Resolving the contradiction

Helmand was the location for a massive public works project in the 1950s, when the US government financed the construction of irrigation systems for cotton growing. In addition to repairing roads across the province, the author’s pick and shovel crews laboured to rehabilitate those 1950s era irrigation systems. Ironically, the repaired roads and irrigation systems would then facilitate opium growing and shipment.

The economic distortions resulting from opium growing and international aid are an important part of the story told in the book. Opium growing not only discourages other agricultural crops because it is more profitable, but also because of the so-called “Dutch disease”, in which dependence on a single successful commodity attracts foreign investment, which then drives up the exchange rate, and as a consequence disadvantages producers of other export commodities (p.235-236).

Infusions of international aid cause economic distortions because expat aid managers typically live well by comparison with the majority of the population. Computer supply stores, travel agencies, gourmet groceries and restaurants are opened to serve the expat community. As has been true of other Third World capital cities occupied by the forces of international aid, real property prices in Kabul soared. Something comparable happened to ambitious Afghan youth, who sought out better paid jobs as staff in the international aid NGOs rather than starting their own businesses or beginning careers as professionals (p.94).

The least convincing material in Hafvenstein’s otherwise insightful memoir is its brief discussion of alternatives to current policy.

He argues against attempting to transform Afghanistan’s illicit opium crop into a legal opium crop, as was done in India and Turkey (p.255). He is correct that legal opium growing produces far less income for farmers and is perhaps correct that it would contribute little to meeting the needs for medicinal opiates of Third World’s pain sufferers because they cannot afford to buy them.

What he fails to question is the wisdom of drug prohibition in the wealthy countries, the policy that makes drug crops more profitable than other agricultural crops in the first place. Until the fundamental futility and perversity of drug prohibition is challenged, economic distortion, government waste, official corruption and criminal violence are inevitable.