antinarcotics efforts was “generally ad hoc and informal.”

Coordination between the American embassies in Kabul and Islamabad, it said, was “limited.”

It also listed the profound handicaps undercutting that effort, “including a weak justice system, corruption and the lack of political will” in the Afghan government, and the overpowering economic incentives that lead farmers to grow poppies.

Among other things, the report recommends setting “a defined end state” for counternarcotics programs; establishing benchmarks for the shift toward an Afghan takeover of those programs; and establishing in-country monitoring of contractors.

The report was based on meetings with embassy personnel in Kabul and Islamabad, visits to Kabul and four Afghan provinces, and meetings with United Nations, United States military and coalition government officials.