Political Intervention

What is being done?

Quantifying and qualifying environmental intervention in Afghanistan posits a challenge. Afghanistan’s terrain is varied, and the actors involve are numerous, and the way in which intervention occurred changes depending on the time or actor(s) involved. There are issues of opium, deforestation, drought, flooding, and access to arable land. The national government, the Taliban, the Soviet Union, Great Britain, non-government organizations and international organizations have all been involved in manipulating the environment, for conservation or for destruction. Often undercutting the choice to preserve or to damage is political goals. Case studies are useful in constructing an ongoing synthesis of the way different agents intervene for different reasons, both locally and on the geopolitical stage: some examples are the opium crisis, deforestation, and the 2007 Environmental Law.

The World and Afghani Opium Trade

International context is inseparable from Afghanistan’s opium economy. Massive profits are made abroad. The wholesale price of heroin (per gram), according to a 2007 report from UNODC, is $2.50 in Afghanistan, but $33 in Russia (UNODC, 2007). The bulk of the profit comes from smuggling opium across borders, but there are various participants involved in Afghanistam.

One fourth of the profit went to opium farmers. District officials generally levy an informal tax, called ushr, under Islamic law, which is generally at the discretion of local leaders— sometimes the Taliban, sometimes not (UNODC, 2007). According to to the UN "Insurgents and warlords control the business of producing and distributing drugs. The rest is made by drug traffickers"

Approximately one quarter of this amount ($1 billion) is earned by opium farmers. District officials take a percentage through a tax on crops (known as ushr) (Weigand). Insurgents and warlords control the business of producing and distributing the drugs. The rest is made by drug traffickers (UNODC, 2007).

According to a separate 2003 UNODC report opium production in Afghanistan has been largely a modern problem, swelling since the Soviet Occupation in 1979. In the 1920s and 1930s, Afghanistan participated in meetings of the Permanent Central Opium Board under the League of Nations; at that time, 2 or 3 provinces produced opium, compared to the 22 out of 28 provinces that produced opium in 2003. None were reported in the Southern provinces— most notable Helmand and Kandahar, which were and are responsible for the majority of opium production. For a sense of scale, in 1932, which is the first year of reputable data, Afghanistan produced 75 tons of opium— China produced 6,000. In 1945, opium production was banned, and more or less effectively so, in retrospect. 12 tons were produced in 1956. Comparatively, opium was not a major issue as it is today (UNODC, 2003).

What Changed?

According UNODC, gross income from opium in 2002 was $1.2 billion, $6,500/family. Daily wages in Afghanistan average $2 per day (National Environmental Protection Agency). Opium is highly valuable and condensed; per gram, it is expensive and easily transported. This makes it profitable and easier for criminal activity. In the UNODC report from 2007, opium was reported to be 53% of Afghanistan’s GDP. The drastic increase in drug production coincides with the rise of the Taliban and civil war. The brief reprise in 2001 came from a fatwa (an Islamic legislative decree) issued by Mullah Omar, Taliban leader, halting production of opium as unIslamic. However, there is a widespread belief this was done in order to bolster international legitimacy to recognize the Taliban government, and also to artificially inflate drug prices to generate profit. After the ban, in 2002, prices of opium increased tenfold.

Various policies have been in place to combat opium trade. The Taliban fatwa is one example, though interesting in the idea that legislation is not always secular, nor is always intended to do what it writes as its goals. Rather, there is often nuanced political motivations from something as seemingly uncontroversial as prohibiting drug trafficking.

Another example of controversial intervention came in October 2010, when Russia and the United States launched a joint drug raid. Many praised the cooperation as a major step forward— at the time— for U.S.-Russia relations (Schwirtz).

Over 2,000 pounds of heroin was destroyed, which translates into $250 million dollars. However, then-President Hamid Karzai criticized the raid. In a statement his office released, serious criticism came that they did not know of Russian involvement:

"While Afghanistan remains committed to its joint efforts with the international community against narcotics, it also makes it clear that no organization or institution shall have the right to carry out such a military operation without prior authorization and consent of the government of Afghanistan," it said.

"Such unilateral operations are a clear violation of Afghan sovereignty as well as international law, and any repetition will be met by the required reaction from our side," the statement added.

Not unlike the Taliban fatwa, issues of national legitimacy are at play. While Karzai supported the international community aiding Afghanistan’s battle against opium, being left in the dark speaks strongly to Afghan state-building. Not knowing another country, particularly the heir to the nation that invaded in 1979, sparking a bloody war that has not ended, undermines both Karzai and Afghanistan as a sovereign state. It beckons to today, as well, as the Government of Afghanistan—the one officially recognized internationally— is left out of peace negotiations between the U.S. and the Taliban.

In 2010, Hamid Karzai’s national security advisor said NATO apologized in private, but that the Afghani government wanted a public declaration. This is because, in part, it is an issue of legitimacy; a public declaration of wrongdoing bolsters Afghani as a state independent of the US (BBC).

Yet, Russia put considerable pressure on the United States. With 2.5 million drug addicts in Russia, the United States was seen as too soft on Afghanistan drug trade by Moscow(BBC), especially since 90% of heroin in Russia comes from Afghanistan (Coyne).

Now, peace talks are occurring without representation of the Afghan national government. Instead, a foreign government is negotiating. In March of 2019, President Ashraf Ghani’s national security advisor, Hamdullah Mohib, called that Zalmay Khalizad, the U.S. representative for peace talks, an “American viceroy”, with ambitions to head an interim Afghan government post-peace deal.

This was clearly a colonialist line of attack, criticizing foreign interference in Afghani affairs. However, international aid has been at the forefront of Afghani government. The United Nationals helped to create the Environmental Act, to be seen in a later section. After agriculture, foreign aid accounts for the second largest percentage of Afghanistan’s national budget (Crews, 248). The United States has spent more than $8.4 billion, and “exported” many domestic anti-drug efforts to Afghanistan, such as the Drug Enforcement Agency, which opened 13 offices in Afghanistan, and rose to 95 offices by 2013 (Coyne).

The raid occurred less than five kilometers from the Pakistani border, near the city of Jalalabad. Pakistan has been charged multiple times with helping support, fund, and train the Taliban.

"Stephen P. Cohen, the authority on Pakistan's army, says, 'Radical Islam certainly has found a home in Pakistan. Radical parties are profuse, and terrorism is an oft-employed tactic...It has almost always been the state, especially the Pakistani army, that has allowed most radical Islamic groups to function on a wider stage— equipping and training them when necessary and provide overall political and strategic guidance for their activities" (Crews, 225).

It is worth mentioning the insurgency has given ample opportunity for opium trade to grow. Evidence shows clearly that provinces in the South, which higher rates of violence, also have much higher rates of opium production. According to the 2007 UNODC report, only 20% of the provinces with designated “good security” grow opium, while 80% of farmers do so in areas where security is poor (UNODC, 2007).

In short, major, delicate political posturing is occurring. The United States cooperated with Russia in part from Moscow's pressure, only to apologize to Afghanistan, privately, while the drug raid occurred in an area extraordinarily close to Pakistan, who is known to have supported the opium-funded Taliban.

Deforestation in Afghanistan: Turbulence and Timber

Deforestation is another environmental crisis in Afghanistan. Like opium, it has only gotten worse in the midst of ongoing violence and instability. Yet, once home to 450,000 hectares pistachio trees, Afghanistan has lost 40% of those hectares over 30 years of fighting. During the Soviet era, soldiers deliberately cut down pistachio trees in the northern border of Afghanistan, as a tactic to destroy cover and hiding places (Asia Foundation.) From 1990 to 2000, Afghanistan lost an average of 29,400 hectares of forest per year. This equals a deforestation rate of 2.25% annually, according to a NEPA report to the UN. (https://unfccc.int/resource/docs/natc/afgnc1.pdf)

In 2006, Hamid Karzai banned tree felling. The 2007 Environmental Law, passed with UNEP’s help, also forbid the changing of lands from public to private, designated forest to grazing lands. Yet, enforcement remains dubious.

In a 2013 NPR piece, the deputy director of NEPA, Wali Modaqiq, notes "There is a huge demand for Afghan timber in the international market.” This was not noted in NPR, but according to the Asia Foundation, truckloads of smuggled timber are sent over the border to Pakistan (NPR).

Hamidullah, a local businessman in Kunar, notes that corruption in the local government plays no small role. "There's a big business running [timber] during the night," Hamidullah says. "All top officials, including the governor, police chief and head of the provincial council, are involved and are paid their share." Despite bribes to local officials, when Hamidullah’s timber business was caught, the government seized his supply and sold it for themselves (NPR)

Strangely, the story of timber mirrors the opium. Its destruction is illegal, but there is little incentive for local governments or communities to stop it. The poverty in Afghanistan makes environmental destruction the best option; despite 4,000 tons of opium production in one year, President Obama worried that eradication programs would be too intrusive, and “farmers would turn to the Taliban for assistance” (Schwirtz).

In a country where more than half the population lives beneath the poverty line, exploitation of the environment, even at a deep detriment to future generations, makes sense. Poverty is rising in Afghanistan; even during GDP growth, it largely benefitted elites, and the poor saw little improvement, as the growth was not “pro-poor”, according to the World Bank (Chaudhuri) The economic lure of timber and opium is not hard to see, if it means maintaining one’s livelihood. It does not help that while the legislation is there, the enforcement is difficult to be seen.

The Asia Foundation, in no small euphemism, notes “the technical capacity of NEPA and local environmental authorities needs strengthening to effectively govern.” (Nixon, Mustafa).

Implications and Implementations: the Environmental Law of 2007

The 2007 Environmental Law was constructed through multiple collaborators, including the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), various nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and the Government of Afghanistan. It was intended to create a framework of national agencies Afghanistan previously did not have. 2005 was the first construction of such an agency devoted to environmental issues, with the establishment of the National Environmental Protection Agency. Likewise, it was formed with UNEP’s help, but until the 2007 Environmental Law there was little legal mechanism to enforce its claims. (UNEP, 2010). The drafting committee of the 2007 Environmental law said as much: “NEPA [the Environmental Agency] is not a line ministry with direct implementation function.”

The Environmental Act required strong international influence in its formation. It involved a variety of actors. As is common with cooperation efforts among actors of different levels of power, vertical imposition of ideology becomes an issue. According to McKenzie F. Johnson in the European Journal of International Relations, “ability of IOs to present themselves as impersonal and neutral, which empowers them to diffuse impartial solutions to apolitical problems as depoliticized actors” (Johnson, 170).

How well are these intervening structures working?

Some issues with efficacy include the debate between calling for “Moqrarah” which means regulations, versus “Tarzelamal” which means procedures. Tarzelamal is weaker, intended to guide ministries, rather than Moqrarah which requires certain behaviors (Johnson).

For example, protected area ranger salaries went unpaid in Band-e-Amir, the first protected national park of Afghanistan. No one could decide who had the responsibility to pay, since “since the Environment Law explicitly directed the Environmental Agency to ‘include in its annual budget the funds required for the administration of the national protected areas system as required in terms of this article” (Johnson). Sub-nationally, NGOs and IOs create a variety of different institutions, ministries, and initiatives that complicate matters and involve a high level of organization to coordinate (GoA, 2007). In the case of Band-e-Amir, The Ministry of Agriculture declined to pay the park rangers.

Some Fraught Conclusions

Environmental issues, whether public health, deforestation, water, or drugs, are politically fraught. Government’s legitimacy hinge on them. The Asia Foundation found a correlation between awareness of public services and government legitimacy: Respondents who knew about a new project were more likely (63.4%) to say the national Government of Afghanistan was doing a good job compared to those unaware (53.8%) Awareness about water drives optimism about the future: 41.7% in the right direct, compared to 29.9% who didn’t know (Afghanistan: A Survey of the Afghan People 2006-2018). International relations, especially with Russia and Pakistan, play a role in intervention as well. The legitimacy of a government that is in constant aid and cooperation with foreign government comes into question. Pakistan’s history with the Taliban and opium and timber as funding matter as well. So too does the rise of poverty in Afghanistan, which leaves poorer, more unstable provinces more likely to turn to opium and timber. It doesn’t help that the unity government sometimes deeply lacks the ability of a government to implement the policies they pass into law. Perhaps in summation, there is no summation; there is only a bunch of moving parts, NGOs, IOs, governments and journalists, who are trying to carve out a safer, healthier Afghanistan. It is just more complicated than one could imagine.

Issues of legitimacy plague Afghanistan's national government. Foreign influence and corruption, and incompetence are common complaints; of Afghan citizens who think their country is moving in the wrong direction, only 2.6% think that is because a lack of international aid (Afghanistan: A Survey of the Afghan People 2006-2018). Of people who were optimistic, 1.2% cited reduced foreign intervention as the cause of their optimism. This speaks to a strong international presence in Afghanistan. Likewise, the Asia Foundation also found 81% of Afghans citizens called corruption a "major problem" in the government. 33% cited weak government for their pessimism in Afghanistan's trajectory towards the future (Afghanistan: A Survey of the Afghan People 2006-2018).

In the Journal of Intervention and State Building, scholar Florian Weigan notes a concise point: "the people’s immediate concern is having any rule of law – regardless of its ideological sources – to counter the perceived high level of corruption and arbitrariness." (Weigand). There are numerous factors contributing to the corruption and arbitrariness he notes; foreign diplomatic strategy, such as Russia and the United States, economic necessity to rely on illegal opium and timber industry, and the very construction of laws that lead to murkiness of responsibility— the difference between “Moqrarah” and “Tarzelamal” is night and day.

Citations

Afghanistan: A Survey of the Afghan People 2006-2018. (n.d.). Retrieved April 1, 2019, from http://surveys.asiafoundation.org/Dashboard?SurveyCode=AGSAP1&SampleName=GP&SectionName=Default&LanguageName=English#tptab3

Afghanistan’s Forests A Casualty Of Timber Smuggling. (n.d.). Retrieved March 30, 2019, from NPR.org website: https://www.npr.org/2013/03/18/174200911/afghanistans-forests-a-casualty-of-timber-smuggling

Crews, Robert D., and Amin Tarzi. 2008. The Taliban and the crisis of Afghanistan. (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press), 2.

Chaudhuri, S. (2018, May 7). The latest poverty numbers for Afghanistan: a call to action, not a reason for despair [Text]. Retrieved April 11, 2019, from End Poverty in South Asia website: http://blogs.worldbank.org/endpovertyinsouthasia/latest-poverty-numbers-afghanistan-call-action-not-reason-despair

Coyne, C. J., Hall, A. R., & Burns, S. (2015). The War on Drugs in Afghanistan: Another Failed Experiment with Interdiction. SSRN Electronic Journal. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2613428

GoA (2007) Environment Law. Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.

Nixon, N., & Mustafa, M. (2012, April 19). The Future of Afghanistan’s Natural Resources. Retrieved April 11, 2019, from The Asia Foundation website: https://asiafoundation.org/2012/04/18/the-future-of-afghanistans-natural-resources/

Programme, UNEP. (2011). UNEP 2010 Annual Report. Retrieved from https://wedocs.unep.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.11822/7693/-The_UNEP_programme_in_Afghanistan_Annual_report_2010-2011unep_programme_afghanistan_2010.pdf.pdf?sequence=3&isAllowed=y

Schwirtz, M. (2010, October 29). Russia Joins Afghan Drug Raid. The New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/30/world/asia/30opium.html

National Environmental Protection Agency, To the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. (2015). 138. https://unfccc.int/resource/docs/natc/afgnc1.pdf

National Environmental Protection Agency, To the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. (n.d.). 138. https://unfccc.int/resource/docs/natc/afgnc1.pdf

United Nations Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention (Ed.). (2003). Opium economy in Afghanistan: an international problem. New York: Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention.

United Nations Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention (Ed.). (2007). Afghanistan Opium Survey 2007. Vienna International Center.

Johnson, M. F. (2017). Institutional change in a conflict setting: Afghanistan’s Environment Law. European Journal of International Relations, 23(1), 168–191. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354066115624953

Weigand, F. (2017). Afghanistan’s Taliban – Legitimate Jihadists or Coercive Extremists? Journal of Intervention and Statebuilding, 11(3), 359–381. https://doi.org/10.1080/17502977.2017.1353755

Woody, C. (n.d.). Afghanistan is producing a lot more opium than before the US invasion. The US just can’t stop it. Retrieved April 10, 2019, from Business Insider website: https://www.businessinsider.com/the-us-cant-seem-to-cut-back-afghanistans-opium-production-2018-6