U.S. officials have spent nearly $7.6 billion fighting the opium trade in the Afghan reconstruction program, but “Afghanistan could well become a narco-criminal state in the future,” according to a government watchdog.
“By every conceivable metric, we have failed,” said John Sopko, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, during a speech Friday before the Center for Security Studies at Georgetown University.
“Production and cultivation are up, interdiction and eradication are down, financial support to the insurgency is up and addiction and abuse are at unprecedented levels in Afghanistan,” Sopko said.
The $7.6 billion spent fighting the opium trade is part of more than $104 billion spent by the U.S. overall on Afghan reconstruction.
“At the end of this year, we will have committed more funds to reconstruct Afghanistan, in inflation-adjusted terms, than the U.S. spent to rebuild Europe after World War II under the Marshall Plan,” Sopko said.
A major factor in the growing crisis caused by the expanding opium trade, Sopko said, is the low priority the problem has in U.S. planning.
“Given the importance of this problem, I was astonished to find that the counter-narcotics effort isn’t a top priority during this critical transition period and beyond,” he said, referring to the scheduled reduction of U.S. military forces in Afghanistan to 5,000 troops by the end of 2015.
He said the problem is barely mentioned in a joint U.S. and Afghan strategy document that “articulates the vision for pursuing U.S. national goals in Afghanistan.”
Sopko said he has talked about the narcotics problem with multiple U.S., Afghan and international officials involved in efforts to shut down the opium industry in Afghanistan.
“In the opinion of almost every one I’ve met, the counter-narcotics situation in Afghanistan is dire, with little prospect for improvement,” he said.
Even now, Sopko said, “the narcotics trade poisons the Afghan financial sector and fuels a growing illicit economy.”
That in turn “undermines the Afghan state’s legitimacy by stoking corruption, nourishing criminal networks and providing significant financial support to the Taliban and other insurgent groups.”
Mark Tapscott is executive editor of the Washington Examiner.
