After publishing an investigative report about the market of drugs in the capital of Afghanistan, the deputy minister of counter narcotics has received a decree from President Ghani to arrest the drug distributers.

The deputy minister says that the process of arresting drug dealers all across the country started last week and will continue.

The counter narcotic debate is a reminder of how unwieldy the alliance’s military operations can be. United Nations figures show that Afghan insurgents reap at least $100 million a year from the drug trade, although some estimates put the figure at five times as much.

For the Taliban, taxes on poppy farmers and opium dealers helped to finance the movement’s rogue state. For Al Qaeda terrorists, the officials warned, the opium trade might also be a way to move money or fund attacks. At the least, Afghanistan’s mix of political radicalism and diplomatic isolation had made for a drug threat that appeared to be well beyond America’s reach.

But more important than the Taliban’s sincerity may have been the fact that drug production could be regulated at all. With little more than Mullah Omar’s decree, poppy cultivation stopped virtually overnight with surprisingly few reports of repression against the farmers. Had such a thing happened almost anywhere else in the world, it would probably have been hailed as one of the greatest achievements in the history of drug enforcement.

The problem that Afghanistan posed under the Taliban was not an isolated one. Over the last decade or so, as anti-drug campaigns have advanced in relatively coherent states like Pakistan, Iran, Thailand and Bolivia, more of the world’s drug supply has begun to come from so-called rogue states, or from regions that government authority simply doesn’t reach.

After Afghanistan, the world’s biggest opium producer these days is Burma. Most of the world’s supply of coca, the raw material for cocaine, comes from regions of Colombia dominated by leftist rebels and right-wing paramilitary forces.

The Taliban’s concentration on their drug interests begins each year during the fall planting season. At that time, commanders often provide seeds, fertilizers, and advance payments and are always ready with promises of protection.
“In most districts, the Taliban are encouraging villagers to plant as many poppy seeds as possible and are assuring the farmers that the insurgency will shield their cultivation from government eradication efforts,” Abdali explains.

(Despite a big push, government eradication efforts have been largely ineffective, with just 6 percent of the some 380,000 acres of poppies planted last year having been destroyed, according to the UNODC.)

To tackle the problem of narcotics, the Afghan government and its international partners have initiated tough measures in recent years.

“Earlier the drug dealers would get away for carrying 5 gram opium, but now strict action is taken against those arrested,” says Mohammad Zahid, who has taken part in many anti-narcotic campaigns.

While Afghanistan continues to be the largest producer of drugs in the world, it was not the largest consumer until recently. Now, one million out of a population of 35 million are addicted to drugs, according to Ministry of Counter Narcotics (MoCN).