Indeed, drug production and other challenges currently facing Afghanistan and its allies are cumulative. They did not spring up overnight. They have been evolving since the Taliban were driven from power in late 2001. In the case of narcotics trafficking, failure to properly assess the problem's causes and effects is encouraging misperceptions.
The narcotics problem in Afghanistan has been cultivated by the past three decades of war, destruction, and human suffering. We know from international experience that global demand for narcotics finds supply in environments where state institutions are weak, where general instability is high, and where poverty is rife.
Although Afghanistan is coping with such dire conditions today, the number of drug-free provinces in the country has increased from six in 2006 to 15 in 2014, according to the UNODC. This significant progress has been achieved in provinces where the government is in firm control, delivering alternative assistance to farmers and prosecuting drug traffickers.
However, where the writ of the government is weak or absent from the very beginning, poppies have continued to bloom, despite the presence of international forces. In fact, 89 percent of all of Afghanistan's opium is grown in a few provinces in the southwest and the east (Helmand, Kandahar, Farah, Nimroz, Uruzgan, Nangarhar). In these areas, there has been a growing Taliban presence, and organised criminal groups remain strong, according to UNODC.
Former President Hamid Karzai used to say that "if we do not eliminate drugs, drugs will eliminate us." Of course, fighting narcotics is not Afghanistan's business alone, nor can the Afghan government do it by itself unless it receives help from its allies and those who join Afghanistan in the belief that narcotics is a common enemy of the whole international community — one that takes millions of young lives across the world every year, one that spreads HIV/AIDS, one that finances urban violence and crime, and one that increasingly fuels global terrorism and annually provides $155 million for the Taliban's brutal terrorist activities in Afghanistan and Pakistan.