{"id":73082,"date":"2018-02-05T21:49:53","date_gmt":"2018-02-05T21:49:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/militarytimes\/uncategorized\/2018\/02\/05\/doubts-rise-over-effectiveness-of-bombing-afghan-drug-labs\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T07:53:54","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T07:53:54","slug":"doubts-rise-over-effectiveness-of-bombing-afghan-drug-labs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/militarytimes\/flashpoints\/2018\/02\/05\/doubts-rise-over-effectiveness-of-bombing-afghan-drug-labs\/","title":{"rendered":"Doubts rise over effectiveness of bombing Afghan drug labs"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/atype-video-jwplayer>
Military releases footage of what it says is an airstrike delivered by a B-52 on a Taliban drug-making facility in Afghanistan Dec. 29, 2017. (DVIDS)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n

The Defense Department\u2019s drug lab bombing<\/a> campaign against the Taliban financial network<\/a> this winter has come under scrutiny from the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to a Pentagon briefing<\/a>, the airstrikes, which began in November, were crippling the Taliban\u2019s drug funding. The illicit money lost from drug kingpins\u2019 pockets totaled $80 million, defense officials said, and that resulted in a $16 million loss for the Taliban, who are known to tax the enterprise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, the DoD has not clarified \u201cwhether future revenue per barrel is calculated using price data on the export of opium and heroin<\/a>, or using higher values in consumer markets outside Afghanistan,\u201d according to SIGAR\u2019s quarterly report<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s an important distinction for Vanda Felbab-Brown, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, who spoke with Military Times. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat number is used is fundamental and, of course, because the labs are being destroyed in Afghanistan itself, it has to be much lower than if interdiction took place, for example, in Britain or Pakistan,\u201d Felbab-Brown said.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a statement to Military Times, Navy Capt. Tom Gresback, public affairs director for NATO\u2019s Resolute Support<\/a> mission, spoke on behalf of U.S. Forces-Afghanistan. He would only say that the price they use is \u201cthe total value to the drug trafficking enterprise.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe Taliban\u2019s cut is the revenue the organization is able to make from production to its movement out of Afghanistan,\u201d he said. \u201cIt is important to remember that the Taliban do not just make money at the point of production and have a hand in the system outside of Afghanistan as well.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, SIGAR\u2019s law enforcement sources suggest the Taliban only profit from the drug trade until the product is sold to drug traffickers outside Afghanistan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
KABUL, Afghanistan (Aug. 3, 2017) \u2014 Afghan forces prepare to destroy lab materials and narcotics after they seized about $19 million worth of drugs, equipment, vehicles, weapons and communication gear in Nad Ali district, Helmand province last month. (Courtesy Photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In arriving at the value of labs, Gresback said they count the number of barrels [used to cook heroin] and multiply that by $205,000, which he explained was the average revenue potential from a barrel of heroin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, using airstrikes, rather than ground operations, forces officials to estimate what was actually in the lab.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gresback acknowledged that fact, and added that they mostly use the lowest value. But even conservative estimates generate other questions, Felbab-Brown said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWas it 10 pounds of raw opium, or was it a 100 kilograms (220 pounds) of heroin?\u201d she asked. \u201cHow about if there was no opium? How about if it\u2019s a lab that can process, but at the time that it was hit, there was nothing in there?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. David Mansfield, a senior fellow at the London School of Economics, has researched opium production in Afghanistan for the past 20 growing seasons. In a January paper for the LSE\u2019s International Drug Policy Unit, titled \u201cBombing Heroin Labs in Afghanistan<\/a>,\u201d he asserts there is no evidence to justify the claim by U.S. Forces-Afghanistan that they inflicted $80 million in losses on drug traffickers by destroying 25 labs in the Musa Qala district of Helmand province, nor that this resulted in a $16 million loss for the Taliban.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAt current prices for heroin, the losses USFOR-A refer to would amount to almost 73 metric tons of heroin, that\u2019s nearly 3 metric tons of heroin in each lab destroyed,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWith a conversion rate of between 9 and 13.5 kilograms of fresh opium per kilogram of heroin, this would require between 27,000 and 40,500 kilograms of fresh opium per lab. It would mean that the 25 labs destroyed were responsible for converting between 8 to 11 percent of the entire 2017 crop of 9,000 metric tons. There is little evidence from the nine buildings destroyed in [Musa Qala] to support such a claim.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cGoing on the tax rates levied on the [Musa Qala] labs, were the aerial campaign to have actually destroyed 73 metric tons of heroin, the loss in revenue to the Taliban would have been around $1.2 million, considerably less than the amount reported by USFOR-A,\u201d he continued.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWere the air attacks to have destroyed a series of houses rented out to cook opium in much smaller batches, as the case would appear to be in [Musa Qala], the loss in revenue to the Taliban would have been negligible. In fact, the 50 barrels of opium cooking at the time of the strike that [USFOR-A commander] General [John] Nicholson referred to as being worth \u2018millions of dollars\u2019 would have been worth at most $190,750 if converted to heroin and no more than $2,863 to the Taliban,\u201d Mansfield concluded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The aerial campaign against the drug labs also marked the first time that an F-22 Raptor has dropped bombs in Afghanistan. But at a cost of $70,000 an hour, there are serious questions about whether this is a cost-effective use of the world’s most advanced aircraft.
<\/p>\n\n\n\t