Corrupting or Consolidating the Peace?

The Drugs Economy and Post-conict Peacebuilding in Afghanistan

JONATHAN GOODHAND

This article examines how the drugs economy emerged, evolved and adapted to transformations in Afghanistans political economy. With a primary focus on the conictual war to peace transition following the signing of the Bonn Agreement, the relationship between drugs and political (dis)order is explored. Central to the analysis is an examination of the power relationships and institutions of extraction that developed around the drug economy. Expanding upon a model developed by Snyder (2004), it is argued that joint extraction regimes involving rulers and private actors have tended to bring political order whereas private extraction regimes have led to decentralized violence and political breakdown. This model helps explain why in some parts of Afghanistan drugs and corruption have contributed to a level of political order, whereas in other areas they have fuelled disorder. Thus, there is no universal, one-directional relationship between drugs, corruption and conict. Peacebuilding involves complex bargaining processes between rulers and peripheral elites over power and resources and when successful leads to stable interdependencies. Counter-narcotics policies have the opposite effect and are thus fuelling conict.

In 2007, Afghanistan was responsible for 93 per cent of the worlds opiates. No other country has ever had such a dominant position in the global supply of opiates. 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 trafcking, fearing that counter-narcotics efforts would upset the fragile political coalition that had been forged to pursue the war on terror; but between the Bonn Agreement of 2002 and the Afghan Compact of 2006, counter-narcotics rapidly rose up the policy agenda, based on the growing perception that the opium economy was a signicant driver (as well as a symptom) of insecurity and bad governance. Although there is a large body of research on the upstream dimensions of the drug economy particularly the micro-level dynamics of cultivation1 the downstream side remains relatively opaque and there has been very little work on the political effects of the drug industry.2 This article examines the interconnections between drugs, corruption and peacebuilding.3 Based upon the assumption that behind peacebuilding stands statebuilding the construction of legitimate political authority this article focuses on the various pathways through which drug-related corruption has inuenced processes of political
International Peacekeeping, Vol.15, No.3, June 2008, pp.405423 ISSN 1353-3312 print/1743-906X online DOI:10.1080/13533310802058984 # 2008 Taylor & Francis

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consolidation (and crisis) since the fall of the Taliban regime. It argues that there is no universal uni-directional relationship between drugs, corruption and conict. In some parts of the country drugs and corruption have contributed to a level of political order, whereas in other areas they have fuelled disorder. Following Snyder,4 it is argued that political order is more likely where rulers and private actors have developed joint institutions of extraction around valuable resources such as drugs. One policy implication of this nding is that peacebuilding in Afghanistan is likely to be the result of complex bargaining processes between rulers and peripheral elites, which may ultimately lead to stable interdependencies. Current counter-narcotics policies have the opposite effect and are thus fuelling conict. Corruption and War to Peace Transitions Corruption is commonly dened as the misuse of public ofce or public responsibility for private, group or sectional gain. Typically, corruption is seen as an impediment to a successful war to peace transition. In Kosovo, post-conict peacebuilding has been accompanied by the growing penetration of the state by criminal structures, particularly in the judiciary, whereas post-settlement Liberia is in danger of heading back to the highly unstable spoils politics that led to the outbreak of war in the rst place.5 However, it has also been argued that corruption may facilitate the creation of a new political order (or the consolidation of an old one) and the dividends of peace obtained through corruption may outweigh the costs of inefciencies.6 Put another way, donors may have to accept that priming the patronage pump is one of the costs of peace.7 Historical experience, as opposed to current liberal orthodoxies,8 provides some support for this position. Thomas Gallant, in a study of brigandage and piracy from a world historical perspective, makes a convincing case for the role played by illegal networks of armed predators in facilitating the spread and global triumph of capitalism.9 Bandits were deeply insinuated in the process of state formation and state consolidation. They acted as brokers between centre and periphery, facilitating capitalist penetration of the countryside by increasing monetization, encouraging marketization and by providing a venue for upward economic mobility. Through a process of either co-opting or crushing rural outlaws in frontier regions, states experienced a border effect that strengthened their capacities. Put simply, bandits helped make states and states made bandits.10 Contemporary statebuilders may adopt similar tactics: the Burmese drug lord Khun Sa, for example, has played a catalytic role in state formation by forcing Rangoon to impose control over its frontiers.11 Similarly, Snyder convincingly argues that although opium initially fuelled chaos by providing a key source of income to rebel armies, after 1990 it contributed to the consolidation of a stable military regime that ended the civil war and forcibly imposed political order.12 The key, according to Snyder, is how institutions of extraction involving rulers and private actors develop around these resources. Four possible extraction regimes are posited private, public, joint or no extraction each leading to

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different outcomes in terms of political (dis)order. If rulers are able to build institutions of joint extraction, lootable resources can produce political order by providing the revenues to govern. Rulers may deploy sticks (coercion or legal instruments) to deny private actors independent access to resources, or carrots (amnesties, tax breaks) to encourage them to share and invest their revenues. Patronage and corruption may be part of the bargaining process. The links between corruption and peacebuilding therefore depend upon the particular types and settings of corruption. Successful corruption, according to Reno, has occurred when informal networks have been grafted on to the central authority of states.13 In cases where the bureaucratic apparatus of the state was permitted to intervene in a wide array of activities, especially the economy, it was able to co-opt local authority structures a practice that is highly at odds with contemporary economic ideology. Therefore, the effects of post-conict corruption on peacebuilding processes depend on a range of context-specic factors. These include: the structure of power relations (preand post-conict); the nature of resources (licit and illicit) available to different groups; the social capital upon which leaders can build constituencies; the intensity, duration and legacies of the conict period; the nature of the grand bargain or peace settlement; and the role played by international and regional actors. As examined below, all these factors have played a part in shaping the complex and dynamic pattern of relationships between drugs, corruption and peacebuilding in Afghanistan. Although this article focuses on the post-Taliban period, some background on the wartime period is required so as to understand better the contemporary dynamics of drugs and corruption. The Afghan War Economy The political economy of the Afghan wars can broadly be divided into three phases: rst, the cold war period, spanning the Soviet invasion of 1979 to the fall of the Najibullah regime in 1992; second, the intra-mujahedin civil war, which lasted until the emergence of the Taliban and their takeover of Kabul in 1996; third, the period of Taliban rule until their removal by the US-led coalition at the end of 2001. Between each phase there were signicant shifts in the war economy. Key factors included: the changing role of international and regional (state and non-state) patrons; the types, sources and magnitude of external and internal resource ows; new patterns of capital accumulation and investment; the emergence and evolution of politico-military structures; and the mobilization of social networks (ethnic, religious, tribal and regional) by military entrepreneurs. During the cold war period of the conict, massive inows of military and nancial assistance to the regime and the mujahedin (from the Soviet Union and the US, respectively) fuelled the expansion of a war economy, producing both rentier rebels and a rentier state. In the struggle for pre-eminence amongst the Peshawar-based resistance groups, the cultivation of foreign patrons was the key to building constituencies within Afghanistan. The inux of external funds contributed to the rapid monetization of the economy, and provided the

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start-up capital for commanders to begin investing in the production, processing and trafcking of opium. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the decline in superpower patronage ultimately led to the fall of the Najibullah regime. Military entrepreneurs had to develop new strategies to generate revenue. They did this primarily through taxing the expanding drugs trade14 and cross-border smuggling, by securing support from neighbouring countries, and from transnational religious networks. The emergence of the drugs industry denoted a major transformation of the Afghan economy from largely subsistence agriculture to commercial, exportoriented farming.15 The decentralization of the war economy led to a regime of private extraction whereby private economic actors enjoyed exclusive, unregulated, and untaxed control over the income generated by resources.16 The lawlessness, criminality and corruption of this period contributed to the groundswell of support for the Taliban, particularly in the south of the country when they rst emerged in 1994. It also led to a new political coalition between the Taliban and the merchant class of the Afghan Pakistan borderland, whose trucking and smuggling businesses were undermined by the chaos of warlord rule. The Taliban takeover led to the emergence of a joint extraction regime. In this third phase of the Afghan war economy, the Taliban consolidated their hold over 90 per cent of the country and in so doing centralized the means of coercion and predation. This period saw the consolidation and expansion of the drug economy. Opium was a de facto legal commodity, as indicated by its cultivation on prime agricultural land.17 Although there are competing explanations as to why the Taliban introduced and successfully enforced an opium ban in 2000, it seems probable that it was a bargaining ploy to gain international recognition.18 Therefore, during these three phases of the conict, Afghanistan emerged as the global leader in opium production, based upon a triple comparative advantage of favourable physical, political and economic conditions: a cultivation environment that produces opium poppies with a high morphine content; chronic insecurity and institutional weakness that resulted in inadequate or non-existent forms of regulation; and poor infrastructure and rural poverty that prevented the development of alternative licit livelihoods. Over the years, Afghans have developed the know-how, expertise and market connections to build upon these comparative advantages in order to survive, accumulate, or wage war.19 Post-Taliban Afghanistan and the Re-emergence of the Opium Economy Although the removal of the Taliban and the signing of the Bonn Agreement transformed the political landscape, many of the structural factors underpinning the opium economy remained unchanged. A range of factors contributed to the reemergence of the drug economy. First, the Talibans opium ban had the twin effects of creating a tenfold increase in prices and a growth in opium-related debt in rural areas. Poor farmers had little choice but to plant poppy in November 2001 in order to repay their debts. For more wealthy farmers, high prices created strong incentives to allocate land to poppy. These factors were reinforced by the

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end of the drought, which meant an increased availability of wheat (a competing crop) and an improvement in security, which freed up internal and external markets.20 Second, the CIAs policy of providing several hundred million US dollars to commanders to buy their support in the war on terror essentially ooded the money market. The exchange rate of the dollar with Afghan currency was halved and this rapid deation created incentives to unload US dollars into other currencies or other protable investments. As the US offensive occurred during the poppy planting season, dollars were quickly recycled into loans to farmers to nance next springs poppy crop. Third, coalition forces initially adopted a laissez-faire policy towards drugs, born out of the strong tension between counter-insurgency and counter-narcotics objectives. Counter-insurgency efforts require good local allies and intelligence. However, local warlords are unlikely to provide either support or intelligence to those who are destroying their businesses.21 Fourth, the criminalization of opium had the effect of keeping prices high because of the associated risk premium (in contrast to previous phases of the conict when it was essentially a licit commodity), which forced those involved in the opium industry to look for protection beyond the state. In Afghanistan, there is no shortage of non-state specialists in violence. Consequently, the Taliban in the south and military entrepreneurs elsewhere have been able to generate political capital (and revenue) by providing protection to the peasantry and to trafckers from state-led counter-narcotics efforts. The decentralization of violence and insecurity in the countryside was compounded by the failure to extend the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) beyond Kabul.

Contemporary Features of the Opium Industry According to UN Ofce on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) gures, opium cultivation rose from 165,000 hectares in 2006 to 193,000 hectares in 2007 this was after a 59 per cent increase between 2005 and 2006.22 National production grew from 6,500 tons to 8,200 tons. However, national gures mask considerable uctuations in cultivation over time and diversity amongst provinces.23 Currently, cultivation is concentrated in the south, with 70 per cent of production concentrated in the ve provinces bordering Pakistan. Helmand is responsible for 50 per cent of the entire opium crop in Afghanistan and produces more narcotics than any other country. In the north and centre poppy cultivation has diminished, and the number of poppy-free provinces more than doubled from six to 13 in 2006.24 At both the upstream and downstream ends of the value chain Afghan farmers and drug consumers in the developed world markets are characterized by numerous actors who are price-takers; but the number of actors at the intermediate stages is much smaller and this is where price setting and price manipulation takes place.25 This practice corresponds with other (licit and illicit) commodity markets in Afghanistan, in which there are low barriers to entry at

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the bottom, but few actors and stronger forms of regulation further up the chain.26 The vast bulk of the value-added is generated outside Afghanistan.27 In 2005 06 the total export value of opiates produced in Afghanistan equalled about 38 per cent of non-drug GDP, down from 47 per cent the previous year owing to growth of the non-drug economy. In 2006 the export value of drugs was US$3.1 billion, compared with US$2.7 billion in 2005. UNODC estimates that 76 per cent of the income from narcotics goes to trafckers and heroin reners (most of which is accrued to a limited number of bulk buyers and large-scale specialist traders) and 24 per cent to farmers.28 In order to reduce risks, a signicant part of revenue is spent on payments to security providers and government ofcials. Since 2002, criminalization and law enforcement efforts have increased the risk premium charged by opium traders, which is reected in higher prices. Although frequently described as a vertically integrated value chain, in practice the opium economy might better be conceptualized as a number of interconnected but constantly mutating networks. There is no evidence to indicate the emergence of a hierarchically controlled, cartelized drug economy, though a recent UNODC/World Bank study reported growing market integration, with Helmand and Kandahar becoming centres of gravity that inuence prices in other markets.29 A further sign of the maturity of the industry is the increased amount of opium rened into morphine and heroin within Afghanistan30 and the shift in quality and purity of heroin.31 UNODC now estimates that 90 per cent of the worlds opium is processed in Afghanistan. Post-Bonn Peacebuilding and the Criminalized Peace Economy In the post-Bonn period the war economy has mutated into a criminalized peace economy. Three factors have contributed to this problematic transition: (a) the role of international actors; (b) the post-conict grand bargain forged in Bonn; and (c) the character of the emergent Afghan state. First, in the international sphere there have been extreme tensions and inconsistencies over the means and ends of intervention. A light footprint approach was adopted by Lakhdar Brahimi, the then Special Advisor to the United Nations Secretary-General. This involved working through domestic powerholders (many of dubious legitimacy) and maintaining a limited peacekeeping presence in Kabul while an alliance of US-led coalition forces and regional strongmen pursued the war on terror. Counter-terrorism was prioritized over statebuilding, and the strategy for pursuing the former undermined the latter as regional strongmen re-established their spheres of inuence in the provinces. The problem of the light footprint was compounded by the invasion of Iraq, which had the effect of redirecting diplomatic, nancial and military resources away from Afghanistan. Between Bonn and the Afghan Compact the US position shifted away from its original minimalist agenda, and the Compact reects a more maximalist approach to statebuilding. However, it also reects the confusion around competing and perhaps incompatible priorities. Liberal peacebuilding skirts around these tensions by assuming that all good things come together;

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but the failure to prioritize between the war on terror, defeating the Taliban, statebuilding, counter-narcotics and reinventing the NATO alliance has often led to second-best, hybrid solutions one example being the provincial reconstruction teams (PRTs) that were, in effect, the poor mans solution to the problem of failing to extend ISAF forces into the provinces.32 Second, the Bonn Agreement did not constitute a sustainable peace settlement. It signied a victors peace involving a coalition of actors who fell on the right side of the war on terror.33 The problem was that the losers retained their capacity to challenge the new political dispensation. The Bonn Agreement left the largest ethnic group, the Pashtuns, feeling disenfranchised, and by excluding groups sympathetic to the interests of the Taliban and Pakistan, it invited spoiler behaviour and continued conict. Third, in parallel with the ofcial political transition with its benchmarks of the emergency loya jirga, the constitutional loya jirga and elections, there has been an unofcial transition in which power has coalesced around factions and groups that established a strategic edge in the war years. These groups continue to have access to means of protection and predation. Elections had the effect of entrenching power structures in the provinces and real power in Afghanistan is now closely linked to the capacity to generate money and patronage through the drug economy.34 As central government is so weak and dependent on unreliable external patrons, power-holders in the periphery have a level of autonomy and leverage. In the bargaining processes between central and peripheral elites, the latter calculate that it may not be safe to throw in their lot with the former, leading to the continuation of uid political arrangements that take the form of spot contracts or constant hedging.35 The nature of these brokering relationships varies from region to region, depending on the areas constellation of political and military actors and its potential for protable extraction. Therefore, there is a deep interpenetration of formal politics with informal structures of networks and factions and, as Mustaq Khan has shown in other contexts, internal political stability is not maintained through scal policy, but largely through off-budget and selective accommodation of factions organized along patron client lines.36 Drugs, Corruption and State Crisis According to the World Bank, the drugs economy has induced a vicious circle of bad governance that endangers the re-establishment of security, the rule of law and a legitimate economy. Opium, it is argued, constitutes a grave danger to the entire statebuilding and reconstruction agenda.37 The poppy economy has several direct and indirect impacts upon both the degree of the state and the kind of state. It is widely believed to underwrite a parallel set of power structures, lubricate clientelist relations and feed endemic corruption.38 Current-day corruption appears to be built upon earlier practices of patronage, but one of the principal differences between the pre-war and postwar economy is the level of monetization of everyday relationships.39 The state has become the major avenue for accumulation and inter-factional competition,

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and drugs have had the effect of increasing the stakes and therefore the costs of appointments. The Ministry of Interior (MoI), according to one report, is aficted by multitiered graft and concentric circles of corruption.40 According to one general in the MoI, up to 30 per cent of the departments foreign-donated nances go astray.41 In an investigative report on the drugs trade it was reported that a police chief in a poppy-growing area could expect to pay up to US$100,000 in bribes for six monthly periods for a salaried position that pays US$60 per month.42 Highway police, until they were disbanded, were also believed to be heavily involved in facilitating and taxing smuggling, and drugs were reportedly smuggled through government law enforcement vehicles. In the same article, Afghan ofcials privately admitted that perhaps 80 per cent of the personnel at the MoI might be beneting from the drug trade. Furthermore, in a recent report by the Afghan Research and Evaluation Unit (AREU) on police reform, an interviewee described the MoI as a shop for selling jobs, conrming its reputation as one of the most corrupt ministries.43 This problem is not restricted to the MoI; of the 250,000 400,000 civil servants who are working within the Afghan government, Afghan ofcials estimate that perhaps 100,000 of these are directly beneting (through transportation fees, prots, or bribes) from the drug trade. The drug economy has become a vehicle for accumulating power. Political entrepreneurs, who want to be seen as legitimate, have a remote control engagement with the drugs trade, which involves working through connections lower down the chain.44 A complex pyramid of protection and patronage has emerged, providing state protection to criminal trafcking.45 This assemblage of actors, networks and institutions, like the opium economy itself, is extremely footloose and exible, and patterns of capture and corruption can shift across ministries and other institutions in order to evade regulatory mechanisms.46 The drugs economy provides a mode of accumulation that enables military and political entrepreneurs to capture parts of the state. The wholesale absorption of factional networks into the government administration at the national and local levels negatively affects the degree or capacity of the state. Those who rose to prominence during the war years and have used their strategic edge to enter the new Afghan state lack the administrative skills and know-how (unlike the technocrats) to work effectively with donors, manage projects and deliver services to the population. The drug economy also constitutes a huge quantity of untaxed income. Government revenue amounts to only 4 per cent of GDP, limiting the states ability to deliver services and increasing its dependence on external resources. Drugs inuence not only the capacity, but also the perceived legitimacy of the state. If the key challenge of post-conict peacebuilding is the construction of legitimate political authority, the widespread perception of corruption undermines the emergence of this authority. Corrupt ofcials are the face of government in the districts; but corruption has got so out of hand that the discourse on corruption has been skilfully mobilized by the Taliban and anti-government elements.47 Corruption became a powerful public issue at the time of the parliamentary

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elections when it was popularized by Ramazan Bashar Dost, an MP from Kabul.48 A study by Integrity Watch Afghanistan, which interviewed 1,258 Afghans, found that 60 per cent of respondents believed that this administration was more corrupt than any other in the past two decades.49 The Courts and the MoI were highlighted as particularly corrupt. This damaging perception of corruption has also spread into the international sphere, undermining the support for further aid amongst voters in Western countries. As President George W. Bush has stated, he does not want to waste another American life on a narco-state.50 Drugs, Corruption and Statebuilding? The mainstream discourse on drugs, however, exaggerates its political and nancial inuence so far there is little evidence to suggest that the state is wholly subordinate to drugs interests. Although there are some indications of growing integration in the drug industry, it is far from being a hierarchical, cartelized entity that is able to exert inuence on the state in a coherent manner. Drug networks tend to be decentralized and constantly mutating, with actors at each level of the chain being only partially sighted. Although drug money represents a signicant source of rent for military and political entrepreneurs, other (licit and illicit) income streams, including large inows of foreign aid, play a role in buying votes, positions and favours. Also, because of the overall growth of the licit economy since 2002, the relative size of the drug economy has declined. Finally, political decision-making involves a complex mix of factors in which nancial, political and social resources are brought into play. Tribal, ethnic, political and religious allegiances can and frequently do trump economic selfinterest. Thus, although drugs are a factor in political decision-making, the narco-state discourse exaggerates their role by raising them to a position of primacy. The drug economy is conventionally viewed as an index of state power, so that low capacity regimes are more likely to have a drug problem than high capacity regimes. During the war years, Afghanistan developed a strong global comparative advantage in illegality as a result of state collapse and the emergence of military entrepreneurs and transnational networks able to facilitate the trade. Although this created an enabling environment for the emergence of the drug economy, different structural factors encouraged its consolidation and expansion. The most rapid expansion of the drugs trade has coincided with two periods of statebuilding rst, during the Taliban regime when the number of opiumgrowing provinces grew from ten to 23, and second, during the Karzai regime when it grew from 24 to 32 provinces. While many other factors contributed to the spread of opium cultivation and one should be careful not to confuse correlation with causation, the common assumption that state collapse and warlordism always provide favourable conditions for the drug trade is empirically inaccurate. In Burma, for example, a major expansion of the narcotics industry in the 1990s occurred during a period that also saw the end of the civil war, the demobilization of ethnic and communist insurgents, and the successful restoration of a military regimes grip on power.51 As Diego Gambetta and others argue, maas need

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states to provide a level of stability and predictability in economic and political relations.52 The drugs maa supported the Taliban when they rst emerged precisely because they could provide state-like functions in terms of security and law and order. The pathways through which drugs and corruption affect peacebuilding processes are far more ambivalent and context-specic than the mainstream discourse allows. The effects of lootable resources such as drugs appear to vary according to the political structures in place and the associated institutions of extraction.53 Illicit drugs lend themselves to regimes of joint extraction because they present difculties either for private agents or for rulers to establish monopoly control. As there are low barriers to entry, drugs are a diffuse resource, and their illegality poses a barrier to entry for the public sector as Snyder noted, it is not feasible to have a Ministry of Opium (though some would argue that the Afghan Ministry of Interior is performing that function). Moreover, joint extraction is easier to sustain in the face of lootable resources with a renewable and elastic supply as in the case of illicit drugs. Whether drug-related corruption is stabilizing or destabilizing depends on the level of centralization, the nature of the bargains struck between rulers and private actors, and the role of international policies. Rulers can deploy a range of sticks and carrots in order to get private actors to co-operate in joint extraction. They can use coercion, the threat of no extraction (drug eradication policies) or legal inducements. A number of factors may lead to changes in the equilibrium of joint extraction, including shifts in the power balance, changes in the value of lootable resources, changes in leadership (the bequeathability problem) and grievances over the division of spoils.54 In Afghanistan, the institutions of extraction that link rulers at the centre with private agents on the periphery vary from area to area, but the crucial dividing line at present is between governance in the south and in the north. In the south, the extraction regime resembles the situation that existed during the Soviet invasion, when rebels commanded a near monopoly over drug-related rents. Large swathes of the south have now become non state spaces55 where the government has neither the capacity nor the legitimacy to mobilize capital or coercion in order to enforce institutions of joint control (or no extraction).56 This contrasts with the Taliban period, when revenues from the drugs trade (which was essentially a licit activity) were used to concentrate the means of coercion and consolidate political control. The change in leadership, the shift in the balance of power57 and the increase in the value of opium have occurred at a time of growing grievances in the south, as Pashtuns felt excluded from the new political dispensation. The political dynamics in the north, however, are very different. Arguably a new equilibrium has emerged, leading to institutions of joint extraction. The power balance between the centre and periphery changed as a result of unevenly implemented disarmament, demobilization and reintegration programmes aimed at ex-combatants and the stabilizing presence of international forces, because warlords had less to fear from an attack by rivals. The political equilibrium had the state essentially maintaining a protection racket, with private actors paying for protection from harassment by the government or from other competitors. The states carrots and sticks (non-enforcement of the law or the threat of

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eradication) are deployed in such a way as to force private actors to co-operate by sharing their income. Conversely, regional strongmen have not dispensed altogether with their militias and have reached an accommodation with the state in return for a policy of limited interference. The stability of this equilibrium varies from area to area but there is no automatic and straightforward relationship between the drug trade and violence.58 Violence is likely to be instrumental and limited and is most frequently a consequence of market dysfunction and disorganization; because it is bad for business, the default setting may be violence avoidance. When wielders of force become owners of capital they are subject to the logic and rules of economic activity, and markets may increasingly control and transform such groups.59 Whereas in the pre-war period the border regions suffered from a political economy of neglect their sparse populations and limited resources made them unpromising sites for state formation during the war years they became important strategic resources and sites of accumulation. The post-Bonn construction boom has been funded largely by drug money, so to a great extent economic activities in the hinterland are actually responsible for the peace dividend experienced by the centre. Although much of the proceeds from the drug economy have been invested outside the country, there are visible signs of inward investment in drug-producing areas and there has been a recycling of money into licit businesses. The opium economy has produced signicant increases in rural wages and is an important source of credit for poor rural households. Opium prots fuel consumption of domestic products and support the importation of high-value goods. Whereas other markets in Afghanistan are extremely fragmented, the drug economy represents the closest thing there is to a national market, involving multi-ethnic networks and strong north south integration. According to the UNODC and the World Bank,60 the opium economy has had a stabilizing effect on the currency by having a signicant net positive impact on Afghanistans balance of payments.61 The IMF has warned that successful counter-narcotics efforts could adversely affect GDP growth, the balance of payments and government revenue.62 Does opium-fuelled growth represent an Afghan version of the robber baron phase in American history? Were the political and economic transformations wrought by the war and the drug economy actually the motors for a process of primitive accumulation? Afghanistan has undergone major transformations during the war years, including a shift from subsistence agriculture to an export-based cash crop economy, resulting in growing inequality between the peasantry on one hand and political and military entrepreneurs on the other. Perhaps the specialists in violence, drug trafckers and businessmen, who prospered during this period, represent an emergent capitalist class. As Antonio Giustozzi notes, many of these actors have now invested too much in the peace for them to seek a return to war.63 To some extent in the north of the country, buying out the spoilers has worked. In Burma, peace proved more protable than war because the returns on opium increased dramatically after ceasere agreements were reached between the military and insurgents. However, in

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Afghanistan, the war in the south and the international narcotics regime are likely to prevent such a transition from occurring. The connection between drugs, corruption and legitimacy is also far more complex than the international discourse allows. External actors have tended to focus exclusively on the illegitimacy and harmful effects of corruption. Certainly its negative impact on the lives of ordinary Afghans cannot be denied. Transactions of bribery and corruption always take place in power relationships that stratify, marginalize and exclude;64 but not all forms of corruption are equally harmful or equally wrong in the eyes of most Afghans. Impartiality in public service, for example, may not always be seen as a virtue. It seems probable that people will tolerate corruption if the state can deliver some tangible benets to them and their families. These benets may constitute public goods such as security, law and order and justice, or private goods including jobs, gifts, or favours. Interestingly, the local discourse on corruption appears to be far less focused on drugs than the international discourse. Instead, anger is directed more towards perceived misuse of foreign funding and corruption amongst non-governmental organizations these are the issues, rather than drugs, that Bashar Dhost mobilized around during the parliamentary elections. Afghans also see corruption in other areas of international engagement, including the links between US security contractors, Afghan militias and corrupt ofcials. Involvement in the drugs economy is not seen as a deviant activity, and to a great extent the drug industry is far more pro poor than the aid industry as it has permeated the rural economy and provided a safety net for poor households. The connection between statebuilding and drugs is therefore more complex than is commonly assumed. One could hypothesize that rather than being a linear relationship that progresses from low capacity regime/high drug production to high capacity regime/low drug production, the historical trajectory has been closer to an inverted U. When state capacity is low, drug production is minimal and illegality grows as state capacity improves during the early phases of statebuilding; this is followed by a decreasing reliance on shadow economy activity as the state matures into a high capacity regime. Corruption and Counter-narcotics Policies As highlighted above, there is a big gap between the (possibly unrealistic) aspirations outlined in Bonn of a liberal democratic state and the reality ve years later of a shadow state deeply penetrated by political factions and drugs interests. Karzais big tent approach, which prioritized stability over reforms, has enabled reform-resistant elements to consolidate their position and consequently act as spoilers within government. A whole raft of initiatives to build accountability, transparency and greater effectiveness have been blocked or diluted, in large measure because they challenge the interests of key actors in the central and provincial administrations. These include reforms to the police and judiciary, public administration reforms and anti-corruption measures.65 The failure to confront drug interests through substantive reforms to the most powerful ministries also reects the competing objectives of international

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players and leads to inconsistent policies, as highlighted earlier.66 Hamid Karzai, particularly in relation to the drugs issue, is caught in the dual legitimacy trap. Paradoxically, drug eradication may build Karzais external legitimacy while simultaneously undermining his domestic standing. He has declared a jihad on drugs and he has deployed notions of religious sin and collective shame to persuade farmers to desist from poppy cultivation; but illegality does not mean that such activities are regarded as illegitimate. Many Afghans view counter-narcotics (CN) policies as an externally driven, Western agenda. Criminalization and eradication may end up undermining government legitimacy particularly when the government cannot deliver on its part of the bargain by providing alternative sources of livelihood. Laws that lack legitimacy consequently require a greater reliance on coercion. Eradication efforts end up attacking farmers who voted for Karzai.67 International forces are also de-legitimized by association in the eyes of many Afghans, who were initially supportive of coalition forces. CN policies may accentuate inter-ethnic/north south tensions as eradication efforts in the south highlighted the perception that the government was anti-Pashtun. In addition to their effects on the legitimacy of the state, CN policies have important opportunity costs and may indirectly undermine state capacities. As Koehler argues, the narco-state may be less of a threat to Afghan statehood than a foreign steered counter-narcotics proxy state.68 The legitimacy of Afghan statebuilding is running the risk of being sacriced for a quick result counter-narcotics enforcement machinery.69 Therefore, even if CN efforts are successful on their own terms (which they are not), ultimately they run the danger of undermining the more fundamental goal of statebuilding. Control regimes tend to reect de facto power relations and the states involvement in counter-narcotics has generated perverse incentives for misgovernment. The threat or application of eradication or interdiction has been used to undermine political enemies or extract resources. It has also enabled producers to eliminate competitors and led to de facto consolidation of the drug industry. In 2007 around 10 per cent of the poppy crop was eradicated according to UNODC, but these were mainly marginal elds, the result of corrupt deals between landowners, village elders and eradication teams.70 The eradication gures themselves have become a source of corruption local ofcials are reported to inate the gures as governors are compensated at US$120 for each eradicated hectare.71 One province that was initially considered a success for poppy eradication was Nangahar. In 2005, there was a 94 per cent decrease in poppy cultivation and only a limited rebound in 2006; but by 2007 there had been a major rebound in production. The Nangahar experiment provides some insights into the perverse political and economic effects of shock therapy elimination. Following a similar approach to the Taliban in 2000, the Karzai government delegated responsibility for reducing cultivation to local power-holders. The chief bargaining tools available to the state were to offer a level of autonomy to warlords (a regime of joint extraction) or to threaten eradication (a regime of no extraction). Local strongmen who made the transition into the administration realized that being a warlord or jihadi commander might be less secure and less lucrative than a position in the

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state bureaucracy;72 but warlords have not necessarily thrown in their lot with the government and continue to hedge their bets. In Nangahar their part of the bargain was to turn off production, but when the quid pro quo of substantial development assistance did not materialize, the economic effects of the ban rapidly undermined support for the government. It has been argued that by focusing on poppy production and acreage, CN efforts are using the wrong metric of success. It makes little sense to concentrate on the part of the chain that involves 80 per cent of the stakeholders but only 20 per cent of the value. Eradication leads to price increases, which transfers prots from farmers to trafckers. Therefore, the focus should be on trafcking, where 80 per cent of the prots are located. However, interdiction efforts have provided leverage to corrupt ofcials to extract enormous bribes from trafckers. Such corruption has attracted former militia commanders who joined the MoI after being demobilized.73 Not surprisingly, very few high-ranking government ofcials have been prosecuted for drug-related corruption. A greater focus on indictment since 2005 has led to several high-prole arrests, including a high-level Interior Ministry ofcial, Lt-Col. Nadir Khan, who was sentenced to ten years in prison for stealing and selling 50 kilograms of conscated heroin.74 The overall aim of interdiction, complemented by other CN measures, according to Ali Jalali et al., should be to turn opium cultivation and trafcking into high-risk activities in a low-risk environment.75 However, as the Transnational Institute notes, the choices about who and who not to indict, arrest or extradite seem to be arbitrary, irrational or highly politicized.76 Furthermore, those attempting to do anything about drugs and corruption are unlikely to keep their jobs. For example, Ge. Aminullah Amerkhel, the chief of border police at Kabul Airport, was suspended from his job, reportedly because he was arresting too many drug trafckers. There is a complex and ambiguous relationship between counter-narcotics and statebuilding, and heavy-handed eradication may have perverse effects and ` -vis local strongundermine the legitimacy and capacity of the central state vis-a men. Returning to Snyders analysis, counter-narcotics policies are likely to create political disorder because they render joint extraction infeasible by imposing high costs on government participation. As experience from Colombia and elsewhere shows, externally induced prohibition against joint extraction is the cause of violence and disorder because it forces governments into a lethal confrontation with drug cartels.77 Conclusions This article has outlined how the drug economy emerged, evolved and adapted to transformations in Afghanistans political economy. Central to this analysis has been an examination of the power relationships and institutions of extraction that developed around the drug economy. It is argued, following Snyder, that joint extraction regimes involving rulers and private actors have tended to bring political order whereas private extraction regimes have led to decentralized violence and political breakdown. In the post-Bonn environment, both regimes

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can be detected, with a fairly clear dividing line, following the mountains of the Hindu Kush, between the north and south of the country. This political divide is a legacy of the war years and the division of spoils following the Bonn Agreement. In the north, drugs, to some degree, have played a role in cementing political relationships between the centre and periphery and in so doing helped create a level of political order. In the south, however, they have fuelled the combat economy and enabled the Taliban to generate political capital by protecting the peasantry and trafckers; but drugs are the symptom rather than the driver of this insecurity in the south. Drugs and drug-related corruption are not inherently conictual, and depending on underlying power relations they may produce order or disorder. Corruption may be the most efcient means for individuals or groups to cope with a political economy of high uncertainty, scarcity and disorder.78 It is as well to remember that corruption is not the worst thing that can happen, compared with the real possibility of state collapse and a return to civil war. From a historical perspective, processes of early state formation were never linear and smooth, and states, bandits and criminality have frequently been close companions. A drug-free Afghanistan cannot be achieved in the short term, particularly while pursuing a war. Efforts to eliminate narcotics in an ungoverned or badly governed state have become increasingly militarized; and law enforcement approaches that operate either through patronage-based networks or parallel institutions created by foreigners have limited purchase. A zero tolerance approach to drugs and corruption is therefore unworkable and has perverse effects. Peacebuilding and counter-narcotics are two distinct and not even complementary objectives. International actors need to consider whether their primary objective in Afghanistan is to build sustainable peace or to implement an international drug prohibition regime. CN policies are determined by the interests of Western countries and their problems with drug consumption, rather than the long-term interests of Afghan citizens. Clearly, states cannot be made to work from the outside79 and legitimate institutions are the product of long-term domestic political processes.80 The bargaining between rulers and private actors and the institutions of extraction referred to in this article are central to the process of statebuilding. Perhaps there is a limit as to how far the argument can be pushed that revenues from the drug economy can pay for peace as well as war. Does this mean that peacebuilding is concerned exclusively with constructing political order in the absence of violence rather than adhering to a higher standard of positive peace? It is clear that corruption cannot simply be dismissed as a Western crusade, given its negative impacts on the lives of most Afghans and the fact that there is a constituency within Afghan society pushing for more stringent measures against corruption and drugs these policies have their importers as well as their exporters. Yet surely there is a fruitful middle ground to explore between consolidating an illiberal, warlord-dominated peace and pursuing the so-called post-conict make over fantasy,81 which sets out an idealized end state but does not provide any road map for how to get there. The most productive

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approaches to counter-narcotics, anti-corruption and post-conict statebuilding in Afghanistan and elsewhere are likely to involve transitional arrangements that enable the country gradually to move towards being less drug dependent and less corrupt. Paradoxically, standalone counter-narcotics efforts are likely to impede such a transition.

NOTES 1. See David Manseld, Diversity and Dilemma: Understanding Rural Livelihoods and Addressing the Causes of Opium Poppy Cultivation in Nangahar and Laghman, Eastern Afghanistan, Report for the Project for Alternative Livelihoods (PAL) in Eastern Afghanistan, 2004; Manseld and Adam Pain, Opium Poppy Eradication: How do you Raise Risk where there is Nothing to Lose?, Brieng Paper, Afghan Research and Evaluation Unit (AREU) Sept. 2006, Kabul. 2. With the exception of Michael D. Shaw, Drug Trafcking and the Development of Organised Crime in Post Taliban Afghanistan, in Doris Buddenberg and William Byrd (eds), Afghanistans Drug Industry, Structure, Functioning, Dynamics and Implications for Counter-narcotics Policy UNODC, World Bank, 2006, pp.189214. 3. The article is based on eldwork conducted in 200506, funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council and the Chr Michelsen Institute, Bergen, Norway. 4. Richard Snyder, Does Lootable Wealth Breed Disorder? A Political Economy of Extraction Framework, Working Paper No. 312, July 2004. 5. See Reno, this issue. 6. Philippe Le Billon, Buying Peace or Fuelling War? The Role of Corruption in Armed Conicts, Journal of International Development, Vol.15, 2003, p.420. 7. Paul Smoke and Robert Taliercio, Aid, Public Finance and Accountability: Cambodian Dilemmas, in James Boyce and Madelene ODonnell (eds), Peace and the Public Purse, Economic Policies for Postwar Statebuilding, Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2007, p.55. 8. Roland Paris, At Wars End: Building Peace After Civil Conict, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. 9. Thomas Gallant, Brigandage, Piracy, Capitalism, and State Formation: Transnational Crime from a Historical World-systems Perspective, in Josia Heyman and Alan Smart (eds), States and Illegal Practices, Oxford and New York: Berg, 1999, pp.2562. 10. Ibid., p.25. 11. Alfred McCoy, Requiem for a Drug Lord: State and Commodity in the Career of a Khun Sa, in Heyman and Smart (see n.9 above), p.158. Arguably if one views the Taliban as protostatebuilders, their control and taxation of the poppy economy was a factor that enabled them to extend their control over the country and concentrate the means of coercion. 12. Snyder (see n.4 above), p.12. 13. See Reno, this issue. 14. As a result of successful counter-narcotics efforts in Pakistan, most of the poppy cultivation and much of the rening capacity had shifted across the border into Afghanistan, particularly in the southern and eastern borderlands. 15. Barnett Rubin, Saving Afghanistan, Foreign Affairs, Jan./Feb., 2007, pp.5778. 16. Snyder (see n.4 above). 17. In fact marijuana was viewed by the Taliban as far more haram (unIslamic/illegal) because it was used for local consumption. 18. Other interpretations are that it was a strategy to push up prices which rose by a factor of 10 following the ban or that it was driven by religious concerns. 19. See my typology of the combat, shadow and coping economies that evolved in the course of the Afghan wars, Afghanistan in Central Asia, in Michael Pugh and Neil Cooper with Goodhand, War Economies in a Regional Context: Challenges for Transformation, London: International Peace Academy/Lynne Rienner, pp.4589. 20. David Manseld, Beyond the Metrics: Understanding the Nature of Change in the Rural Livelihoods of Opium Poppy Growing Households in the 2006/7 Growing Season, Report for the Afghan Drugs Inter-departmental Unit of the UK Government, May 2007. 21. Vanda Felbab-Brown, Afghanistan: When Counternarcotics Undermines Counterterrorism, Washington Quarterly, Vol.28, No.4, pp.5572. 22. UNODC, Afghanistan Opium Survey, 2007.

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23. David Manseld, Responding to the Diversity in Opium Poppy Cultivation, in Buddenberg and Byrd (see n.2 above), pp.4776. The post-Taliban period has seen the emergence of new areas of cultivation, including Bamyan, Nuristan, Khost and Wardak provinces. 24. The sustainability of these decreases can be questioned and drugs trafcking also continues in the north. 25. William Byrd and Olivier Jonglez, Prices and Market Interactions in the Opium Economy, in Buddenberg and Byrd (see n.2 above), p.136. 26. Anna Patterson, Going to Market: Trade and Traders in Six Afghan Sectors, Kabul: AREU, 2006; Sarah Lister and Adam Pain, Trading in Power, Kabul: AREU, 2004. 27. Byrd and Jonglez (see n.25 above), p.130; David Zetland, Markets for Afghan Opium and US Heroin: Modeling the Connections, Social Science Research Network, 23 Jan. 2003, p.4 (at: http://ssrn.com/abstract 668761), for instance, calculates that opium that costs US$90 per kg at the Afghan farm gate becomes US$2870 per kg (rened heroin) in Pakistan, which in turn increases to US$80,000 per kg in the US wholesale market and nally US$725,000 at retail prices. The cross-border mark-up from Pakistan to the United States is 2,400 per cent compared with the norm of 12 per cent for most agricultural products. 28. UNODC (see n.22 above). 29. Byrd and Jonglez (see n.25 above). 30. In 1995, 41 per cent of opiate-based exports were in the form of heroin, but by 2002 this had risen to 72 per cent. 31. Different opiates do not have the same purity and their prices depend on their quality and characteristics. At the low end of the spectrum is brown sugar and at the high-quality end is China White, with a level of heroin chlorhydrate reaching up to 98 per cent. A global conversion ratio of between 610 and 1 is used to calculate the quantity of opium required to produce heroin and morphine. In Afghanistan a 7:1 ratio is commonly used. 32. PRTs are described by Barnett Rubin and Humayun Hamidzada as an attempt to create an ISAF effect without an ISAF presence, Rubin and Hamidzada, From Bonn to London: Governance Challenges and the Future of Statebuilding in Afghanistan, International Peacekeeping, Vol.14, No.1, p.12. 33. The four main groups at the Bonn talks were the Northern Alliance, the Pakistan-based Peshawar Front, the Iran-backed Cyprus group and the Rome group representing former King Zahir Shah. 34. For example, the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission reported that after the parliamentary elections an estimated 80 per cent of the candidates in the provinces and 60 per cent in Kabul maintained contacts with armed groups and drug trafckers, Integrated Regional Information Network, Afghanistan: Rights Body Warns of Warlords Success in Elections, 18 Oct. 2005. 35. Astri Suhrke, When More is Less: Aiding Statebuilding in Afghanistan, Discussion Draft for Research Partnership on Postwar State-building, 2007 (at: www.state-building.org). 36. Mustaq Khan, Markets, States and Democracy: PatronClient Networks and the Case for Democracy in Developing Countries, Democratization, Vol.12, No.5, 2005, pp.704 24. 37. World Bank, Afghanistan State Building, Sustaining Growth and Reducing Poverty, World Bank Country Study, Washington, DC, 2005. 38. Afghanistan ranked 172 out of 180 countries in Transparency Internationals 2007 Corruption Perception Index. 39. Elizabeth Harrison, Unpacking the Anti-corruption Agenda: Dilemmas for Anthropologists, Oxford Development Studies, Vol.34, No.1, 2006, p.21. 40. Arthur Kent, Covering up for Karzai and Co, Policy Options, JulyAug. 2007, pp.11 17. 41. Ibid., p.11. 42. Pay grades have subsequently changed and a provincial police chief is now paid between US$500 and $600 per month, Scott Baldauf, Inside the Afghan Drug Trade, Christian Science Monitor, 13 June 2006. 43. Andrew Wilder, Cops or Robbers? The Struggle to Reform the Afghan National Police, Issues Paper Series, AREU, Kabul, June 2007. 44. For example, in Jurm district of Badakshan a local commander has reached an agreement with a parliamentarian who has close links to the Presidents ofce. In return for delivering votes and the ongoing support of the population, the commander receives the parliamentarians patronage. In return, the parliamentarian turns a blind eye to poppy cultivation. 45. Shaw (see n.2 above). For example, one former mujahedin commander, Din Muhammed Jurat, became a general in the Ministry of Interior and is widely believed to be a major gure in organized crime. Rubin (see n.15 above). 46. Buddenberg and Byrd, Introduction and Overview (see n.2 above), p.6.

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47. For example, in 2006 the Taliban introduced their own code of conduct, which aims to set standards of professionalism and behaviour in contrast to the perceived corruption of government. Henry Schuster, The Talibans Rules, CNN, 7 Dec. 2006 (at: www.cnn.com/2006/ WORLD/meast/12/06/schuster.12.6/index.html). 48. It [corruption] is a disaster for the Afghan people . . . Mr Karzai doesnt really want to ght corruption, and the international community too, doesnt want to ght corruption in Afghanistan, Bashar Dost, cited in Kent (see n.40 above), p.12. 49. Cited in Fisnik Abrashi, Afghan Bomber Hits U.S. Embassy Convoy, The Washington Post, 19 March 2007. 50. Cited in James Risen, Poppy Fields Are Now a Front Line in Afghan War, New York Times, 16 May 2007. 51. Snyder (see n.4 above), p.2. 52. Diego Gambetta, The Sicilian Maa: The Business of Private Protection, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993. 53. Snyder (see n.4 above). 54. Ibid., p.9. 55. James Scott, Seeing Like a State. How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998. 56. It should be noted that the drug trade in the south still depends upon the tacit collaboration of state ofcials; it would not be able to function without the collaboration of provincial governors, police ofcers, border guards, customs ofcials and so forth. 57. The presence of a virtually open border, the Talibans establishment of safe havens within Pakistans tribal territories and the introduction of tactics of asymmetrical warfare including suicide bombing have shifted the balance of power in favour of the insurgents. 58. See David Manseld, Governance, Security and Economic Growth: The Determinants of Opium Poppy Cultivation in the Districts of Jurm and Baharak in Badakshan, A Report for GTZ/ AKDN, Feb. 2007. Manseld contrasts the level of stability in Baharak district with Jurm in Badakshan province and relates this to the particular conguration of political and military players in each locale and their relationship to provincial authorities. 59. Vadim Volkov, Violent Entrepreneurs. The Use of Force in the Making of Russian Capitalism, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002, p.122. 60. World Bank, The Investment Climate in Afghanistan. Exploiting Opportunities in an Uncertain Environment, 2005. 61. The stable value of the new currency has been an important factor in the popularity of the government and a source of national pride, Rubin (see n.15 above), p.6. 62. Islamic State of Afghanistan: 2004 Article IV Consultation and Second Review, Country Report No. 05/33, IMF, Feb. 2005. 63. Antonio Giustozzi, War and Peace Economies of Afghanistans Strongmen, International Peacekeeping, Vol.14, No.1, 2007, pp.7589. 64. Dieter Haller and Cris Shore, Corruption. Anthropological Perspectives, London: Pluto, 2005, p.17. 65. The Afghan government recently published its Anti-corruption Roadmap and established a USbacked Criminal Information Unit within the MoI to reduce corruption by strengthening internal affairs and accountability mechanisms; but Afghanistans anti-corruption chief, Izzatullah Wasi, has a troubling past and an Associated Press investigation found he was convicted two decades ago of selling heroin in the United States. Matthew Pennington, Afghan Anti Corruption Chief is a Convicted Drug Trafcker, USA Today, 2007 (at: www.usatoday.com/news/world/200703-09-afghan-corruption_N.htm). 66. In 2005, US Drug Enforcement Agency agents and Afghan counterparts found nine tons of opium in the ofce of Sher Muhammad Akhundzada, governor of Helmand, but the CN team was blocked from taking any action against the governor who had close ties to American and British military intelligence and diplomatic ofcials, Risen (see n.50 above). 67. Barnett Rubin and Omar Zakhilwal, A War on Drugs or a War on Farmers?, Wall Street Journal (Eastern edition), New York, 11 Jan. 2005. 68. Jan Koehler, Conict Processing and the Opium Poppy Economy in Afghanistan, Jalabad: GTZ Project for Alternative Livelihoods in Afghanistan, 2005. 69. Ibid. p.70. 70. UNODC (see n.22 above), p.v. 71. Transnational Institute, Missing Targets. Counterproductive Drug Control Efforts in Afghanistan, Drug Policy Brieng No. 24, Amsterdam, Sept. 2007. 72. Koehler (see n.68 above).

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73. Rubin (see n.15 above). 74. Carlotta Gall, Opium Harvest at Record Level in Afghanistan, New York Times, 3 Sept. 2006. 75. Ali Jalali, Robert Oakley and Zoe Hunter, Combating Opium in Afghanistan, Strategic Forum, Institution for National Strategic Studies, National Defence University, No. 224, Nov. 2006. 76. Ibid., p.11. 77. Snyder (see n.4 above), p.9. 78. Le Billon (see n.6 above), p.424. 79. Simon Chesterman, Michael Ignatieff and Ramesh Thakur, Making States Work. From State Failure to Statebuilding, New York: International Peace Academy, 2004. 80. Marin Ottaway, Rebuilding State Institutions in Collapsed States, Development and Change, Vol.33 No.5, 2002, pp.100124. 81. Christopher Cramer, Civil War is not a Stupid Thing. Accounting for Violence in Developing Countries, London: Hurst, 2006.