Afghanistan's Security, Poverty, and Taliban Resurgence
This paper analyzes three interconnected crises facing Afghanistan in the early 2010s: the unreadiness of the Afghan National Army and police forces to assume independent security responsibilities, the country's entrenched poverty and public health failures, and the resurgent Taliban insurgency. Drawing on reporting from Time, NPR, and the BBC as well as peer-reviewed sources in Military Medicine and Iranian Studies, the paper documents drug abuse within Afghan security forces, widespread corruption in the Afghan Local Police, extreme urban poverty in Kabul, and the Taliban's exploitation of Afghanistan's dominant role in global opium production to fund its ongoing insurgency against the U.S.-backed government.
- Introduction: Three core crises framing Afghanistan's instability
- The Afghan National Army: Undertrained and Unprepared: Parliamentary and military concerns about Afghan force readiness
- Drug Abuse and Corruption in Afghan Security Forces: Widespread drug use and criminal behavior in Afghan police
- Afghanistan's Poverty, Poor Health, and Social Collapse: Extreme poverty, malnutrition, and failed urban infrastructure
- The Re-emergence of the Taliban: Taliban resurgence financed by opium and exploiting U.S. withdrawal
- Conclusion: Bleak outlook for security, poverty, and Taliban containment
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What makes this paper effective
- It organizes a broad, complex geopolitical situation into three clearly defined problem areas, making an otherwise sprawling topic manageable and readable.
- The paper integrates a range of source types — peer-reviewed journals, news outlets, and government-linked reports — lending credibility to each distinct claim.
- Specific statistics (e.g., 60% of ANP troops in Helmand Province testing positive for drugs; 92% of the world's opium supply coming from Afghanistan) give the argument concrete weight.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates effective use of attributed quotation to anchor claims. Rather than paraphrasing all sources, it selectively quotes officials, parliamentarians, and military commanders directly (e.g., Golali Akbari, Lt. Gen. Dave Barno, Sir Simon Gass), allowing authoritative voices to reinforce the argument while the writer synthesizes and connects them.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with a three-part problem statement that doubles as a structural roadmap. It then addresses each issue in sequence — military unreadiness, poverty, and Taliban resurgence — before a brief conclusion tying all three problems together with reference to the political context of U.S. withdrawal. Each body section moves from general claim to specific evidence, following a consistent pattern across all major sections.
Introduction
The situation in Afghanistan was not improving as had been hoped, despite the massive and expensive American and NATO intervention. The country faced three serious, interconnected crises: (a) the lack of a competent, well-trained military defense force; (b) a lingering legacy of poverty and hopelessness; and (c) the re-emergence of the Taliban, a radical Islamic fighting force that had been ousted from Afghanistan after September 11, 2001, but was returning as a disruptive insurgency. Each of these issues is examined in this paper.
The Afghan National Army: Undertrained and Unprepared
One of the main reasons the United States and NATO pumped billions of dollars in aid and military resources into Afghanistan was to hold off the Taliban while training Afghanistan's own military forces. Initially, the U.S. intervened in response to the bin Laden-led al-Qaeda use of Afghan training grounds to plan and execute the attacks of September 11, 2001 — attacks made possible in part because the Taliban, then the ruling power in Afghanistan, welcomed terrorists into the country. The plan to secure Afghanistan from insurgency, however, was not succeeding as hoped. Afghan security forces were not well enough trained to take over the security of their nation — a conclusion supported by multiple sources reviewed here.
"The time is not right for a transition to Afghan security forces," said Golali Akbari, an elected member of the upper house of Afghanistan's parliament (Wendle, 2011, p. 1). "They are not ready. They are not well trained, and they are not commanded and organized well," Akbari told Time magazine. Her concerns, and those of other Afghan leaders regarding the competency of the Afghan National Army and the Afghan National Police, were underscored in March 2011 when a Taliban suicide bomber killed 37 people and wounded 40 others at an army recruitment center in Kunduz (Wendle, 2011).
Journalists reporting for National Public Radio (NPR) accompanied U.S. and NATO forces on patrols alongside Afghan troops. In some instances, U.S. Marines planned and led the patrols and even spoke with villagers through an interpreter while the Afghan forces stood and watched (Bowman, 2012, p. 2). U.S. commanders in Afghanistan described the abilities of Afghan forces as at best "spotty," and clearly not ready to stand up to the Taliban on their own (Bowman, p. 2).
Retired Lt. General Dave Barno — former commander of coalition forces in Afghanistan — authored a white paper calling for more training for Afghan forces. His assessment was direct: Afghan forces were "largely untested — and perhaps far from ready" (Bowman, p. 3).
Drug Abuse and Corruption in Afghan Security Forces
Beyond their lack of training, a significant percentage of Afghanistan National Police (ANP) personnel were using illegal drugs. An article in the peer-reviewed journal Military Medicine reported that drug abuse had become "increasingly common" among ANP soldiers (Arfsten et al., 2012). The use of cannabis and opiates was described as "rampant," based on drug testing conducted by British and American personnel. In Helmand Province, tests showed that upwards of 60% of ANP troops were using drugs on a regular basis (Arfsten, p. 1).
A separate U.S. State Department report found that between 12% and 41% of ANP recruits at Regional Training Centers tested positive for drug use, with analysts suggesting the true figure was likely higher, as opium does not remain in the system long enough to be consistently detected (Arfsten, p. 1).
A Pentagon report based on previously classified data found that units of the Afghan Local Police had become "deeply entangled" in corruption and criminal activity, including taking bribes and extorting money from citizens. One in five American special operations teams reported that Afghan Local Police personnel used drugs, accepted bribes, raped women in local communities, and engaged in drug trafficking (Cloud et al., 2012, p. 1).
Conclusion
Public opinion had long since turned against American involvement in Afghanistan, and in the 2012 presidential election year, President Obama was clearly intent on withdrawing U.S. troops as quickly as possible. The Afghan soldiers being trained to take over from NATO and American forces were obviously not prepared for the responsibility being handed to them, yet the handover was proceeding regardless. The many Afghans living in poverty were unlikely to see meaningful improvement in their circumstances anytime soon. As for the Taliban, they continued to cross the porous Afghan-Pakistani border, determined to return to power — an outcome that appeared increasingly plausible given the incompetence and corruption within Afghanistan's existing leadership structure.
Works Cited
Arfsten, Darryl P., Joe F. Moralez, Linnes L. Chester, Pir Mohamad, and Timothy H. Weber. "Drug Use Among the Afghanistan National Police: A National Assessment." Military Medicine 177, no. 1: 85–90.
Bowman, Tom. "U.S. Prepares to Redefine Mission in Afghanistan." National Public Radio. 2012. Accessed May 15, 2012. http://www.npr.org.
Cloud, David S., and Laura King. "Afghan Police Fall Short, Study Finds." The Los Angeles Times. 2012. Retrieved May 15, 2012. http://www.latimes.com.
Kataria, Jafar R., and M. Phil Scholar. "Poverty in South Asia: An Overview." Interdisciplinary Journal of Contemporary Research in Business 3, no. 3 (2011): 389–396.
Roggio, Bill. "Taliban Ambush NATO Supply in Western Afghanistan." Long War Journal. Accessed May 14, 2012. http://longwarjournal.org.
Schmidt, Farhana. "From Islamic Warriors to Drug Lords: The Evolution of the Taliban Insurgency." Mediterranean Quarterly 21, no. 2 (2010): 61–79.
Schutte, Stefan. "Informal (In)security in Urban Afghanistan." Iranian Studies 42, no. 3 (2009): 465–491.
Sommerville, Quentin. "Dismantling U.S. Bases as the Taliban Fight On." BBC News. 2012. Accessed May 15, 2012. http://www.bbc.co.uk.
Wendle, John. "Are Afghan Security Forces Ready to Take Over?" Time. 2011. Accessed May 14, 2012. http://www.time.com.
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