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Shooting Up: Counterinsurgency and the War on Drugs
January 22, 2010To stabilize Afghanistan, President Barack Obama has called for a surge of American and NATO troops. His counternarcotics strategy, a major departure from previous ineffective and counterproductive policies, is also crucial to the war effort. In Shooting Up: Counterinsurgency and the War on Drugs, Brookings fellow Vanda Felbab-Brown, shows that although success in suppressing illicit economies cannot be achieved without first addressing the security situation in a country, neither can counterinsurgency and state-building strategies succeed without effectively dealing with the illicit economy, such as the opium trade in Afghanistan. Warlords, terrorists and insurgents throughout the world use financial resources gained from the illicit drug trade to fuel their operations. U.S. counterinsurgency policy has been based on the premise that suppressing drug production will starve an insurgency of needed funds, and the movement would wither away as a result. Shooting Up rebuts this "conventional wisdom" and shows how U.S. anti-narcotics and counterinsurgency policies have too frequently been at odds. Counternarcotics campaigns, particularly those focused on eradication, typically fail to bankrupt belligerent groups that rely on the drug trade for financing. Worse, they actually strengthen insurgents by increasing their legitimacy and popular support. Full release.