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FROM THE EDITOR

The Disease of Narcoterrorism

J. Michael Waller

Fighting disease is one of the toughest challenges facing the world today: a hugely expensive, controversial, and often fruitless effort that will last lifetimes and generations. It’s a partnership between the public and private sectors, and among those who make a profit and those who volunteer.

The fight against illegal narcotics is similar in many ways to the battle against epidemics and killer diseases. It’s a thankless task. It’s an emotional issue. It involves experimentation with controversial new ideas, repeated failures and occasional successes through trial and error, hard-to-measure metrics, and a long-term approach that can cause many to lose heart and simply throw up their hands.

But like disease, narcotrafficking must be stemmed by any means possible. And like pharmaceutical development and healthcare, the fight against narcoterrorism involves strong public-private partnerships whereby governments fund those in the private sector with the knowledge, expertise, experience and commitment to innovate and deliver. Similarly, the private sector is a partnership between those who seek financial reward for their work well done, and those whose reward comes simply from helping their unfortunate brothers and sisters around the world.

That’s the way it should be. Our cover story takes an up-close look at the drug war in Afghanistan. I recently visited Afghanistan to witness the public-private partnership that is waging the fight against the world’s largest suppliers of opium and heroin—a conflict interlinked at the core with the fight against the Taliban and al-Qaeda.

I visited with Afghan officials and police, the U.S. and other NATO allies who work with them, and the private contractors who make their operations possible. I went to some of the U.S.-funded training facilities and bases at the tip of the counternarcotics spear. And I compared what I saw with what independent government investigations concluded.

The bottom line is that without the talent and gruelingly hard work of private contractors, the U.S. military, State Department, and Drug Enforcement Administration would be denuded of their abilities to attack the international criminal syndicates that flood the world with Afghan heroin and finance the enemy’s war against us.

As Senator Lieberman says in “The Last Word,” more accountability is needed all around to make sure that the contractors are doing what the U.S. government has contracted them to do, and that the contracting agencies in government are effectively and competently writing and managing those contracts. Accountability also means ensuring a sound counternarcotics strategy that is interlinked with our nation’s increasingly sound counterinsurgency strategy. Finally, safeguards must protect the interests of all involved—this includes protecting the private companies that provide the service from government leaks that do material damage to their business and hinder their ability to help provide for the common defense.
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From the March/April 2008 issue of Serviam.