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Historians have long neglected Afghanistan's broader history when portraying the opium industry. But in Poppies, Politics, and Power , James Tharin Bradford rebalances the discourse, showing that it is not the past forty years of lawlessness that makes the opium industry what it is, but the sheer breadth of the twentieth-century Afghanistan experience. Rather than byproducts of a failed contemporary system, argues Bradford, drugs, especially opium, were critical components in the formation and failure of the Afghan state. In this history of drugs and drug control in Afghanistan, Bradford shows us how the country moved from licit supply of the global opium trade to one of the major suppliers of hashish and opium through changes in drug control policy shaped largely by the outside force of the United States. Poppies, Politics, and Power breaks the conventional modes of national histories that fail to fully encapsulate the global nature of the drug trade. By providing a global history of opium within the borders of Afghanistan, Bradford demonstrates that the country's drug trade and the government's position on that trade were shaped by the global illegal market and international efforts to suppress it. By weaving together this global history of the drug trade and drug policy with the formation of the Afghan state and issues within Afghan political culture, Bradford completely recasts the current Afghan, and global, drug trade.

For centuries, travelers, traders, and armies have passed through Afghanistan in awe of its mighty mountains, deep valleys, and vast deserts. The imposing physical features serve as one of the cornerstones of Afghanistan’s intrigue. Much like the travelers of centuries past, during the 1960s and 1970s, the allure of Afghanistan brought thousands of American and European travelers to explore its borders. Some of them were there on journeys of self-discovery; others in rejection of society and culture that was increasingly foreign to them. As Erik Cohen remarked, the foreign traveler “reject[s] his home society and culture and seeks in the

By the late 1960s, drug use in the United States escalated to seemingly epic proportions. Use of marijuana, heroin, and other hallucinogenic drugs became a mainstay of a youth culture that rejected the social and political constructs of the previous generation. When President Richard Nixon signed the Controlled Substances Act in 1970 and formalized the War on Drugs, he struck at the heart of the “silent majority’s” fear that rampant and often romanticized drug use was a prime indicator of America’s rapid social and moral decline. Throughout the 1960s, millions of baby boomers came of age in an era when

In June of 1929, customs authorities in Paris attempted to deliver a package to the residence of the Afghan minister to France, Ala Ghulam Nabi. Ghulam Nabi was a notable figure since his arrival in France; he had served as the Afghan envoy to Russia, where he worked to get the Soviets to come to the aid of the now deposed Amanullah Khan.¹ But the delivery of the package had aroused the suspicions of French authorities who had spent weeks trying to get Ghulam Nabi to file the necessary customs paperwork for the package’s delivery. Repeatedly, however, he circumvented official

Following the attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, and the United States’ subsequent invasion of Afghanistan, opium has become synonymous with the conflict in Afghanistan. Helmand Province, in particular, has come to symbolize the role of opium as both a cause and consequence of the failures of the Afghan state. Helmand Province is by far the largest producer of opium in the world. In 2007, a year during which it was estimated that Afghanistan produced a record high of roughly 8,200 metric tons of opium,¹ Helmand Province itself produced an estimated 5,397 metric tons, nearly 66 percent

In 2013, opium was a pervasive component of the political and economic environment of Badakhshan. The revenue from opium provided farmers with the capital to repay debts; it improved individual farmers’ economic, if not social and political, conditions. As opium production expanded, however, so too did the impact of the Afghan government’s counternarcotics programs. In 2011–12, the government eradicated four times the amount of land devoted to opium production than the previous year. Although the eradication of large swaths of opium poppies would seem to be good for Afghanistan, over time, the consequences of the deployment of coercive counternarcotics

In 1924, a British officer stationed in the northwest frontier of British India reported that the British trade in opium and cannabis, which was a significant portion of domestic tax revenue, was increasingly threatened by the smuggling of Afghan opium and charse into British territory.¹ Although smuggling was nothing new, especially among Afghans, this situation seemed different. The smuggling of Afghan drugs coincided with a significant decrease in the export of opium to China, long a bulwark of revenue for the British Empire. Opium was now being discouraged by British policymakers as the international community became more aware of the

This dissertation examines the role of opium in the political and economic development of Afghanistan from a world historical perspective. My research reveals that the Afghan government's adoption of American anti-narcotics policy after World War II led it to enforce prohibitions and anti-smuggling laws that proved divisive among rural Afghans, who were both culturally ambivalent toward opium use and increasingly dependent on revenue from the opium trade. In particular, by the late 1960s and 1970s, when the global demand for narcotics exploded, Afghanistan emerged as an ideal source for illicit hash and opium. However, to maintain a steady flow of American money and aid, which it was increasingly dependent, the Afghan government had to enforce the culturally and economically divisive opium laws. More important, the crackdown on the opium trade coincided with broader political conflicts throughout the country. Thus, I recast the history of opium in Afghanistan to demonstrate that drug control, as a reflection of the ambitions, desires, and needs of the Mushiban state, were fundamental in shaping the conditions of statelessness and lawlessness that are commonly thought to characterize the Afghan opium industry today. The flourishing opium trade, then, is not simply the result of a fragmented state but rather a critical component of the historical process of state formation, social resistance, and fragmentation in the region.

This chapter explores how Afghan drugs expanded into British India during the later half of the 19th century. By analyzing two Afghan rulers, Abdur Rahman Khan and Amanullah Khan, this chapter demonstrates that Afghans established a system which encouraged the smuggling of opium and hashish out of Afghanistan and into British India, but put harsh penalties on the use and trade within the country. It also explains why this was significant given the broader landscape of events; Afghan drugs were increasingly smuggled into South Asia while British India moved toward restricting the production and trade of drugs. Ultimately, this chapter details how Afghan drugs entered markets in South Asia and beyond, but as a result, Afghanistan was also drawn into international dialogues over the illicit drug trade and drug control.