US Marine Corps. Marine guards a poppy field in Marjah, Helman Province.
I've often wondered if the great powers will just convert the US war in Afghanistan following the Russian war in Afghanistan as a big anti-drug war by everybody.
Yesterday in Vienna there was a ministerial-level conference of the Paris Pact, the largest international forum on counter-narcotics related to Afghanistan, the Russian business daily Kommersant reported February 17.
While Kommersant ran the story with the headline "Anti-Narcotics Initiative Blocked in Vienna: Russia Succeeds in Freezing Discussion of the American Project," the article was reprinted in Central Asia news sites like for.kg with the headline, "US Wants Access to Information from the Intelligence Agencies of Central Asia; Russia Outraged" Each to his own.
The US rolled out a proposal that was characterized as enabling access to "sensitive information" from Central Asian countries. Russia views the drug problem as one of the main threats to its security, but didn't want the US grabbing intelligence from countries it views as part of its sphere of influence. "As a result, Russia for now has managed to talk its allies in the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) out of participating in [the American plan]," says Kommersant.
The Paris process was started in 2003 to unite countries affected by narcotics transit out of Afghanistan. The second summit was in 2006 in Russia, which has a big stake in the issue. More than 30,000 Russian citizens die of drugs every year. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov acknowleged that opium production had increased from 3.6 thousand tons in 2010 to 5.8 thousand tons in 2011 so the goals were not being met. He blamed NATO and the US which is not sufficiently combatting opium fields in Afghanistan and doesn't want to establish anti-drugs cooperation with the CSTO. Of course, with drugs, it takes two to tango -- yes, the US stopped eradicating fields so as to give farmers susceptible to Taliban recruitment a livelihood to fall back on while they concentrated on eliminating the Taliban strongholds (only partially successfully). Yes, there were plenty of Russian drug overlords available to pick up the excess opium now available on the market.
Evidently the US was trying to trump this situation with an offer of cooperation to include everyone, including the CSTO. The Central Asian Anti-Narcotics Initiative was unveiled in October at the General Assembly by William Brownfield, Assistant Secretary of state for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs who previously served in Columbia and Venezuela. Five countries were to be included: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, all members of the CSTO, and Turkmenistan, which isn't. The US was going to pay for a special unit to combat the drug mafia and was going to announce the initiative at the conference with the participation of the Central Asian countries, Russia and Afghanistan.
But Russia threw a wrench in the works, complaining that the special agent were envisioned as having broad powers, and that would mean access to operational and classified information in the other countries' intelligence agencies, unnamed Russian officials told Kommersant.
As we know from WikiLeaks and the reporting of Joshua Kucera at EurasiaNet, the US already has some of this access with its special forces that help Central Asian governments with military and security issues. We just don't know how much.
"In Moscow, officials fear that [such access] will give the US the opportunity to collect sensitive information and then with the help of such information, blackmail the governments of the countries in the region," the sources told Kommersant. Of course the US denied this.
The Russians also made the practical argument that there was no need to reinvent the wheel if there was already the CSTO, among whose missions is fighting the drug trade, and already Russian-led initiatives. "Why don't the Americans just join them if they really want to combat narcotics traffic? Why do they insist on bilateral dialogues with the Central Asian republications, demonstratively ignoring Russia's interest in the region?" wailed the sources.
Well, I'd say that's because they want to demonstratively ignore Russia's interest in the region? And because the anti-narcotics is just a kind of narrative under which the real task of forging the military relationships and trade ties is accomplished. It's the glue for the New Silk Road.
The US had contacted the Central Asian counterparts before the conference, and the Russians got to work, too. They told all their Central Asian allies about the risks that would be involved in accepting the US offers. I wonder if they mentioned the risk of WikiLeaks revelations!
Whatever the Russians invoked, it had the effect -- Kommersant's sources say they believe the reason Secretary of State Hillary Clinton didn't come herself to this ministerial-level meeting and sent her deputy William Burns is because of the Russian's disruption on the eve of the conference.
The US used the conference to keep talking to their interlocutors from Central Asia, says Kommersant, but still didn't find any takers. It's likely that they fear angering Russia -- Kyrgyzstan depends on Russia for security and fuel and injections of development assistance and all the others have trade, energy relationships, and remittance economies all dependent on the Kremlin. What can the US offer?
Hmm, this is a tough one, because Russia is corrupt, and corrupt in the drugs department big-time, so cooperating with Russian means all your secret stuff gets misused and you don't really combat drugs anyway; but if you don't get Russia on board, as much as you have to distrust it, they will block your progress in Central Asia.
The US is not going to win this one just by invoking its "expertise" or "capacity" or "good will". It likely has to pitch a harder game where it makes very bleak prognoses about the drug trade boom that will occur when the Taliban surge comes after the departure of US troops, and all the security issues that go with it, and ask Russia what it reallly wants out of this. Is the revenue for its own drug mafia really worth the deaths of 30,000 people and the recent 10 percent increase in the spread of addiction and AIDS, not to mention the turmoil and devastation of the even more fragile societies of Tajikistan and other poor Central Asian countries?
Like everything else in Russia, this is not going to get better because of Russia's determination to thwart the West which is cultural and imperial. So the situations with Syria or Iran; START; anything you care to name are not going to improve. This is why you need a containment strategy to go along with the futile multilateral cooperation efforts.
Oh, here's a bad English translation of the Russian piece for some more and here's RFE/RL's story.
