The Afghan drugs case

NATO and Russia might find it more profitable to pursue another Russian idea—better integrating the multilateral interdiction efforts aimed to counter the Afghan narcotics problem.

By Richard Weitz, Ph.D., Center for Political-Military Analysis, Hudson Institute, Senior Fellow and Director

Fight against drug production has been an important issue world wide. Different tactics have been used to prevent it, but there is no unique solution that can be used in all cases. That is why cooperation among international community is vital.

One factor that might make aerial spraying less effective in Afghanistan than in Columbia is that the drug trafficking in Afghanistan is more closely linked with regional narco-terrorist networks, which in the Afghan case extend throughout Eurasia. For this reason, NATO and Russia might find it more profitable to pursue another Russian idea—better integrating the multilateral interdiction efforts aimed to counter the Afghan narcotics problem. In addition to Ivanov’s call to increase the exchange of information on the production and distribution of Afghan narcotics, Russian officials have been proposing for many years that NATO cooperate directly with the Moscow-dominated Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) on Afghanistan and other Eurasian security issues.

Among other activities, the CSTO—which in recent days has become better known in the West due to its possible role in leading (and legitimizing ) a Russian-led military intervention in Kyrgyzstan—has conducted so-called “Kanal” counterdrug interdiction operations around Afghanistan. Although individual NATO countries, including the United States, have sent observers to the Kanal missions, NATO officials and the alliance member governments have refused to establish formal institutional ties with the CSTO for fear of strengthening Moscow’s security primacy over the organization’s other members—Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. But NATO might want to reconsider this policy, at least in the Afghan drugs case, to prevent Russian anger over the Afghan narcotics issue from impeding the growing bilateral cooperation between Moscow and NATO over other Eurasian security issues, which includes Russia’s granting NATO the right to transit military supplies through its territory as well as, more recently, joint Russian-American efforts to reestablish stability in Kyrgyzstan.