Addressing the elephant in the room: filling the policy vacuum of the international counter-narcotics strategy in Afghanistan

This year’s Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND), the United Nations central policy-making body on drug related matters, dedicated a special round-table session to the principle of common or shared responsibility. It tries to revitalise the principle that basically refers to the joint responsibility of producer, transit and consumer countries to tackle the drug problem. While this classification is no longer clear-cut , Afghanistan could still be regarded as a case where the traditional understanding of the concept applies. While there are also more and more drug addicts in the country, it remains the principle supplier country of more than 90 percent of the world’s opium and heroin.