The United States in essence has been waging two wars: a counterinsurgency against the Taliban and Al Qaeda, and a war to eradicate the opium trade in Afghanistan. At the beginning, the latter war was a much lower priority of the U.S. because the main goal of the U.S. was to focus on the war on terror; destroying and dismantling Al Qaeda, overthrowing the Taliban regime that gave sanctuary to Al Qaeda, and creating a viable democratic state. The U.S. began the war against the Taliban on October 7, 2001 and over the span of a month the Taliban were ousted from power. The purpose of this brief is to provide a background of U.S. foreign policy and its failures on the drug war in Afghanistan, and suggest alternatives sustain Afghanistan.In December of 2001, some prominent Afghans and world leaders met in Bonn, Germany through the United Nations. They outlined a policy became known as the Bonn Agreement. The agreement’s goals were to design and re-build the state following the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. One of the tenets of the Bonn agreement called for a post-Taliban Afghan government to prevent Afghanistan’s re-emergence as a safe haven for drug cultivation. From the beginning, the Bush administration decided that besides fighting against Al Qaeda and the Taliban, some of the U.S. resources should be focused on counter-narcotics. In this mission, Britain was also an important ally and later took the lead among members of the coalition alongside the newly established Afghan government to reduce narcotics production and trade. In January 2002, at the urging of the U.S. and the international community, the Afghan interim government banned poppy cultivation. Afghanistan’s President Hamed Karzai announced that “Either Afghanistan destroys opium or opium will destroy Afghanistan.” The U.S. and the international community welcomed Karzai’s support as part of its important strategic framework for its future work with the Afghan government. The Bonn agreement not only urged the U.S. and the international community to fight against narcotics but also forced the Afghan government to put pressure on its citizens to stop cultivating opium. Continue reading...