This is an Agriculture Policy paper I wrote this during my undergrad, while collaborating with a wildlife policy professor. We were trying to establish a Policy Fellowship for the transition into University of Tennessee's push to create the institute of Agriculture (now known as UTIA). I wrote several policy analysis papers while I was in that role (2013-2015) and I'm going to share them here (absent some of the data tables until I gain access to the sources I used).

Afghanistan as a Case Study, with Comparative Insights from Mali, Sudan, and the Philippines

Introduction

In fragile states, natural resources are never just “development assets”; they are strategic terrain. Land, water, minerals, forests, and high-value crops become sources of state revenue, livelihoods, and identity—but also rents for insurgents, targets of predation, and bargaining chips in peace talks. In protracted conflicts, these resource systems are reorganized into conflict economies, where armed groups, political elites, and criminal networks treat them as revenue streams and instruments of control.

Afghanistan illustrates this dynamic starkly. The country possesses enormous mineral wealth—copper, iron ore, rare earths, talc, chromite, gemstones, hydrocarbons—and a long history of irrigated agriculture.Reuters+1 Yet over four decades of war have transformed its natural resources into pillars of a conflict economy centered on opium, informal mining, and territorial taxation. This resource system has financed insurgency, entrenched corruption, and undermined state-building efforts.

Afghanistan is not unique. In Mali’s gold fields, Sudan’s oil and land, and Mindanao’s forests and mines, armed groups—including organizations designated as terrorist entities—have used poorly governed natural resources to sustain violence and consolidate parallel governance.Council on Foreign Relations+3Global Initiative+3Vision of Humanity+3 Across these contexts, the distinction between “criminal” and “political” economies collapses.

This paper examines natural resource governance under conflict economies with Afghanistan as the core case. It traces the evolution from a fragile but functional agrarian resource regime to a highly organized opium–mineral economy, and situates that transformation within global heroin markets. It then draws parallels to Mali, Sudan, and the Philippines. Throughout, it uses an intelligence lens—network analysis, supply chain mapping, financial flows, and indicators-and-warnings—to show how the tools of field and strategic intelligence can illuminate, and potentially reshape, natural resource governance in conflict zones.

Afghanistan’s Agrarian and Resource Landscape Before and During Conflict

Prior to the late 1970s, Afghanistan’s economy was still overwhelmingly rural and agrarian. The Helmand and Arghandab Valley Authority (HAVA), launched in the 1950s, became one of the country’s flagship development projects. With large dams and canals, HAVA irrigated vast areas in the south, producing a substantial share of Afghanistan’s wheat, cotton, and other crops.UNEP - UN Environment Programme Although the project is often criticized in hindsight for social and environmental flaws, it embodied an important principle: the state could mobilize infrastructure to stabilize rural economies and assert a degree of governance over land and water.

Yet even then, the state’s reach was limited. Customary institutions—tribal jirgas, village shuras, and religious leaders—mediated land and water rights across much of the countryside. The formal legal framework coexisted with informal tenure systems, with limited integration between them. When conflict escalated after the 1978 Saur Revolution and the 1979 Soviet invasion, this fragile dual system became a liability. Destruction of irrigation networks, mass displacement, and militarization of local authority disrupted both state and customary governance.

At the same time, Afghanistan’s mineral endowment remained mostly latent. Surveys by Soviet and Western geologists documented substantial deposits of copper (Mes Aynak), iron ore (Hajigak and elsewhere), rare earth elements, bauxite, chromite, talc, marble, and gemstones.Reuters+1 These resources were recognized as strategically valuable, but the capital, infrastructure, and institutional capacity needed to manage them were not in place. What existed was a resource potential, not yet a fully formed resource sector.

Conflict changed that. Rather than enabling orderly investment and governance, war created opportunities for decentralized, often violent, extraction. Warlords in the 1990s, Taliban commanders in the late 1990s and 2000s, and later a mix of insurgent factions, local strongmen, and corrupt officials learned to treat forests, mines, and even irrigation systems as instruments of coercion and revenue.

From Poppy Fields to Heroin Markets: The Opium Economy as a Conflict Resource System

The most significant transformation in Afghanistan’s resource economy came not from minerals but from a plant: Papaver somniferum, the opium poppy. While opium cultivation existed before the war, it was the combination of conflict, state collapse, and international demand that transformed Afghanistan into the world’s dominant supplier of illicit opium.

UNODC’s landmark report Addiction, Crime and Insurgency: The Transnational Threat of Afghan Opium estimated that Afghanistan accounted for more than 90 percent of global illicit opium poppy cultivation in the 2000s.UNODC+1 Each year, roughly 3,700 tons of illicit opium were consumed worldwide, raw or processed into heroin. Out of that, some 375 tons of heroin and morphine derived from Afghan opium entered the global market annually.UNODC+1 By 2009, UNODC estimated that trafficking in Afghan opiates generated about US$61 billion in illicit funds, US$68 billion for the global illicit opiate trade overall—meaning nearly 90 percent of the global heroin market’s value was tied to Afghan production and trafficking.UNODC+1

From a governance perspective, this was not just a “drug problem” but a wholesale reconfiguration of the rural economy. The World Bank’s analysis in the early 2000s estimated that the opium economy accounted for more than one-third of Afghanistan’s total (opium-inclusive) GDP, with farmers’ income estimated at around US$600 million and traffickers’ and processors’ income at US$2.2 billion in 2004.World Bank UNODC later estimated that by 2021, the opiate economy—including domestic consumption and exports—was equivalent to 9–14 percent of Afghanistan’s GDP.UNODC For many rural communities, opium income was not marginal but central.

From an intelligence perspective, the opium economy formed a layered supply chain with multiple taxation nodes:

• at the farm gate, where traders or “hawaladars” purchased raw opium and advanced credit to farmers;
• at processing labs producing morphine base and heroin;
• along trafficking routes through Pakistan, Iran, and Central Asia;
• and at border crossings into key markets feeding Russia, Western Europe, the Middle East, and, via the “southern route,” East Africa and beyond.UNODC+2UNODC+2

The global heroin market thus became structurally dependent on Afghan opium. Heroin produced from Afghan morphine base moved along the “Balkan route” through Iran, Turkey, the Balkans and into Western Europe, and a “northern route” via Central Asia into Russia and neighboring states.UNODC+1 The “southern route” emerged later, shipping heroin by sea from the Makran coast to East African ports such as Zanzibar or the Quirimbas, then overland to other African markets and onward.Wikipedia

The Taliban and other insurgent actors inserted themselves at multiple points in this chain. UNODC and various security assessments concluded that insurgent groups taxed opium cultivation, labs, and transport, using revenues to finance operations.GovInfo+2UNODC+2 The FATF’s report on financial flows linked to Afghan opiates describes how funds for drug purchases were sent into Afghanistan via money or value transfer services (MVTS) and informal systems like hawala, with a portion used to provide loans to farmers and expand production capacity.FATF+3FATF+3FATF+3

What emerges is not simply a picture of farmers coerced into growing poppy, but a complex governance arrangement in which the opium economy acts as a parallel development system. It provides credit, price stability, and protection—services that the formal state only sporadically delivered in rural areas. Any attempt at natural resource governance in Afghanistan that ignores this parallel system is blind to the actual structure of authority.

Recent developments have shifted the landscape but not eliminated the problem. After retaking power, the Taliban announced a ban on opium in April 2022. UNODC and UN surveys found that poppy cultivation fell by about 95 percent by 2023, from roughly 232,000 hectares in 2022 to only about 10–12,000 hectares in 2023–2025.Reuters+3EUDA+3UNODC+3 Opium production dropped sharply; yet prices initially spiked, and cultivation has begun to resurface in new areas like Badakhshan, while some production appears to have shifted to countries such as Myanmar, which has now surpassed Afghanistan as the world’s largest opium producer.AP News+1 UNODC also warns that as opium declines, synthetic methamphetamine production is expanding in Afghanistan, suggesting a transition rather than a resolution in the drug economy.Reuters+1

From a governance lens, the Taliban ban changes the form of the opium economy but not the underlying reality: rural communities remain dependent on high-value crops; global markets still demand opioids; and organized crime groups are capable of shifting both supply and trafficking patterns. Unless legal agricultural alternatives and credible governance structures fill the gap, the resource logic of opium will reassert itself in some form.

Minerals, Talc, and the Taliban’s “Cash Cow”: Conflict Governance in the Extractive Sector

While opium has dominated headlines, Afghanistan’s mineral sector has quietly emerged as an increasingly important pillar of the conflict economy, particularly under Taliban rule. Reporting by Afghan Witness and others notes that in September 2023 the Taliban announced more than US$6.5 billion in new mining contracts with domestic and foreign companies, including firms from China, Iran, Turkey, and Britain.Centre for Information Resilience+2Centre for Information Resilience+2 A 2023–2024 review of open-source data by researchers found over 200 mining contracts concluded since the Taliban takeover, with the sector described as their “cash cow.”Centre for Information Resilience+1

At the ground level, the story is one of continuity and adaptation. Earlier work by the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point documented how illegal extraction of chromite in Khost and other minerals generated significant revenues for local powerbrokers and insurgent groups, who outsourced smuggling operations to criminal syndicates and paid protection fees to the Haqqani network and Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan.Combating Terrorism Center at West Point Today, the Taliban have increased stated royalties on minerals such as talc—reportedly tripling the royalty rate for some commodities—while still struggling to impose transparent oversight.PeaceRep

Externally, Afghanistan is routinely described as possessing mineral resources worth upwards of US$1 trillion, including copper, iron ore, rare earths, gold, and lithium.Reuters+1 Yet Lawfare and other analysts emphasize that governance, security, infrastructure, and sanctions constraints make these resources a risky bet for legitimate investors.Default+1 In practice, much of the extractive sector continues to function through opaque deals, informal arrangements with local commanders, and partial state oversight—conditions in which resource governance remains subordinate to conflict dynamics.

An intelligence-driven view of Afghanistan’s mineral sector reveals patterns similar to the opium economy: overlapping state and non-state control, rent extraction at transit nodes, and blurred boundaries between political authority and criminal enterprise. The Taliban’s formalization of royalties and contracts does not yet amount to accountable governance; rather, it consolidates a new version of the conflict economy around minerals.

Comparative Conflict Economies: Mali, Sudan, and the Philippines

Afghanistan’s experience resonates with other conflict zones where natural resources have become both fuel and prize for armed groups.

In Mali and the wider Sahel, artisanal gold mining provides a crucial livelihood for rural communities but also a lucrative revenue stream for jihadist groups, criminal networks, and predatory security actors. Recent analysis of “gold and conflict” in West Africa shows jihadist factions linked to al-Qaeda and the Islamic State moving aggressively to tax mine sites, protect or coerce miners, and exploit weak state oversight.OFAC+3Global Initiative+3Africa Defense Forum+3 Climate stress—droughts, degraded pastures—intensifies pressure on land and water, and armed groups have framed themselves as alternative governance providers in resource-rich areas where state presence is limited or abusive. The result is a layered conflict economy in which minerals, charcoal, cattle, and fuel smuggling intertwine with insurgency financing.

In Sudan, the relationship between natural resources and conflict is long-standing and multilayered. Oil revenues were central to disputes between Khartoum and the south; land and water disputes intersected with ethnic and political tensions in Darfur; and, more recently, gold mining and control over trade routes have played major roles in the rise and consolidation of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). UNEP’s post-conflict environmental assessments highlight how environmental degradation and competition over scarce water and fertile land in Darfur helped fuel violence, while more recent UN and media reporting indicates that control of resource-rich territories continues to shape Sudan’s ongoing war.The Guardian+5UNEP - UN Environment Programme+5Global Environment Facility+5 The RSF’s dominance over parts of Darfur and its links to gold exports exemplify how armed groups convert natural resources into both financial power and political leverage.

In the Philippines, particularly in Mindanao and the Sulu archipelago, armed groups such as Abu Sayyaf and different factions of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) have also tapped natural resources to sustain their campaigns. Research on mining and insurgency in the Philippines shows how subnational conflicts over mineral deposits, logging concessions, and plantation agriculture overlap with the presence of insurgent and extremist organizations.ISA Network+2Department of Justice+2 Illegal logging and small-scale mining have generated rents for armed groups and local elites; land dispossession and the marginalization of indigenous and Moro communities have fed grievances that insurgents mobilize.

Across all three cases, the pattern is clear: where state institutions lack legitimacy and capacity, armed groups step into the governance vacuum around natural resources. They levy taxes, enforce rules, resolve disputes (selectively), and allocate access to land and mines. In doing so, they become not just criminals but de facto resource governors.

Converging Illicit Economies: Drugs, Wildlife, and Environmental Crime

Although this paper focuses on opium and minerals, conflict economies rarely confine themselves to a single commodity. International organizations and NGOs like TRAFFIC, UNODC, WWF, and the OECD have documented growing convergence between drug trafficking, illegal logging, wildlife trafficking, and other forms of environmental crime.WWF UK+5Traffic+5UNODC+5 The same networks that move heroin or precursor chemicals may move ivory, pangolin scales, tropical hardwoods, or gold, sharing logistics, corruption channels, and financial infrastructure.

Analyses of wildlife and drug trafficking note that, for militant groups, the difference between drugs, timber, and wildlife is often secondary to the reliability of the revenue stream.Brookings+1 The UNODC World Wildlife Crime Report 2024 and financial intelligence assessments emphasize that wildlife trafficking, illegal logging, and drug trafficking are intertwined, often relying on similar smuggling routes and money-laundering techniques.UNODC+2FinCEN.gov+2

This convergence matters for natural resource governance because it means interventions cannot treat opium, gold, timber, or wildlife as isolated problems. Instead, they form part of a broader environmental–criminal complex in which armed groups and organized crime treat nature as a multi-commodity portfolio. In Afghanistan, this is visible in the shift from opium to methamphetamine production and the ongoing expansion of illicit mining. In other regions, such as the Amazon or parts of Africa, UNODC has documented overlap between drug routes and timber or wildlife trafficking, pushing agencies like TRAFFIC to engage not just on species protection but on financial flows and organized crime.UNODC+2Illuminem+2

Intelligence Applications: Making Sense of Conflict Economies and Resource Governance

It is worth discussing that attacking these issues traditionally, through crime fighting or natural resources protection can be limiting in scope to the of ineffectiveness. Embracing an intelligence-minded analysis framework can be the force multiplier that help tackle this convolution problem. Natural resource governance in conflict zones is, in essence, a problem of mapping and influencing complex, illicitly governed systems.

An intelligence-oriented approach to natural resources begins by treating each sector—opium, minerals, timber, wildlife—as a network of actors, nodes, and flows. Field reports, patrol logs, community interviews, satellite imagery, financial transaction data, and open-source information become inputs into a multi-layered picture of who controls what, where, and how.

In Afghanistan’s opium economy, for example, UNODC and FATF reports provide baseline estimates for production volumes and financial flows, while national and military reporting identify specific trafficking corridors and protection rackets.UNODC+4UNODC+4FATF+4 Combined with satellite imagery showing changing patterns of cultivation and road usage, this enables analysts to identify critical nodes: key border crossings, dominant hawala brokers, major labs, or strongholds where insurgent taxation is concentrated.

Similarly, in the mineral sector, open-source analysis of contracts, talc and chromite export statistics, and satellite imagery of quarry sites, when merged with HUMINT on who actually controls those sites, yields a realistic map of who benefits from extraction.Global Initiative+4Combating Terrorism Center at West Point+4Centre for Information Resilience+4 That map is often very different from the formal organizational chart of a ministry of mines.

This kind of conservation intelligence can be used to:

• anticipate where enforcement interventions will displace crime rather than dismantle it;
• identify leverage points, such as chokepoints in supply chains or politically exposed persons central to illicit deals;
• evaluate how changes in global markets (e.g., heroin prices, demand for lithium) might reshape local conflict dynamics;
• and support conflict-sensitive policy design by highlighting who will lose or gain from particular governance reforms.

The same methods apply to Mali’s gold corridors, Sudan’s oil and gold routes, or Mindanao’s logging and mining frontiers. International reports on terrorist financing and “nature crimes” underscore that non-state armed groups are increasingly sophisticated in diversifying their revenue streams across drugs, gold, wildlife, and other commodities.New Lines Institute+4Vision of Humanity+4OFAC+4 An intelligence-trained conservation professional is uniquely placed to connect these dots.

Importantly, intelligence methods must be deployed with strong ethical safeguards. Many conflict-affected communities are simultaneously victims of both armed groups and predatory state actors; indiscriminate targeting can exacerbate grievances. Intelligence-led approaches to natural resource governance need built-in checks around human rights, protection of sources, and community consent.

Governance and Policy: From Conflict Resource Systems to Peace Resource Systems

If natural resources in conflict economies have been reorganized into systems that sustain war, the central challenge of natural resource governance is to reverse that logic: to design institutions, incentives, and enforcement mechanisms that reorient resources toward peace and development.

In Afghanistan, Mali, Sudan, and the Philippines, this means several things in practice.

First, resource governance cannot be treated as a purely technocratic exercise—drafting laws, signing contracts, and introducing transparency standards. While initiatives like the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative and open contracting are valuable, they address only part of the problem.PeaceRep+1 Effective governance also requires confronting parallel power structures, including insurgent taxation systems and entrenched patronage networks. Intelligence-informed diagnostics can help identify where these systems intersect with formal institutions.

Second, resource governance needs to be conflict-sensitive and inclusive. Environmental peacebuilding research shows that ignoring customary land rights, community use patterns, or environmental degradation can trigger renewed violence even after peace accords are signed.Global Environment Facility+2UNEP - UN Environment Programme+2 Constitution-making processes and peace negotiations that explicitly address resource allocation and local rights are more likely to produce durable peace than those that sideline these questions.

Third, interventions must grapple with the economic rationality of conflict economies. Farmers grow opium because it offers price stability, access to credit, and market connectivity; miners work in artisanal sites because there are no viable alternatives; communities sometimes accept insurgent “governance” because the state is absent or abusive. Disrupting these economies without providing alternatives risks deepening poverty, delegitimizing the state, and unintentionally strengthening other illicit activities (such as synthetic drug production).World Bank+3Crisis Group+3UNODC+3

Finally, natural resource governance must be linked to financial and enforcement strategies that go beyond borders. FATF’s work on Afghan opiate financial flows and recent financial crime toolkits targeting illegal wildlife trade show that following the money—through MVTS, shell companies, and trade-based money laundering—can reveal where resource profits are ultimately consolidated.WWF UK+4FATF+4FATF+4 Integrating environmental agencies, financial intelligence units, and law-enforcement cooperation platforms like INTERPOL or regional task forces is critical.

Conclusion

Natural resource governance under conflict economies is not primarily about technical capacity or environmental law; it is about power, legitimacy, and competing visions of order. Afghanistan’s trajectory—from HAVA-era irrigated agriculture and latent mineral wealth to an entrenched opium–insurgency system and Taliban-dominated mining sector—shows how deeply conflict can reshape resource governance. The parallels in Mali’s gold fields, Sudan’s oil and land, and Mindanao’s forests and mines underscore that this is a global pattern, not an anomaly.

Your intelligence background gives you a specific and powerful lens on this problem. Where many conservation professionals see “illicit logging” or “illegal mining” as discrete issues, an intelligence approach sees intersecting networks, adaptive supply chains, converging illicit markets, and feedback loops between local grievances and global demand. It is precisely this systems-level perspective that is needed to design natural resource governance that weakens conflict economies instead of reinforcing them.

If resources can be organized into conflict systems, they can be reorganized into peace systems: institutions that channel revenues into public goods, secure community rights, and build state legitimacy. Doing that will require not just laws and policies, but also the sustained use of intelligence-grade analysis, ethical enforcement, and community-centered governance.