The Rise of the Opium Trade in Afghanistan Following the US Invasion

Evaluating a Counterterrorism Strategy
Introduction
One of the problems with the “war on terror” as first conceived in the wake of 9/11 was that it lacked objectivity and realism (Taddeo, 2010). The mission calculus was unclear, the operation involved lacking in all the variables of iSTART (ideology, strategy, tactics, accounting/financing, recruitment, targets). What was the aim of the counterterrorism operation in Afghanistan? Numerous negative consequences of the mission followed: the liberation of the poppy fields and the spike in the heroin trade around the world that decimated communities, including American ones back home (Felbab-Brown, 2017); the rise of the Islamic State throughout the Middle East (Barton, 2016); two trillion dollars in costs in addition to the loss of 2,400 US soldiers and the deaths of nearly 40,000 Afghani civilians (Almukhtar & Nordland, 2019). Because the US lacked an adequate iSTART framework going into its counterterrorism operation in Afghanistan, the result has been an extended, largely ineffective and costly war without end.
The iSTART Framework
The iSTART framework provides six principles for effective counterterrorism strategies. Ideology focuses on providing legitimacy for the counterterrorism operation by showing that there is a marginalized, oppressed or defenseless population that needs assistance. The legitimacy should be able to remain justifiable from the standpoint of religious and social critique. Strategy focuses on the whole picture, from moving the cause along with implementable action items to mobilizing members to advance that action and promote the ideology that supports it. Tactics refers to the development of a spirit of mission where a command-and-control structure is in place, with discipline and rigor resulting. Training is involved and motivation is a major outcome. Accounting/Financing refers to how the operations are funded and whether money is easily transferred or collected. It requires understanding of the legal parameters of finances in the region and how to ensure that members of the operational group are funded throughout. Recruitment focuses on ensuring that there is a population there to provide support through funding, shelter, material and human and intellectual capital; the organization should be able to provide support for members both physically and psychologically. Targets refers to the choice of locations that, when attacked, will inflict maximum damage.
Ideology
The ideology of the counterterrorism operation in Afghanistan was based on opposing terrorism, which was defined as a “sustained use, or threat of use, of violence by a small group for political purposes such as inspiring fear, drawing widespread attention to a political grievance and/or provoking a draconian or unsustainable response” (Kiras, 2002, p. 211). However, this definition did not directly apply to or even really fit the Taliban, which was a small, regional militia-like group, more involved in domestic governance than in international terrorist acts like that which occurred on 9/11. Al-Qaeda was identified by the US as the international terrorist group behind the attacks on the World Trade Center. The Taliban rather more appropriately fit the definition of an insurgent group in Afghanistan, a group whose purpose was focused on the “organized use of subversion and violence to seize, nullify, or challenge political control of a region” (FM 3-24, 2014, p. 1-2). Thus, from the outset, the ideological approach of the counterterrorism effort in Afghanistan was misdirected.
President Bush had called upon the Taliban to stop protecting agents of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and to deliver the leaders of the international terrorist organization to US forces. The war on terror that Bush called for, though, was like calling a war on coronavirus or even a war on crime—an impossible mission. Sickness and crime can be prevented to some degree but never eradicated completely because so long as human beings exist and human nature stays what it is the extermination of all agents of mischief will never totally disappear. Thus, what was the real objective here? The Taliban was not disposed to work with the US and thus the US quickly lumped the Taliban in with al-Qaeda and began attacking bases and camps belonging to both groups. Nonetheless, the US ideological drive was to create sympathy for its cause by labeling the Taliban as a terror threat because, if they were not with the US—as Bush so simplistically put it—they were against the US.
Strategy
Kiras (2002) explains that the strategy in Afghanistan was initially one of counterterrorism, where the aim was to use both proactive and covert means to target terrorists primarily with the aid of intelligence. However, the strategy shifted to one of counterinsurgency as the war went on, with the strategy being to locate, isolate and eradicate insurgents throughout the region. This meant tracking and attacking not only terrorists but also those who supported them or aligned themselves against the US forces and their allies in Afghanistan.
Initial victory was not far off: the strategy combined military action with the application of law enforcement, the seizure and freezing of financial assets, and calls for international support (Pavlova, 2004). The US built a coalition that soon installed a new government, and the Taliban and al-Qaeda forces were chased into the mountains between Afghanistan and Pakistan. With the enemy’s camps and presence gone, the US saw the strategic aim as accomplished.
This strategy was not entirely effective, however, as it in the beginning lacked a whole-picture framework, with forces entering into the region essentially looking to oppose the Taliban and al-Qaeda. The outcome was negligible. As Taddeo (2010) notes, the Taliban “still have a strong influence, terrorism is a daily threat, and Afghanistan is neither stable nor secure” (p. 27). The reason for the failure can be assessed in the fact that the strategy did not take into consideration the after-effects of the initial counterterrorism operation and a failure to adapt to the environment that followed created a vacuum that US forces became mired in. Even though an initial victory over the Taliban occurred quickly, the group was never wholly defeated and it reformed even as the US sought to understand what exactly it was dealing with—which was essentially more of an opposition force to American forces in the country than a terrorist force; but because the US did not define its objective realistically, this distinction never made its wall into the formulation of strategy. It was as though the US had a distinctively uncertain and unclear strategy and aim in Afghanistan that had more to do with occupation than it did with countering terrorism, which was always a loose enough aim in and of itself that it could allow for mission creep to occur.
After 2003, the US saw that popular support was rising for the Taliban and so a new strategic aim was developed to stymie this support: “the main objective was maintaining popular support in order to prevent local insurgencies and coalitions forming with the Taliban and al-Qaida” (Taddeo, 2010, p. 30). The US saw the Afghan people themselves as the main drivers of insurgency, and thus the Afghan people became part of the problem in the war on terror (Barno, 2007). Boots on the ground increased and the US began to focus on understanding Afghan culture more intimately so as to construct a new Afghanistan by developing the local population to be more friendly and supportive of the US presence and US aims and intentions, whatever those might be.
Tactics
The early assault on Taliban and al-Qaeda bases and camps involved the use of tactical aircraft with next-gen weapons, which provided the US with a significant advantage over the enemy (Taddeo, 2010). Special Operation Forces were also deployed to show the opposition in Afghanistan that the US was committed to engaging the enemy in a thorough and decisive manner. The Taliban was unable to mount any significant resistance and after two months of the US taking the offensive both the Taliban and al-Qaeda forces had retreated into the mountain ranges (Taddeo, 2010). This was essentially a network-focused and enemy-focused approach. However, the tactics should have utilized a population-focused approach as well, because the population supported the infrastructure and institutions that aided the resurgence of the Taliban. Taliban training camps could be easily targeted and blown up, but it did nothing to stem the tide of social and institutional support for the group. Camps could be rebuilt easily enough. The US and the Northern Alliance helped to form a new government in Kabul in 2002, but this failed to be inclusive, and the Pashtun population resented their marginalization from government building. Pashtuns became more sympathetic to the Taliban’s overtures and with the US shifting its focus to Iraq, the Taliban left the mountains and began its insurgency against the new US-backed government in Kabul.
Thus, after an initial victory over the Taliban between 2001 and 2003, tactics shifted from counterterrorism to counterinsurgency, with the main focus being to stop the spread of insurgents who opposed the presence of US forces in the country (Taddeo, 2010). These tactics failed in large part due to the fact that both the Taliban and al-Qaeda grew between the years of 2003-2005 and inflicted damages to US forces in the process to the extent that many back home questioned the purpose of the continued presence in the region and the objective of waging a war against a local group of what were essentially Afghani militiamen doing no more than what the Americans did in the War for Independence when they opposed the Redcoats of the 18th century.
There was no long-term vision or operational strategy involved: the destruction of Taliban bases, camps and training facilities was nothing more than a temporary setback, and the government set up was little more than provisional—yet the US viewed it as sufficient for the time being, and sights were set on other missions. Whether the lack of planning was negligence or deliberate, with the intention always being to create a quagmire in Afghanistan for geopolitical purposes (like derailing China’s One Belt One Road Initiative, which aimed at going through Afghanistan but could not proceed so long as the threat of terror and destabilization existed—and it surely did so long as the US continued its inherently disorganized approach to counterterrorism in the region). If the aim was counterterrorism, the tactics and strategy employed were extremely short-sighted; if the aim was to throw a wrench in the works of China and its intention to create a multipolar world in opposition to the West’s apparent zero sum game, the US’s operations in Afghanistan were successful. One might wish to conclude, considering the intelligence involved, that the surface tactics and strategy employed in Afghanistan concealed a much broader objective, one whose scope was international and much more geopolitical than a so-called war on terror.
In any case, by focusing attention on Iraq, valuable resources were turned away from Afghanistan and whatever victory had been achieved prior to 2003 quickly vanished afterwards. The Taliban’s presence increased and the population’s animosity towards the US did as well. The tactics of the US consisted of small party raids. These tactics upset the local Afghani population, and the coalition that the US had built began to crumble. The insurgence that developed in opposition to the US was mainly the result of the lack of stability in Afghanistan, effected mainly by these tactical raids, which undermined Afghani society, stifling economic growth and social stability. The support for the Taliban was thus a direct outcome of the US’s failure to understand that the Afghan population was not focused on perpetuating a war on terror but was rather becoming inflamed towards the US and was willing to make war on the US forces in Afghanistan in order to regain a sense of self-determination (Taddeo, 2010).
Accounting/Financing
Financial assets were frozen thanks in large part to the help of Britain’s role: the UK froze some 60 million pounds of suspected Taliban financial assets in a London branch European bank (Irish Times, 2001). As the war on terror and the ensuing legislation that passed in the West allowed for the seizure of financial assets of suspected terrorists and supporters of terrorism, this was an integral part of the strategy to neutralize al-Qaeda and its supporters in the Taliban, who were suspected of aiding and abetting Osama bin Laden.
Recruitment
To recruit the local population to side with the US, the military bombing campaigns had to be reduced lest the local population continue in its resentment of the West and its support for the Taliban (Taddeo, 2010). Because the bombings were disruptive to the Afghani way of life, the US had to cease them in order to gain recruits from the local districts. Too many deaths of civilians had resulted from them and these deaths in large part spurred survivors on towards throwing their lot in with the insurgents. Troops on the ground, however, helped to curry support from locals and helped to establish at least a stable environment in which the US could focus on developing the country to be more US-friendly and to support the government that the US backed and had installed.
However, again the US began to relax its presence in the field and shifted responsibilities over to NATO, at which point the Taliban seized the opportunity to recruit the local population to its own aims and intentions once more (Barno, 2007). The US withdrawal and the lack of local support for the US-backed government in the end allowed the Taliban to reassert itself, as NATO did little policing of the local villages and cultivated zero support for Western aims within the country. The Taliban sought to cut off the US-backed government from the local populace and thus exacerbate the problem of instability so that it could come in and restore order and show the people that it alone had the power to govern. Villages and provinces fell one by one to the Taliban as the US lost control and influence, and even in cities like Ghazni the Taliban’s presence and influence grew as the US’s diminished. Al-Qaeda safe havens were re-established and Afghanistan became a quagmire.
Because the US failed to recruit support from other neighboring countries around Afghanistan, the counterterrorism operation stalled and the counterinsurgency strategy failed to bring stability. With Taliban bases throughout the mountain range between Pakistan and Afghanistan, the US needed to win support from Pakistan for its initiatives but did not, and thus the Taliban was able to thrive in these enclaves. Instead of recruiting players from other states in the region, the US succeeded mainly only in alienating them with its continued presence and war on terror.
Targets
As Taddeo (2010) points out, “the principal objective of the U.S. intervention was al-Qaida, and its bases in Afghanistan, protected by the Taliban regime, were the target of U.S. air strikes” (p. 27). However, these strikes were not without significant collateral damage and several thousands of civilian lives were lost, which turned the Afghani people against the US. The US thus had to stop the bombings in order to develop a better relationship with the Afghanis if it hoped to turn them away from the Taliban and move them to support the US-backed government—at least that was the strategy that evolved. The targets thus went from being camps that were bombed to being people who were rounded up by soldiers on the ground. These same soldiers also worked to develop relationships with the locals, so there were two types of targets—those who the US sought to arrest and those the US sought to communicate with and motivate to join them on the political front.
Positive and Negative Aspects of the Strategy
The strategy overall had its positive elements of clarity and purpose, but its short-sightedness was its main negative element. It was as though the US were not entirely committed to its professed strategic aims but were only attempting to shift the balance of power in the region to the point where destabilization was the enduring outcome. Was destabilization of the region the end game all along? If one looks at the war on terror from this perspective and keeps in mind the geopolitical ambitions of the US, particularly with respect to containing China and addressing its One Belt One Road initiative, one can see how destabilization would help to derail China’s ambitious expansion of the new Silk Road into the Middle East.
The US did succeed in chasing the Taliban out of Afghanistan initially, but it did not proceed to nation-building and instead it continued a campaign that only alienated the populace. Had the US implemented a more holistic and far-sighted strategy, the outcome likely would have been different as the Taliban would have had no choice but to remain outcast and exiled in the mountains. This, however, was not in the plans, and after destabilizing Afghanistan it quickly turned towards destabilizing Iraq, and from Iraq it moved to Syria where destabilization sure enough followed. The remarkable lack of a cohesive and coherent strategy suggests that destabilization was the ultimate objective, and whether that objective was to counter China or to assist another Middle Eastern state with its own geopolitical objectives is beyond the scope of this paper. What can be said is that the positive aspects of the counterterrorism operation employed by the US in Afghanistan stalled after the initial victory and the negative aspects of it then prevailed. When the US then altered its strategy to develop a more suitable approach to building support among the locals, the efforts were helpful, but then once more the US did not stay the course.
Conclusion
The aim of the US in Afghanistan is difficult to decipher as it has been nearly two decades and nothing has come of the operation. Cease-fires have been declared and bombs have continued to fall, yet coalition governments have failed to gain traction and the US presence in the region has become increasingly seen as antagonistic to regional stability and peace. Iraq’s government has called on US troops to leave its country, and the US presence in Afghanistan has been a socio-political bone of contention in the US as much as it has been in the Middle East. President Trump campaigned and won on the platform of ending the wars in the Middle East, just as Obama did before him, and yet like Obama Trump has done little to bring about this promise. The American public seems willing to end the occupation there, which is what it has come to be seen as, and the death toll of the heroin epidemic that devastated American communities following the liberation of poppy fields in the wake of the US invasion is still remembered in America.
The initial strategy of bombing Taliban and al-Qaeda camps succeeded in chasing the groups into the mountains, but these tactical exercises were not supported by a social or cultural tactical exercises to cultivate socio-political support for the development of a new national government. That was a mistake. Had the US coupled the bombing campaign with an extended nation-building approach and won favor and support among other Middle Eastern nations instead of focusing on destabilizing them as well, the outcome in Afghanistan likely would have been different.
In terms of having universal value, it is difficult to see how the strategy employed in Afghanistan had any local value let along universal value. The strategy was half-baked at times and never fully utilized all the strategic tools in a long-term sense with respect to what the US should have been able to accomplish. Were this same strategy to be employed elsewhere throughout the world it would most likely produce the same results: destabilization, animosity among the populace, and frustration at home.
The explosion of the heroin trade is an outcome of this operation that should not be overlooked. While collateral damage is often an expected outcome, the damage caused by the flow of heroin into the US as well as other countries devastated an entire generation. Opium cultivation has skyrocketed in Afghanistan and the US has had no success in containing it, if containing it is even the objective. The drug trade has funded black operations for intelligence communities in the past, as was the case with the CIA and the Contras in the 1980s (Hitz, 1999).
As Whitlock (2019) points out, the US has made attempts to bomb the opium production labs responsible for the spread of the heroin trade as in 2017, “U.S. military commanders in Afghanistan launched Operation Iron Tempest, a storm of airstrikes by B-52 bombers, F-22 Raptors and other warplanes.” Yet Operation Iron Tempest turned out to be another failure: the supposed labs were empty: opium production was being done elsewhere. How could intelligence continuously fail so badly again and again in Afghanistan? It would seem that an intelligence operation so badly botched would have severe consequences. It appears that mishandling of the operation in Afghanistan at every level has gone without serious repercussions, as though by design: “after more than 200 airstrikes, the U.S. military concluded it was a waste of resources to keep blowing up primitive targets with advanced aircraft and laser-guided munitions” (Whitlock, 2019). In short, the US was blowing up hills and mounds of earth with million dollar missiles, achieving nothing but a show of force to empty fields and surroundings. What universal value could such an operation have? It screams of waste and unaccountability. Even Mohammed Ehsan Zia, the former Afghan cabinet minister in charge of rural development programs, told U.S. government interviewers that the United States and other NATO countries “never settled on an effective strategy and just threw money at the opium problem,” continuously altering policies and relying “on a carousel of consultants who were ignorant about Afghanistan” (Whitlock, 2019). It is difficult to see how there is strategy at all in the containment of the heroin trade, since the fields used to farm poppies have grown in size by 4x since the US invasion of Afghanistan. Were the US genuinely interested in stopping the farming and production of opium, one would think these farms would not have increased in size—yet they have—which points to the existence of an ulterior motive and a possible Contra-like operation going on.
To that end, one could argue that the operation in Afghanistan does have universal value since it appears to be the same sort of operation that intelligence has run in the past throughout other parts of the world. To what end these operations entail is not always publicly known nor interdepartmentally known. That is the problem with the existence of governmental silos: silos conceal cultures, which have their own plans and processes that may not align with other plans and operations in other parts of the organization. Covert operations are covert from other departments as well.
All of this should signal a high degree of frustration, and undoubtedly it can be seen for being just that. The counterterrorism operations in Afghanistan have been going on for nearly 20 years, with an endless stream of bureaucrats implementing their own policies, which lead to more waste, more missile strikes on empty clay huts while the heroin trade soars and the Taliban becomes more entrenched in the halls of local government. Had the US been trying to fail in the Middle East it could not have done a better job. And perhaps that is exactly what it has been doing. In the light of the ongoing feud with China, the derailment of the One Belt One Road initiative, the destabilization of nations in the Middle East, the ongoing expansion of Israel, the ratcheting up of tensions with Iran, the isolation of Venezuela, and the alienation of China from the West, the intelligence community appears to be quite busy with a Brzezinski level chess board; the only question is whether the operations in Afghanistan were ever meant to succeed as counterterrorism strategies or if they were merely part of a larger operation with wider geopolitical ramifications.
It is not always politic to assess the outcome of a single operation without awareness of the contextual factors in which it is situated. Afghanistan is but one small piece in a much bigger geopolitical puzzle of foreign policy that becomes clearer as the years pass. The US may have been waging a war on terror in these past 20 years, but the actual target of that war may not have been the groups that the US officially was attempting to target. If it were, it would betray a level of incompetence unheard of in modern warfare and intelligence. This suggests that a larger operation has been in the works.
References
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