RUSSIA: Poppy Diplomacy

June 10, 2010
By Roland Oliphant
Russia Profile

http://www.russiaprofile.org/page.php?pageid=International&articleid=a1276193638

Russia Has Launched a Publicity Offensive to Bring Attention to the Threat of the Afghan Heroin Trade, but There’s a Long Way to Go to Consensus

Russia hosted an international drugs conference in Moscow this week in a bid to put the problem of Afghan heroin production higher on the international community’s agenda. Afghanistan has seen a surge in opium production in the past decade, and Kremlin officials have long complained that most of it ends up on the streets of Russian cities. They have managed to win recognition of the problem, but there remains an insurmountable gap between what Russia wants done, and what NATO is prepared to do.

Since the beginning of the current conflict in 2001, Afghan heroin production has boomed from next to nothing when NATO forces first arrived, now accounting for some 90 percent of the world’s opiates – exporting 3500 tons annually according to the United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

The effect on Russia, the largest single national market for Afghan heroin, has been traumatic. Heroin addiction levels have surged by a factor of ten in the past decade, to reach as much as two percent of the population. Russian addicts get through some 75 to 80 metric tons of Afghan opiates – about 20 percent of Afghanistan’s output – every year. According to government estimates the heroin epidemic kills 40,000 Russians annually – out of 100,000 victims worldwide.

Over the past two days these figures have been quoted, (and misquoted, and embellished) ad nauseam in the conference centre of Moscow’s Swiss Hotel, where the Russian authorities had summoned an impressive range of stakeholders to address what it sees as a long neglected problem. But while the diplomats and ministers from Russia, the United States, Afghanistan and Central Asia did their best to sing from the same song sheet – President Dmitry Medvedev set the tone with an opening address about “global responsibility” and a warning against politicizing the issue – when it came to the practicalities of fighting narcotics, major fault lines were apparent.

What is to be done?

The Russians, who hosted and organized the event, are pushing a seven point plan, known by the Tom Clancy-esque title of “Rainbow Two.” Much of it is unobjectionable – it calls for the UN Security Council to classify Afghan drug production as “a threat to global peace and security,” and advocates economic development and job creation in Afghanistan, sanctions against opium producers, better intelligence sharing and cooperation between national counternarcotics agencies.

But Russia also wants NATO to do more to eradicate narcotic crops (and not just opium poppies – Afghanistan is also the world’s number one producer of hashish).

Russian officials, who have been frustrated by television footage of British and American forces picking their way through poppy fields, have been calling for a Columbia-style eradication program. The director of the Federal Drug Control Service, Viktor Ivanov, a long-standing critic of NATO’s counternarcotics strategy in Central Asia, laid out his demands very clearly. “The EU and United States are spending $500 million in agricultural subsidies, but it is not reducing the opium crop,” he told the conference. “In Columbia, where subsidies were a fraction of that, production has been drastically produced – through eradication.”

The fight against cocaine production in Colombia is something the Russians keep on coming back to – they even invited a Colombian police colonel to offer insight into successful eradication strategies (for the record, he said the secret was to incentivize farmers to eradicate the crops themselves, not to spray herbicides from the air).

But it’s an analogy U.S. Ambassador John Beyrle politely but firmly rejected, citing the myriad of cultural, historical and economic differences between the two countries. Besides, argue the NATO countries, eradication is taking place – it’s just being carried out by Afghan rather than foreign forces.

Russia wants eradication written into ISAF’s mandate. Dmitry Rogozin, Russia’s outspoken ambassador to NATO, told Russia Profile on the sidelines of the conference that the only reason America is not eradicating Afghan opium poppies is that, unlike Colombian cocaine, “these drugs are not destined for America.”

“In this instance Mr Rogozin is not being fair, and he knows it,” countered Maurits Jochems, deputy assistant secretary general for plans in NATO’s International Secretariat. And he’s got a point. The United Nations’ chief expert on the matter, UNODC Director Antonio Maria Costa, made it clear that “there is no role for NATO forces in eradication at the farm level” because it risks turning communities toward the Taliban. (He also pointed out that production has actually dropped in the past year – party from interdiction, and partly because of a blight affecting the poppies). And lest suspicions be cast on Costa’s neutrality, it should be pointed out, he is the man behind the 2009 UNODC drug report that every delegate was quoting like it was divine truth.

So who’s right? Russia Profile thought it would be an idea to ask the Afghans themselves, but Counter Narcotics Minster Zarar Ahmad Muqbil sidestepped the question. “Why are we always talking about eradication?” he asked, before arguing at length that only an economic solution – providing farmers with alternative livelihoods – would solve the problem.

That is, of course, the ideal to which all the delegates aspire – in the long term. No one was willing to guess how long it will take.