Fighting corruption in countries with serious narcotics problems

State capture and the criminal infiltration of the public sector is a major feature of drug producing and transit countries. Drug traffickers seriously compromise the effectiveness of anti-corruption and institution-building efforts as they permeate political and state administration institutions and build corrupt networks with state officials in order to facilitate or reduce the risks and costs of their operations. General lessons cannot easily be extracted and applied to Afghanistan, as some specific challenges associated with post-conflict countries make the situation there very unique.