Afghan opium inflames US-Russia tensions after failed drug war -- Stars and Stripes‎

VIENNA — Another record poppy crop in Afghanistan, already the source of 90 percent of the world's heroin, threatens to exacerbate the drug problem in Russia and stoke tensions between President Vladimir Putin and the United States.

As the biggest market for illicit opiates, Russia is in the front line as the U.S. withdraws its troops from Afghanistan after spending an estimated $7.6 billion in a failed attempt to curb narcotics production.

Russia now faces a public health crisis and a rise in crime stoked by the flow of Afghan heroin, Yuri Fedotov, executive secretary of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, said Nov. 12 at a briefing in Vienna. The U.S. special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, John Sopko, visited Fedotov this week to give his assessment of the lost drug war.

"This failure in Afghanistan affects what I call the new Cold War with Russia," said Robert Legvold, who led an effort by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences to reformulate U.S. policy on Russia. "It supports the views expressed by Putin and his circle that U.S. foreign policy has been intentionally destructive."

As the United States grapples with Russia's encroachment in Ukraine, government officials and advisers say the failure of the Afghan drugs effort helps explain Russian sensitivities. While U.S. forces withdraw from a 13-year Afghan war that cost 2,350 American lives, more than 7,000 Russians die annually from heroin overdoses.

Russians, who already account for about a fifth of the $70 billion global opiate market, are unlikely to see a reduction of supply in the foreseeable future, according to the U.N. A reduced North Atlantic Treaty Organization presence in Afghanistan may encourage more poppy cultivation.

"With their departure, many jobs will be lost, so that could be one incentive to increase cultivation of opium," said Fedotov, a former Russian diplomat. Delayed government salaries have already forced people to abandon jobs like law enforcement for poppy cultivation, he said.

Afghan land under poppy cultivation hit a record 554,000 acres last year, according to the U.N. Opium production rose about 17 percent to 6,400 tons while the number of fields eradicated by security forces plummeted 63 percent.  Read More