The report by the UN Office on Drug and Crime repeats what has been known to Pakistan for long — that insurgent forces have become ‘narco-cartels’ on the Columbian pattern, and that the funds generated by the drug trade are used by the Taliban to procure arms. As the report notes, the militants view profits from the lucrative drug trade as more important than ideological considerations.

One reason for the slight improvement in the situation is the abandonment by the Obama administration of Bush-era policies which lacked consistency and were often counterproductive. One proposal, which fortunately was not implemented, called for the poppy fields to be sprayed with chemicals. This was not only hazardous for health, it could have annoyed small land-owners by depriving them of their means of livelihood and driven them into Taliban hands. The Obama administration has adopted a different approach, with American and coalition troops going into the Taliban-dominated areas to provide security to farmers, training Afghan security forces in the job, replacing those found involved in corruption, helping local communities financially if they are prepared to abandon poppy cultivation, intercepting drug carriers, destroying stockpiles and encouraging small farmers to go for alternative crops.

Nevertheless, in spite of the promising statistics given by the UNODC, Afghanistan will continue to remain the world’s biggest producer of narcotics unless the international community persists with the war on narcotics and puts pressure on the regime to cooperate. As the UNODC report correctly observes, controlling Afghanistan’s drug trade will not solve all of its problems, but the more challenging ones, like the insurgency, cannot be resolved without eliminating the multibillion-dollar trade in narcotics.