Asia Confronts Drug Problem

June 14, 2010

By Richard Weitz

Meanwhile, SCO leaders have repeatedly criticized NATO for failing to more effectively eliminate or at least contain narcotics trafficking and terrorism in Afghanistan. At the March 2009 Moscow conference, the SCO and Afghan governments adopted a joint statement that notably failed to mention NATO explicitly, confining itself to expressing support for the efforts of ISAF (without mentioning NATO’s lead role in the force) to counter regional narcotics trafficking. SCO members indicated no interested in contributing troops to ISAF, but the declaration did encourage ‘other countries concerned to participate in the collective efforts’ of the SCO to combat regional terrorism as well as to ‘consider taking part in transiting non-military cargoes needed by ISAF.’

By adding that, ‘We consider it important that the UN Security Council takes this into account when discussing the ISAF mandate next time,’ the text warned that SCO members would condition their continuing support for NATO’s mission in Afghanistan on its progress in this area. The SCO plans to hold another international conference on Afghanistan this July in Kabul.

SCO governments, led by Russia, have raised strong objections to the decision of the US government to end NATO’s direct involvement in eradicating the Afghan poppy crop and instead rely on the Afghan government, with its still limited capabilities, to lead this effort. They’ve called on the United States and its allies to employ aerial spraying in the main opium poppy growing provinces of southern Afghanistan, proposals the Afghan government has strongly opposed (like most Western governments, Afghan authorities fear that aerial spraying will antagonize many of the affected small farmers and induce them, out of anger or a need to make a living, to join the Taliban-led insurgency).

From the perspective of its members, one advantage of using the SCO to resist narcoterrorism in Afghanistan is that all SCO governments agree on the importance of this objective, making it an obvious priority. It’s also a relatively low-cost objective, since the SCO has declined to contribute combat troops to ISAF and instead allowed NATO and other countries to do the fighting.

Central Asian governments have found that they can’t manage the narcotics and regional terrorist threats from Afghanistan by themselves and have turned to foreign powers, especially Russia and China, and international organizations, such as the SCO and NATO, to assist them. As a consequence, in addressing the issue so visibly, the SCO is reaffirming its relevance to meeting its members’ security needs even when they recognize that only NATO is now in a position to crack down on narcotics production in Afghanistan.