VZCZCXRO0458
PP RUEHDBU RUEHPW
DE RUEHBUL #1064/01 1180416
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
P 280416Z APR 09
FM AMEMBASSY KABUL
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC PRIORITY 8634
RUEATRS/DEPT OF TREASURY WASH DC
RUEAIIA/CIA WASHDC
RUEHRC/USDA WASHDC
RUEKJCS/SECDEF WASHDC
INFO RUCNAFG/AFGHANISTAN COLLECTIVE

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 04 KABUL 001064 
 
DEPARTMENT FOR SRAP, SCA/FO, SCA/A, EUR/RPM 
STATE PASS TO AID FOR ASIA/SCAA 
USFOR-A FOR POLAD 
COMISAF FOR POLAD 
 
SENSITIVE 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: SNAR KCRM PREL PINS PTER AF
 
SUBJECT: Implementing a Comprehensive Counter-Narcotics 
Strategy 
 
¶1. (U) Summary: Afghanistan produces 93% of the world's 
opium and heroin with 98% of poppy cultivation 
concentrated in just seven provinces in the south and 
southwest.  Two-thirds of all opium in Afghanistan is 
grown in one province -- Helmand, with lesser but 
significant amounts produced in Farah, Kandahar and 
Uruzgan. The narcotics industry dominates Afghanistan's 
economy; it is the most significant source of funding for 
the insurgency, undercuts licit development, and 
undermines governance.  Breaking the nexus is critical to 
our counter-insurgency (COIN) strategy of securing the 
population, connecting the government to the people, and 
transitioning to a licit, agro-based economy. In the 
context of an additional 20,000 U.S. troops flowing into 
the south, we are working closely with the United Kingdom 
and other partners to implement a civilian-military 
counter-narcotics (CN) campaign, with a prioritized 
effort along the Helmand and Arghandab river valleys. 
Our approach applies a new balance to the five pillars, 
placing added emphasis on alternative livelihoods and 
interdiction, maintaining the current level of focus on 
public information and justice sector reform, and 
"focusing" elimination/eradication in support of 
governance and alternative livelihoods.  Underpinning our 
efforts is a more robust intelligence analysis of the 
narcotics network, enabled by the establishment of a CN 
Combined Joint Interagency Task Force. End Summary. 
 
Narcotics: A Pervasive Drain on Our COIN Campaign 
--------------------------------------------- ---- 
 
¶2.  (U) Afghanistan produces 93% of the world's opium; 
with fully 88% of Afghanistan's output emanating from the 
RC/South area of operations.  The narcotics industry has 
a chokehold on Afghanistan's other major industry 
agriculture. In many parts of the south, the people are 
dependent on poppy revenue, threatened by formidable 
narco-security forces, and beholden to the criminal 
networks that underpin the industry. Finished opiates are 
smuggled virtually unhindered across Afghanistan's 
borders and into the global market.  Of the three-four 
billion dollars a year in revenue from Afghan narcotics, 
at least $60-80 million is directed to the insurgency, 
roughly equal to the insurgency's annual operating 
expenses.  Narcotics, the insurgency, and corrupt GIRoA 
officials create a nexus driving instability 
undermining governance, rule of law, and development. 
 
Comprehensive Five Pillar CN 
Approach Underpinned by Intelligence 
------------------------------------ 
 
¶3.  (SBU) Under the President's strategy to defeat Al- 
Qaeda and its supporters in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and 
with new guidance to de-emphasize eradication, re- 
emphasize interdiction and increase and integrate 
alternative agricultural livelihoods, we are developing a 
comprehensive multi-disciplinary, interagency operational 
plan to target the narco-insurgent nexus, secure the 
population, and enable the transition of millions of 
farmers from raising poppy to jobs in a licit, agro-based 
economy.  Success will depend upon our ability to secure 
the population and to increase security and freedom of 
movement.  Our campaign applies a new balance to the 
traditional five pillars, emphasizing and integrating 
alternative livelihoods and interdiction; maintaining the 
current high levels of focus on public information and 
justice sector reform; and focusing 
elimination/eradication in support of governance and 
alternative livelihoods. A critical underpinning of our 
strategy is more a more robust intelligence collection 
and analysis, and improved USG interagency ICT support 
for knowledge management, in order to indentify the nexus 
of narcotics, corruption, insurgent activity, and 
criminality. Such improvements should enable increasingly 
effective targeting (kinetic, diplomatic/political, 
interdiction/law enforcement). 
 
Synchronized Application of Capabilities 
---------------------------------------- 
 
 
KABUL 00001064  002 OF 004 
 
 
¶4.  (U) The CN campaign will synchronize all efforts 
based on anticipated stages of poppy cultivation, 
harvest, and processing/refinement for international 
sale.  Alternative livelihood programs will be timed on 
the poppy cultivation cycle to attempt to affect farmers' 
decisions on what to plant. During the crop maintenance 
phase, eradication will be carefully targeted to 
reinforce Government of the Islamic Republic of 
Afghanistan (GIRoA) alternative livelihood programs and 
rule of law.  Interdiction and law enforcement operations 
will be timed to the later stages of processing when the 
opium and products are at their greatest value and 
farmers have already been compensated to have the 
greatest impact on the narco-industry's profitability 
while mitigating risks to popular support. 
 
A Mixed Partnership Bag 
----------------------- 
 
¶5. (SBU) Over 17 nations have elements operating in 
southern Afghanistan, but our most critical partner in CN 
is the United Kingdom (the G8 lead partner for CN).  The 
Canadians, constrained by policies set in Ottawa, have 
limited their CN support in Kandahar to alternative 
livelihoods and justice system capacity building. 
Reluctance to undertake interdiction or targeting is even 
stronger among other members.  In April, ISAF released a 
fragmentary order on CN that built on the October 2008 
North Atlantic Council decision that ISAF forces could 
target the narco-insurgent nexus. Over the coming months, 
particularly as our prioritized CN effort in Central 
Helmand is implemented and narcotic networks and 
cultivation spill over into other provinces, we will work 
to achieve greater unity of effort in CN with ISAF and 
bilateral partners. At the same time we will strengthen 
collaboration with host nation security and political 
authorities as well as engagement with civilian 
populations at both local and national levels. 
 
Rebalancing the Five Pillars 
---------------------------- 
 
¶6.  (U) The alternative livelihoods pillar of our 
strategy seeks to provide greatly increased incentives 
for farmers to transition to cultivation, harvesting, and 
marketing of licit crops with competitive value in secure 
areas. Our sequenced approach to the transition will 
include immediate job/income alternatives, 
migration/remittances policies, agricultural extension 
programs, value-chain creation, increased access to 
regional and global markets, microfinance, 
subsidies/price supports/guaranteed purchase, land 
leasing, and completion of critical infrastructure 
enablers (e.g., roads, power, water management, airports, 
processing plants). Local and national deployment of USDA 
and USAID agricultural development specialists will be 
essential to success. 
 
¶7.  (U) The second pillar, interdiction, is conducted 
through both kinetic and non-kinetic operations 
(military, law enforcement, information, diplomatic, and 
financial) to deny the insurgents and the narcotics 
traffickers safe haven and funding.  Successful 
interdiction and disruption of both primary networks 
(drug labs and bazaars) and secondary networks (chemists, 
Hawaladars, smugglers) affect incentives by driving up 
the cost of production and lowering the prices of 
unprocessed opium. Embassy Kabul's Treasury Attache will 
play an integral role in interdicting the international 
and domestic financial movements associated with the 
opium economy. 
 
¶8.  (SBU) The third pillar, public information, will 
continue to be a critical component of our strategy, 
along with the fourth pillar, justice sector reform. In 
particular, our strategy will focus on bringing high- 
level drug traffickers to justice through an expansion of 
GIRoA CN and anti-corruption capability, law enforcement 
human capital, legal frameworks, and ministry capacities. 
Growing the capacity of private and official media, and 
influencing its content, will be critical to success. We 
 
KABUL 00001064  003 OF 004 
 
 
will draw on extensive interagency expertise and 
resources in the media campaign. 
 
¶9.  (U) The fifth pillar, "focused eradication", will 
reinforce governance and affect drug profitability over 
time by targeting large cultivations and privileged 
individuals within pre-determined areas. Areas would be 
selected for "focused eradication" based on comprehensive 
governance plans (such as the Mangal Food Zone in 
Helmand) or in conjunction with intelligence-gathering 
operations that pinpoint the land interests of major drug 
figures and/or insurgents. Success would no longer be 
defined in terms of hectares eradicated but on the 
proportion of Afghan domestic income derived from the 
drug industry, particularly on a regional basis, and on 
the longer-term measurement of specific hectare use that 
is not returned to poppy cultivation. 
 
The Lynchpin: Greater Understanding 
through Intelligence Analysis 
----------------------------------- 
 
¶10.  (SBU) Effectively identifying and financially 
targeting the nexus of narcotics, corruption, insurgent 
activity, and criminality require additional intelligence 
resources, a new process and structure for fusing 
intelligence, and targeting of interdiction, eradication 
and information operations, as well as agriculture 
development projects for alternative livelihoods. 
Building on lessons from Joint Interagency Task Forces in 
Miami, El Paso, and the Philippines, we will establish a 
Counter-Narcotics Combined Joint Interagency Task Force 
(CN CJIATF) in Afghanistan.  The mission of the CN CJIATF 
is to conduct intelligence fusion to develop an 
understanding of the narcotics-insurgent-GIRoA nexus, 
inform policy development and enable improved operational 
coordination in order to fracture the nexus and break its 
hold on the people. This mission requires effective 
deployment of defense, law enforcement, finance, economic 
(especially agricultural) development, IM, diplomacy, and 
public communicationsQtruly a "whole of government 
approach," with meaningful resources of each of these 
tools. 
 
¶11. (SBU) The CN CJIATF will act under the combined 
authority of CDR USFOR-A/ISAF and COM Embassy Kabul. It 
will be composed of three main elements: an intelligence 
cell, an operations cell, and an interagency coordination 
cell.  The first, the intelligence cell, contains the 
standard intelligence capabilities (signals, human, and 
imagery), an all source intelligence element, law 
enforcement analysts, and threat finance experts.  It 
brings all of these capabilities together to ensure unity 
of effort and understanding of the nexus. The second 
element is an operational cell that conducts planning, 
targeting, and mission synchronization with conventional 
military forces, special operations forces, CN 
interdiction units, and law enforcement units.  The third 
element is the interagency coordination cell that 
synchronizes across critical players implementing the 
interdiction, governance, and alternative livelihoods 
components of our CN planning. 
 
¶12. (SBU) The CN CJIATF will have as its scope all of 
Afghanistan, to include locations initially in Kabul, 
Kandahar and Jalalabad. The Executive Working Group, 
composed of senior officers under both COM and CDR USFOR- 
A authority, will be the high-level policy 
synchronization body overseeing implementation of the CN 
campaign. 
 
The Goal: Separating Narcotics 
from the Insurgency and the People 
---------------------------------- 
 
¶13. (U) The fragmentation of the narco-insurgent- 
corruption-criminality nexus and its separation from the 
people, combined with greatly increased availability of 
alternative, competitive, and licit economic 
opportunities, is the essential recipe to COIN in 
southern Afghanistan. 
 
KABUL 00001064  004 OF 004 
 
 
 
RICCIARDONE