Narcotics smuggling in a new Afghanistan
Project completed
PROJECT TEAM
Shehryar Fazli
Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime
Contact: shehryar.fazli@gmail.com
Shehryar Fazli is a London-based senior policy analyst and former consultant for the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC). A specialist on political and security affairs in South Asia, he has served for several organisations, including the World Bank, United Nations agencies, and several private international institutions. From 2003 to 2005, he was a South Asia Analyst for the International Crisis Group, and later its South Asia Regional Editor and Senior Analyst (2008–2018). He has delivered lectures at various US universities, such as Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, Johns Hopkins SAIS, Bard College and the University of Massachusetts Amherst. His articles have appeared in a range of international publications, and his first novel, ‘Invitation’, was a runner-up in the 2011 Edinburgh International Book Festival's First Book Award.
PROJECT SUMMARY
This research is part of the project ‘Monitoring the evolution of the illicit economy in Afghanistan’ which seeks to develop an overarching framework to better understand how a monitoring system for illicit markets in Afghanistan could operate. This will provide policy-makers in Europe and elsewhere with more advanced tools for scenario planning illicit trade developments and thereby formulate more effective policy responses against them. The research paper examines Afghanistan’s narcotics trade and smuggling patterns, which are intertwined in different ways with the economic fate of the Afghan state and society. The Taliban’s 3 April 2022 edict prohibiting poppy cultivation and the use and trade of all types of narcotics across Afghanistan could have grave implications for a collapsing economy.
Some prominent experts and commentators infer that international legitimacy and funding were the Taliban’s primary motivation in announcing the edict. If so, there are no signs yet that the move will generate the desired response. The research highlights how the poppy is the country’s most valuable cash crop, where labour-intensive cultivation employs several hundred thousand people, pushing up wages and living standards of those directly and indirectly involved. Requiring relatively little water, the poppy’s resilience in adverse agricultural conditions makes it an attractive long-term investment, especially during one of the worst droughts in decades. The new ban would affect farmers in the rural southwest region, where many Taliban leaders are from, and influential players across the opium and heroin supply chain. While exploring possible motivations for the edict, the paper argues that in the absence of significant financial incentives for these constituencies, the risks of a major backlash probably outweigh any benefits of enforcing a poppy ban.
PUBLICATIONS
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Narcotics smuggling in a new Afghanistan, and the Afghanistan-Pakistan nexus (SOC ACE Research Paper 9)
The impact of Afghanistan's drug trade on its neighbours ( SOC ACE Research Paper) - coming soon
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Narcotics smuggling in a new Afghanistan, and the Afghanistan-Pakistan nexus (SOC ACE Briefing Note BN15)
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John Collins, Shehryar Fazli & Ian Tennant, Opium, meth and the future of international drug control in Taliban Afghanistan, in Michael Cox (ed.) Afghanistan: Long war, forgotten peace. London: LSE Press, 2023.
ENGAGEMENT
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John Collins, Ian Tennant, Thi Hoang, Ana Paula Oliveira & Shehryar Fazli, ‘Monitoring the evolution of the illicit economy in Afghanistan’, GI-TOC, SOC-ACE Publications, 16 June 2022
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Research on the regional impact of Afghanistan’s drug trade on Pakistan, Iran and Tajikistan discussed on a panel "Narconomics: Transnational Drug Trafficking & Corruption," at Disruption Network Lab’s ‘Organised Crime: a Global Business’ Conference. Other speakers included: Stevan Dojčinović (Investigative Reporter and Editor, Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, OCCRP, SRB) and, Floriana Bulfon (Investigative Journalist, IT). Moderated by Denisse Rodriguez Olivari (Researcher, School of Transnational Governance, EUI, PE/IT). Friday, 24 November 2023, 19:30 - 21:30 (UK).