Afghan Opium Poppies and U.S. Policy

American forays into distant lands have generated some pretty horrific “unintended consequences.” Especially in the Islamic world. Like the “blowback” from the CIA’s having armed the extremist Afghan mujahadein Sunni fighters to harass and then drive out the Soviets in a war of attrition (1979-89), a reality which many believe led to the collapse of the USSR immediately thereafter. Those same mujahadein that subsequently reconfigured to use that experience and those weapons to turn on the West, the United States in particular, in various incarnations, including as al Qaeda, the Taliban and later ISIS. 9/11/01 anyone?

Or that our 2003 toppling of Saddam Hussein (Iraq’s leader of a 20% Sunni minority that ruled a 60% Shiite majority nation) under a fabricated pretense (over “weapons of mass destruction” that never existed) would eventually lead to an explosive expansion of Shiite Iran (95% Shiite), its surrogate, Hezbollah, and its regional ambitions. Simply, Shiites took over Iraq under our notion of “democracy” and less-than-subtly embraced Iran. Nuclear power, surrogate wars, losses in Yemen and Lebanon, and the list goes on and on. The entire Middle East was accordingly deeply destabilized, probably for decades if not longer.

But one of the most overlooked and exceptionally devastating “unintended consequence” of US policy in the region was the product of seemingly innocent good intentions. It seems strange that although neutral during WWII, Afghanistan made a particularly important, and very financially rewarding for them, contribution to our war effort. They produced a particularly heavy-duty sheep-fur used as jacket lining to keep American bomber crews warm 25,000 feet in the air. After the war, that lambskin made its way into the fashion world. Afghanistan made so much money from that commodity, with virtually nothing to spend that windfall on, that their then king, Mohammed Zahir Shah (deposed in 1973), wanted to improve the life of his people with some wise investments. It was 1946, when the King settled on dam building, inspired by the New Deal dams constructed in the United States, when the problem began. 

With full support from the U.S. government, Zahir engaged American and other foreign engineers to build precisely this kind of dam in Helmond Province. This was a massive undertaking. A small “U.S. town,” replete with small houses (some with white picket fences), was built to accommodate the engineers and foreign builders. Pictured above. Zahir envisioned hydroelectric power and available water for an explosion of lucrative food crop expansion. 

“Afghanistan faced the world with confidence. Revenue from its main export, the karakul lambskin, had grown steadily as the furriers, milliners and clothiers of a stricken Europe decamped to the United States. Although poor and undeveloped, Afghanistan in the late 1940s held $100m dollars in reserves.” BBC News, August 14, 2014. “Final studies for the dam began in 1946 and a preliminary design was crafted in 1950. The dam was built between 1951 and 1953 by the Morrison-Knudsen firm [headquartered in Boise, Idaho] as part of the Helmand Valley Authority project.” Wikipedia. In the 1970s, severe drought dried up most of the dam’s reservoir water supply, and as it restored later, the ruling Taliban used their control of the water supply to their own regional political goals.

The dam endured wars, bombing efforts and was slated for upgrades that never completely materialized. Conflict got in the way. While U.S. engineers built the dam, agronomists had obviously not been consulted on that desired agricultural component. It seems that the surrounding soil was so poor, so tainted with salts, that it was incapable of sustaining the food crops everyone expected, notwithstanding all that stored water. 

The only crop that could thrive in that harsh earth was, apparently, the opium poppy. Afghanistan rapidly became the world’s biggest supplier of opioids, from heroin to simple opium. And years later the revenue from that illicit crop became the main funding source for the Taliban and other extremists. Another consequence: all those homes, trenches and buildings left behind when the engineers and builders left became perfect hiding places for Islamist fighters lying in wait for foreign invaders. From Soviets to Americans. And to “Kabul government” soldiers. 

There is an arrogance to our efforts in so many of our foreign policy decisions. It seems that the farther we drift from Western values and culture, the more we try to cast primitive rural people in rugged lands into our vision of modernity – just assuming that our vision of governance and democracy works everywhere – the more we mire ourselves in failure and waste… and extend the rules of unintended consequences at every turn. A thought for policymakers as we leave Afghanistan in tatters.

I’m Peter Dekom, and we have created so many false hopes in such efforts… only to watch reality close in and dash our best intentions.