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How Afghanistan's Opium Trade Survived a $7.6 Billion Assault

The War on Terror's War on Drugs has been a massive failure.

Since the War on Terror began back in early 2002, the United States has spent $7.6 billion trying to eradicate illicit poppy cultivation in Afghanistan, the idea being that illegal opium and heroin production was fueling the Taliban and al-Qaeda. All of that money, it's turned out, has been a waste: Poppy cultivation is at an all-time high in the country, according to a new US government report.

The report, compiled by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, a group that basically looks for corruption and failures in the whole rebuilding effort, doesn't paint a pretty picture. Afghan farmers grew 209,000 hectares of poppy in 2013, up from a previous peak of 193,000 hectares in 2007.

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"With deteriorating security in many parts of rural Afghanistan and low levels of eradication of poppy fields, further increases in cultivation are likely in 2014," the group concluded in a letter addressed to Secretary of State John Kerry, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, Attorney General Eric Holder, and USAID administrator Rajiv Shah.

This is of course not new:  Reports like this have come out before, and the US has failed to curb opium production time and time again.

The War on Terror's War on Drugs has failed miserably. What gives?

Well, Afghanistan is no more stable today than it was when we got there, so growing poppy is still a decent way to make a living. Meanwhile, technological advances have made it easier to grow poppy seeds in places where it was once impossible to do so. According to the report, new deep-well technologies have made it possible to water poppy plants in areas that were once desert.

When the United States paid Afghani farmers to burn down their fields, it obviously didn't get rid of the farmers or their skill set, so those farmers have merely relocated and started growing again. Poppy and opium goes for high prices, so, that's obviously what the farmers have chosen to grow.

"Due to relatively high opium prices and the rise of an inexpensive, skilled, and mobile labor force, much of this newly arable land is dedicated to opium cultivation," the group wrote.

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Is there a word for what happens when you combine the two into one horrendous Policy?

That thought was backed up by the US embassy in Afghanistan, which said that cultivation has "shifted toward more remote and isolated areas where governance is weak and security is inadequate."

Though the situation is a little different because the US has been engaged in an all out war-war in Afghanistan and not just a war-on-drugs war as it has been in South America with cocaine, the failures and patterns appear to be very similar to what has happened there.

In South America, for instance, when Colombia or Peru (backed with US money) has tried to curb coca cultivation by applying aerial herbicide, farmers have simply gone to more remote areas or started growing coca plants in between other crops in order to disguise what they were doing.

In the short term, prices go up when supply temporarily falls, then stabilize once the already skilled farmers relocate and get supply back up to normal or record levels. The overall profits flowing into potentially dangerous coffers (in South America, drug cartels; in Afghanistan, the Taliban or local warlords) don't really change all that much.

In Afghanistan, it's not just the newly opened areas to agriculture that are responsible for the poppy boom: Areas such as Nangarhar in eastern Afghanistan were declared "poppy free" as recently as 2008. Between 2012 and 2013, the amount of land where it's cultivated grew by 400 percent. The overall value of the Afghanistan poppy, opium, and heroin trade was roughly $3 billion in 2013, up 50 percent from $2 billion in 2012, the report suggests.

Whose fault is this? Well, the Department of Defense, in a letter, said that it's the fault of the Afghan government that the United States helped install.

"In our opinion, the failure to reduce poppy cultivation and increase eradication is due to the lack of Afghan government support for the effort. Poverty, corruption, the terrorism nexus to the narcotics trade, and access to alternative livelihood opportunities that provide an equal or greater profit than poppy cultivation are all contributors to the Afghan drug problem," it said.

So, the War on Drugs has been a disaster, the War on Terror has been a disaster. Is there a word for what happens when you combine the two into one horrendous policy? For the record, the United States generally doesn't destroy poppy fields anymore.