Stemming the Contagion:
Regional Efforts to Curb Afghan Heroin's Impact
By Svante E. Cornell
Afghanistan’s heroin industry is one of the most intractable
and far-reaching consequences of the violence that has racked
that country since 1980. Producing on average three-quarters
of the global supply of heroin since the mid-1990s,
Afghanistan supplies the majority of heroin consumed in
Europe and nearly all the heroin for Russia’s booming market.
Even in the United States, a minor portion of the heroin con
sumed is of Afghan origin. The human and material costs of
heroin addiction have been significant worldwide. In addi
tion, money earned from the heroin industry has been a pow
erful part of financing rebellions. The Kosovo Liberation
Army and the Marxist-Leninist Kurdistan Workers’ Party in
Turkey are the best-known rebel groups to have financed their
activities through the heroin trade.
The consequences of the Afghan heroin industry have
been even worse for Afghanistan’s neighbors. Iran, Pakistan,
and the Central Asian states of Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan,
Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan have become
major transit routes for Afghanistan’s opiates. Although
many of these countries initially dismissed the transit of
drugs through their territory as Afghanistan’s problem
alone, they came to perceive this trade as a major and multi-
Crime Goes Global
faceted threat to their own social, economic,
and national security.1
The heroin industry brings crime
and addiction that threaten the very
fabric of society in states poorly
equipped to handle such challenges.
The drug trade has exacerbated corruption
in the weak states bordering
Afghanistan, impairing their economic
and political functioning and infiltrating
their governments to an unknown
extent. With links to insurgency and
terrorism, the drug trade threatens
national and regional security. Militant
organizations such as the Islamic
Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) have
financed their operations through
drugs.2 Although systematic research
into the phenomenon has been relatively
scant, it is clear that the region’s
security has become inseparable from
Afghanistan’s illicit crops.
With limited international resources
and attention, the region has been left
alone to deal with the fallout of the drug
trade. The total budget of the United
Nations Office on Drugs and Crime
(UNODC) is roughly $100 million per
year globally. This figure is miniscule
compared to the estimated $1 billion
generated annually by the cultivation of
opium in Afghanistan, in addition to
the proceeds of heroin processing and
smuggling. This disparity has impaired
efforts to establish meaningful inter
national cooperation—a prerequisite
for containing a problem that is
transnational by nature. The often
tense relations between the states of the
region have not helped either. Given
the importance of the region to U.S.
national security interests, the adverse
effect of the drug trade on the region’s
stability is bound to harm U.S. interests
in Central Asia.