For every $310 earned per capita in Afghanistan, $307 is drug money. For Viktor Ivanov, who heads the Kremlin’s drug enforcement agency, understanding the role the drug trade plays is fundamental to considering the country’s future. A central player in the relations between Moscow and Washington, he believes the secret to Afghanistan’s future may not lie in military force
The war in Afghanistan is not just a strategic and political test for President Barack Obama, but also a bellwether in wider ties between Russia and the United States. Evidence of improved relations between the two countries came last July, when Obama visited Moscow. But the rapprochement had gotten its real start months before, when Moscow allowed NATO assets move through Russian on their way to Kabul. Akey figure in the ongoing Moscow-Washington dialogue is 59-year-old Viktor Ivanov, an influential member of the so-called siloviki, or “hawks” faction, officials with established links to the Russian secret services and the army, or both. But Ivanov, a close ally of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, also heads Federal Service for Drug Control (FSKN), Russia’s anti drug organization. Apolitician and businessman, Ivanov was born in Novgorod, near St. Petersburg, and participated in the Medvedev-Obama Working Group, an anti-narcotics traffic commission that met in Moscow in early November. He has direct knowledge of Afghanistan, having served there for two years during the Soviet occupation of the country in the late 1980s. At the time, he was a frontline KGB officer. But Ivanonv doesn’t have a veteran’s fsbeshik, or roughshod, manner. Anything but. He’s well-educated, dresses stylishly, and unabashedly sportscuff links. His conversational speech is calm and even-tempered. He supports Italian, German and British proposals for the convening Afghanistan peace conference, a plan that has been repeatedly brought up by Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Such a conference, he says, would be the “correct” approach to addressing the deteriorating Afghan domestic situation. “Such a conference would be a first step,” he says, “because sending more troops will do nothing to stabilize the situation.” Yet his views also underscore Russian differences with Obama’s stated position. The American president has said repeatedly that he’s committed to maintaining current troop levels, if not increasing them, something NATO and U.S. commander General Stanley McChrystal asserts is essential to maintaining security in the country and the region. McChrystal has openly requested an additional 40,000 men. At the same time, Vice Presiden Joseph Biden, a foreign policy expert, has counseled Obama against dispatching more troops, labeling an increase in troop level as unwise and insisting that pockets of Taliban resistance will never be eradicated through military force. Reinforcing troop levels is against U.S. strategic interests, he says. Meantime, the White House is playing for time. For Russia, monitoring Afghanistan is part of remaining a player in the Central Asian sphere of influence. It can also follow the activities of Islamic extremists, which it considers threatening. Moscow, along with Europe, also faces the dilemma of combating the drug trade that is a centerpiece of the Afghan underground economy. So far, foreign promises to limit Afghanistan’s vast opium production have made little tangible progress. Last year, the FSKN decided to take the Afghan drug trade problem directly to the UN Security Council, hoping to ensure the UN sees it as a priority. “We have to reflect on the situation and on just what’s what going on," says Ivanov, insisting that adopting broader view, which includes factoring in the role of the drug trade, is essential to fighting terrorists. The following are excerpts from an interview. 

I’d use different methods in place of armies. A spy network, for example, in an effort to forage for intelligence. I’d use any available special techniques. The use of conventional military force seems to me useless. Take aviation for example: what good are radar-surveillance AWACS aircraft? They were created to hunt for hidden missile installations to help out friendly fighter jets, to help uncover major troop movements. Please tell me how that is that functional against terrorists? And yet Germany has four AWACS based in Central Asia. 

We need to adjust our goals. And not adjust the war. We need to agree on that. I saw TV images of the six bodies of Italian soldiers killed in Afghanistan. Russian TV also showed parts of the funeral. That gave me pause. But Rome, Berlin and London all agree on the need to guarantee the peace.

If the Taliban until recently enjoyed only marginal support, their backing has since increased. It’s more commonplace; it’s consolidated; it affects the country’s socio- political structure and its military. All this can’t be underestimated, since the ideology that’s making those on the ground act is largely fueled by the presence of foreign troops.

Together with our American colleagues, we are working on developing a package of measures. The goal is to significantly reduce the global market for Afghan heroin over a period of three years. One of the most important things is to assure that heroin is characterized as a threat to world peace and security, along with terrorism and piracy, particularly given the extent to which terrorists rely on the production and sale of opiates. While the price of opium has dropped from $95 to $60 a kilo, the price of heroine never goes down. The price of a hit of heroin in Moscow has recently gone up 1,500 to 4,000 rubles, which is just under $100. That’s the reality. Kabul continues to remain a gold mine for opium and heroin mine trafficking. As long the country is mired in conflict, no one will turn to agriculture. Six months is spent growing opium alone, followed by six months selling it.

The entire heroin production peddled and sold in Russia is Afghan, while synthetic drugs mostly come from Europe, including The Netherlands, Poland and the Baltic States. But it isn’t just our problem. It was [then-British Prime Minister Tony] Blair who said Afghan heroin was rampant on the streets of London. In this sense we’re ready to offer our support in developing a qualified police based in Kabul that would focus its attention on drug trafficking. We could send instructors to teach short courses on drug control. It’s a fact that the fight against drug trafficking from Afghanistan won’t be fully effective until a strong cooperation mechanism is created among the international organizations that are operating in Afghanistan (the NATOled International Security Assistance Force, operating under the UN mandate). Also necessary are international organizations that bring Russia, China and Central Asia nations (including Tajikistan) into play, as well as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO).

The problem didn’t exist. Better said, that period [of Russian occupation] marked its origin. It is no secret that Pakistan helped formed the Mujahideen, which led in turn to the grooming of religious fanaticism. It also shut its eyes to the growing of the [opium] crops that allowed the Mujahideen to help fund their operations. By the time Taliban took power, this process of growing and selling had been built into the system. Subsequently, and gradually, and mostly as a result of international appeals, Mullah Omar, the de facto head of state of Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, finally did call a halt to opium cultivation. That was in 2000. It did stop, with the exception of the territories under the control of the Northern Alliance.

It’s estimated at $10 billion. Revenues for the Taliban are pegged at between $70-to-80 million. This means the Taliban receive only a small proceeds of the total amount garnered from the production and sale of Afghan drugs. The rest goes drug-trafficking clans spread all over the world, who rake in an estimated $100 billion from international deals. But that’s the “food” money that nourishes extremists and terrorist organizations around the world. For example, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, which seeks to overthrow the legitimate Uzbek government, exists as a result of, and depends on, Afghan drug money.

The average annual income of an Afghan citizen is $310, of which $307 comes out of drug trafficking. Drugs are easier to “grow” than wheat. So is opium. But it’s obvious those making the real money off the results aren’t the poor poppy farmers. The Taliban takes 99 percent of local drug profits. Simple field hands get little or nothing. A full 20 Afghan provinces have set new records for hashish growing. The absurdity of all this is that there still isn’t enough wheat to supply the country’s needs. It has to go outside its own borders to import wheat. In the end, it’s just a matter of changing production priorities. But we can’t rely on the farmers themselves to do that because the land they till isn’t really theirs.