(EastWest Institute Report) The report critically reexamines the general driving forces behind the opium economy in Afghanistan, including the links between drugs, the socio-economic environment, corruption, militancy, and governance failure; and the main patterns of transnational trafficking of Afghan opiates and related money laundering. It also explores Russian and U.S. respective interests, concerns, strategies, and capacities and shows that the United States and Russia are threatened by different aspects of Afghan narcotrafficking and to a significantly different extent, which partly explains why Washington and Moscow tend to emphasize different aspects of counternarcotics in Afghanistan. Finally, the report identifies points of shared concerns about the broader implications of Afghan narcotrafficking, including links to global transnational crime and money laundering and more specific links to the dysfunction of the state, corruption, and armed violence within and around Afghanistan.
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