The trade in drugs and people are growing in importance as other sectors of Afghanistan’s economy contract or shut down and poverty deepens.
Entangled lives: Drug assemblages in Afghanistan’s Badakhshan
This Third World Quarterly article explores the lifeworld of drugs, following their journey from the farmers’ field to their arrival at the border with Tajikistan.
Trading spaces: Afghan borderland brokers and the transformation of the margins
This chapter published in The Routledge Handbook of Smuggling focuses on brokers and brokerage in the context of cross border smuggling or illicit trade.
Afghanistan: what the conflict means for the global heroin trade
Jonathan Goodhand discusses how economic factors are shaping unfolding events, including the trade in opium and heroin.
Critical policy frontiers: The drugs-development-peacebuilding trilemma
This article develops the notion of a policy trilemma, showing the tensions and trade-offs between drugs, development and peacebuilding policy fields.
Beyond the narco frontier: rethinking an imaginary of the margins
The ‘narco-frontier’ is frequently invoked in policy and popular narratives about drugs and armed conflict as unruly and marginal. This paper asks why has this been the case. What ideological work does the imaginary perform and for whom? And what are the implications of an alternative imaginary of the margins?
Policy frontiers: the drugs-development-peacebuilding trilemma
This policy brief presents the ‘Drugs-development-peacebuilding’ policy trilemma as a useful framework and tool for highlighting tensions and trade-offs between these three policy fields.
Journeys to borderlands always seem to lead to unexpected surprises
Jonathan Goodhand’s journey to a remote Afghan village, gave him a rare glimpse into the intricacies of borderland political struggles.
In the world’s forgotten borderlands, the drug trade helps people survive – but at a cost
Conventional thinking about illicit drugs, development and violence are deeply flawed, here’s why.
Three strategies to transform approaches to illicit drug economies
While the World Bank Fragility Forum 2020 was postponed, development leaders still need to rethink their approaches to illicit drugs. Here’s how.
The historical role of opium and what it tells us about illicit economies today
Jonathan Goodhand explores historical insights from two books and what they tell us about illicit economies today.
Illicit drugs and peace: why the borderlands matter
The borderlands lie at the country margins, but are central to processes that generate war and peace.