ABSTRACT
In 2011, Afghanistan was responsible for 90 per cent of the world's opiates. No other country has ever had such a dominant position in their global supply. However, in 2002 the opium economy was not seen as a priority of the newly-installed Karzai regime or its international supporters. The US-led intervention that overthrew the Taliban was primarily concerned with counter-terrorism and political consolidation. Coalition forces initially turned a blind eye to poppy cultivation and trafficking, fearing that counter-narcotics (CN) efforts would upset the fragile political coalition that had been forged to pursue the ‘war on terror’. But between the Bonn Agreement of December 2001 and the Afghan Compact signed in London in 2006, CN rapidly rose up the policy agenda, based on the growing perception that the opium economy was a significant driver (as well as a symptom) of insecurity and bad governance.
