Vodka may be being replaced as the “opium of the people” in Russia – by real opium coursing through the veins of a growing number of Russians. One in every 50 working-age Russians is an addict, according to Russia’s top drugs official, Viktor Ivanov. This level of Russian consumption per capita could be as much as eight times higher than the overall rate in the European Union. Russia’s underclass of more than two million hard-drug addicts – out of population of over 142 million – pose “a threat to our national security, our society, and our civilization ” Ivanov said.
The main source of heroin for the Russian market is Afghanistan, and the growing market for Russians addicts is a major asset for the Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Rather than money, the Taliban drug lords barter their shipments for weapons. “We never sell the drugs for money,” boasted one of the smugglers. “We exchange them for ammunition and Kalashnikovs.” Smugglers say that Russian arms dealers meet Taliban drug-lords at bazaars near the old Afghan-Soviet border, deep in the desert of Tajikistan.
The overall traffic indicates that heroin-related products are smuggled to Russia via several routes: 30 percent of its heroin and morphine-base and 79 percent of its opium went through Iran in 2007, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). The figures were 51 percent and 13 percent for Pakistan and 19 percent and 7 percent for the Central Asian republics, notably Kazakhstanwhich has a porous border with Russia extending for 7,000 kilometers. (4,375 miles).
According to Ivanov, Russia has also become the world’s absolute leader in the opiate trade and the number one heroin consumer. An estimated 90 percent of those addicted to drugs in Russia use Afghan products. The drug traffic number continues to rise. “Mr. Ivanov said that “the level of Afghan drugs production now is 44 times higher than it was in 2001.” This sky-rocketing production can be linked to the US military drive to crush the Taliban in Afghanistan, he said, because the insurgents need the cash and supplies from they can get from the heroin.
This traffic is “filling the coffers of the Taliban”. US State Department agrees: “Opium is a source of literally billions of dollars to extremist and criminal groups… [C]utting down the opium supply is central to establishing a secure and stable democracy, as well as winning the global war on terrorism”.
In Russia, the drug problem is becoming a dire challenge for civil society. Once addicted, a Russian heroin-user addict has a life expectancy of seven years.
On current trends, opium is replacing vodka as the opiate of the people predicted by one of communism’s founders, Karl Marx. “Drugs have already become a part of youth culture here,” said Alexander Mikhailov, a senior staff scientist and research group leader in the Fritz Haber Institute, the prestigious German science research institute.
Coupled with low birth-rates, the opium toll among younger Russians poses a grave threat to Russia’s future.
Amid the daily reports of deepening military problems in Afghanistan, NATO operations there are at risk not just because of the mounting tempo of the Taliban but also because allied capitals are papering over deep disagreements about the strategy and the conduct of the campaign. The command structure is afflicted by the simultaneous presence in the field of many three and four-star generals from different countries and their divergences have damaged morale among troops and officials on the ground and spread pessimism in the Western media, especially in Europe. The U.S. feeling of political concern has become acute now that Britain is showing signs of becoming lukewarm about its Afghan commitment. If Britain, the key U.S. ally in the campaign, were to pull its forces out of Afghanistan, it would be easy to see other European governments following the British lead to the exit.
A blunt analysis of the emerging confusion and disarray among the allies was delivered recently in Washington by a leading British specialist, who did not mince words about the urgency of the problem. “It is clear that for the next two years the EU and the US need to be brutally honest with each other about Afghanistan and to commit their focus to this war and its resolution”, Dr. Michael Clarke, Director of RUSI (the London-based Royal United Services Institute) told a think tank in Washington in late October.
The multinational character of the NATO-led military forces there are by no means the only source of confusion and trouble. According to Clarke, some of the numerous NGO’s and other international civilian organizations on the ground there are severely obstructing military operations with their mere presence. Perhaps worst of all, the Afghan government has yet to make substantive progress on its own in establishing stability and its own credibility, he said.
These problems in Afghanistan have exposed fundamental weaknesses in the EU’s defense capabilities. On paper, the EU and NATO together account for 25% of the world’s defense spending, but their actual capabilities for fighting a conflict such as Afghanistan are alarmingly weak and poorly adapted to the battlefield. A gap is widening dangerously between some allied governments’ claims on paper about their troop and equipment capabilities and the actual forces they can deploy. This discrepancy has often exposed, to a devastating degree, the conflict in Afghanistan. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has complained publicly about the European allies’ unreadiness to fight counter-insurgency warfare, and this fall 10 French service people died in a Taliban ambush for which the NATO fighters were ill-equipped. France has set out to repair the shortcomings in its expeditionary force there but, on a larger scale, this lack of realism in governments about the issue could threaten the future of European defense. “If NATO and the EU continue to have delusions about their military mission capabilities without actually assessing the realities, the consequences will be catastrophic,” he said.
British doubts about the outlook have surfaced in the form of conversations that have been leaked. Defeatist comments by British officials generally take the line that “America’s strategy is doomed” and “we are not going to win this war” in Afghanistan. Even US Admiral Mike Mullen (Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) was reported by the Economist as admitting that Afghanistan is “not going in the right direction.” The British seem most in favor of starting some type of dialogue with elements of the Taliban – a move sternly rejected, so far, by Washington.
The U.S. role in Afghanistan has now come under the command of General David Petraeus, who was the architect of the surge strategy credited with bringing some stability to Iraq. But he would be the first to recognize that in some ways Afghanistan poses bigger challenges than Iraq. The very difficult, often treacherous terrain in Afghanistan makes it harder for Western forces to hunt down individual rebels. The Kabul regime lacks far behind Baghdad in having the foundations for a modern central administration. Pakistan seems even less inclined to cooperate about Afghanistan than Iran or Syria has been about Iraq. But Petraeus reportedly believes there is room for maneuver in getting “reconcilable” Afghan tribes to the fight against the Taliban. There may be some hopeful signs in Pakistan terrorist actions increase there and move leaders and public opinion in that country to turn against their own violent Islamic militants.
Canadian policymakers are confident that other allied nations will come up with reinforcements and greater operational mobility in Afghanistan, thus meeting the terms set by Canada for keeping its crucial combat role in embattled Kandahar province, the main front with Taliban insurgents.
Most of the additional forces – around 1,000 men – are expected to come from France, where President Nicolas Sarkozy has made it clear that he intends to follow through on his pledges to bring France closer to NATO. The French troops may be deployed in Kandahar or in eastern Afghanistan near the border with Pakistan, another key front. The arrival of French forces will enable the United States, if necessary, to redeploy American units there to fight directly alongside the Canadians in Kandahar.
Canada has also insisted on more operational mobility that would come from more helicopters and drones, and Washington is expected to provide some of what is needed in both categories.
“I am very comfortable that the conditions we stipulated are going to be met,” David Wright told European Affairs. A former Canadian ambassador to NATO, he is currently a professor at Victoria College, University of Toronto. Ambassador Wright has written for European Affairs on Canada’s involvement in Afghanistan.
Details about exact numbers and timetables are expected to emerge at the NATO summit meeting in Bucharest next week.
“This outcome means that the alliance will have solved the immediate short-run challenge in Afghanistan, so now we need to turn to a longer-term discussion about exactly how we plan to enable the Afghans to move ahead in taking over their own security,” Wright said.
That debate is likely to start in earnest at the NATO summit meeting, which will also be attended by Afghan President Hamid Karzai and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.
The Canadian parliament voted early this year to keep Canada’s current force of 2,500 troops in Afghanistan until 2011 – on condition that allied nations provided the reinforcements in manpower and mobility in the nation’s most dangerous regions.
France has decided more ground troops to Afghanistan for combat missions against Taliban insurgents in the mountainous battle zone close to the border with Pakistan, according to press reports in Paris.
The French commitment, which includes elite special forces, comes at a critical moment for NATO, which it direly needs reinforcements to ratchet up its campaign against guerilla fighters infiltrating eastern Afghanistan from their sanctuaries in the tribal areas of neighboring Pakistan.
By sending in fresh combat units, expected to number up to 500 men, President Nicolas Sarkozy seems to be acting on his pledge that France wants to work more closely with NATO. With the Bush administration asking European nations for more military help in Afghanistan, a Sarkozy adviser was quoted in Le Monde newspaper saying that “France is the only country that can — if it decides to – make the crucial difference.”
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A growing sense of crisis about NATO’s mission in Afghanistan crystallized in Washington early this year with the release of near-simultaneous reports on the outlook there – all sounding similar warnings to the effect that the campaign to restore government authority against insurgent Taliban forces and pacify the country has been neglected, under-resourced and damaged by conflicting views about the mission’s purpose.
“Make no mistake,” began one of these reports:“NATO is not winning in Afghanistan.”This study, entitled “Saving Afghanistan” and published by the Washington-based Atlantic Council, emphasized the need for greater progress in civilian reconstruction, at least in areas free of insurgent attack. In the long run, it argued, no amount of Afghan and Western military power can completely defeat the Taliban as long as its fighters can still find a safe haven in neighboring Pakistan.
The need for a major new effort to succeed in Afghanistan was also the theme of major new independent reports by Afghanistan Study Group and by the NationalDefenseUniversity. All three reports concur that without prompt actions by the U.S. and its allies, the mission in Afghanistan may fail – causing severe consequences to U.S. strategic interests worldwide, including the war on terrorism and the future of NATO. The U.S. cannot afford to let Afghanistan continue to be the neglected, or forgotten, war. All said that the Taliban cannot “defeat” NATO, but concluded that a quasi-stalemate would be a very serious blow to the alliance.
Former U.S. Ambassador to NATO Robert E. Hunter examines the current state of the NATO mission in Afghanistan. He focuses on the challenges presented by so-called “caveats”– limitations that individual nations place on their NATO forces– and the difficulties that they are causing for NATO commanders on the ground. Hunter’s article deals not only with the alliance’s immediate prospects in Afghanistan, but also with the long-term repercussions that could result from NATO’s first major military defeat. (more…)
This blog carries highlights from European Affairs, the policy journal of The European Institute, which is a non-partisan, independent, non-profit forum devoted to transatlantic relations. Editors can be reached at info@europeanaffairs.org. We welcome submissions.