Iran blame USA & UK for Afghan flow of Opium

[Alfa]

DRUG TRADE 'REACHES TO AFGHAN CABINET'
Some cabinet ministers in Afghanistan are deeply implicated in the drugs trade and could be diverting foreign aid into trafficking, the country's anti-narcotics minister said yesterday.
The admission will dismay Western governments, which last week pledged $10.5 billion (UKP6 billion) in aid, including UKP505 million from Britain, to help to fight poverty, improve security and crack down on the drugs trade.
It raises the prospect that money being donated by the West could be used indirectly to kill British soldiers, 3,300 of whom will be stationed in anarchic Helmand province, where corrupt officials, insurgents and drug lords overlap.
"I don't deny that," said Habibullah Qaderi in an interview with the Sunday Telegraph, when asked whether corruption linked to the UKP2.7 billion-a-year drugs trade went right up to the cabinet.
Such high-level criminality, he said, would help account for why "a lot of trafficking through different parts of the country" was being conducted with apparent impunity.
But he declined to name names and said Afghanistan's weak justice system, itself bedevilled by corruption, meant that it was difficult to convert allegations and rumours into fact. "The question is how to find evidence against these people [politicians]."
In Kabul, the houses of several senior politicians resemble small palaces with marble corridors, painstakingly manicured lawns and dozens of armed guards.
Even in provincial town such as Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand, ostentatious homes stand in stark contrast to the poverty around them and are known locally as the houses of "smugglers" - a euphemism for drug traffickers.
Western aid officials and several European diplomats named the same high-ranking politicians and officials, including one with close links to Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan's President, as drug lords.
"The Afghans complain that 75 per cent of aid is spent directly rather than being filtered through their government but the reason for that is because otherwise a significant proportion is skimmed off into the pockets of drug lords," said one American aid worker.
"Post-Taliban Afghanistan is going to emerge as a low-level narco-state at best."
But a veteran European diplomat in Kabul said: "The problem, as ever, is the smoking gun. We all know it is happening. We all know the names. But I have never seen any direct evidence and I don't know anyone who has."
Ali Ahmad Jalali, who resigned as Afghanistan's interior minister last year, said: "Sometimes government officials allow their own cars to be used for a fee. Sometimes they give protection to traffickers.
"In Afghanistan, corruption is a low-risk enterprise in a high-risk environment. Because of the lack of investigative capacity it is very difficult to get evidence. You always end up arresting foot soldiers."
But he accused Western governments of exaggerating the problem to justify limiting their long-term commitment to rebuilding Afghanistan. The "drug problem in Afghanistan is demand-driven" from the West, he said, with 90 per cent of profits being made outside the country. Nato policies, moreover, had helped to consolidate the drugs lords because they had focused solely on fighting Taliban and insurgent forces rather than attacking the trade.
Mr Jalali urged British troops in Helmand not to ignore narcotics, 90 per cent of which end up in Europe. "I understand Nato's argument that if they eradicate poppy fields then that antagonizes the population. But there are legitimate targets - mobile labs and stockpiles - which only drugs lords, rather than ordinary poppy growers, are involved with."
A British official said that a number of Afghan MPs were linked to the drugs trade and that some officials had to be circumvented because they were corrupted by drugs. "There are plenty of people in the national assembly who are very dodgy. Corruption is endemic so I have to be careful with some figures in the Afghan set-up who might not be 100 per cent committed to eradicating drugs."
Last week, the World Bank castigated Western governments for failing to channel money through the Afghan government, leading to vast amounts of cash being spent on exorbitant salaries, security guards and fortified accommodation for aid workers.
But the Kabul Weekly, an Afghan newspaper, summed up the dilemma: "If aid is given to NGOs, huge amounts go into their own expenditures. If it's given to the Afghan government, the poor bureaucracy and corruption waste it."

[klaatu]

Scotsman.com
23 Feb 2006

THE commander of the British forces in southern Afghanistan insisted yesterday that his troops would play no part in destroying poppy fields.

Ministers had declared that one of the main tasks of the 5,700-strong force was to help end Afghan heroin production, which supplies 90 per cent of the narcotics sold illegally on British streets. But Colonel Gordon Messenger, of the Royal Marines, said troops deploying to Helmand, the biggest centre of heroin production, will not become involved in the process being considered by president Hamid Karzai's government of eradicating poppies.

"There will be absolutely no maroon berets (of the marines) with scythes in a poppy field," he said. "British forces will not even directly stop vehicles suspected of smuggling the drug. That will be the task of Afghan police and army."

The main role of the British forces will, instead, be to enable the Afghan police and army to establish control over areas which had so far remained outside their reach, allowing a resurgent Taleban and drug lords to gain ascendancy, said Col Messenger.

[Solidly-here]

Good for the Brits.

There are a only a couple thousand Marines over there in Afghanastan. They are there to improve the Peace, and slow-down the Taliban.

With the few men at their disposal, they are over-worked already. If the Afghans want the Poppies, why should the Brits declare their OWN "War on Drugs"? Well, they won't.

[Alfa]

That funny, not only are they going to fight the ones who really want to end heroin production. They refuse to get in the way with the drug trade, regardless that this has been one of the major arguments for going in the first place. But I can't blame them; The US is no longer in control of Afganistan. Taliban is gaining territory. I wouldn't be surprised if it soon becomes publicized how far out of control that war is getting. The Brits are in a very nasty place. But make no illusion Solidly, the Brits are not there to improve the peace. It is war.
I recently met a Dutch marine. He was about to go to Afghanistan with his 'peacekeeping' unit. His orders have nothing to do with peacekeeping. They are going to fight.

[enquirewithin]

Yes, the Brits are certainly there to fight a punitive war for the US. They have every reason to be cautious in Afghanistan. The British army was defeated there before, at the height of Britain's powers. They know their limitations. (The British army have long retrerated into their bases in Iraq too.)

There is also an awareness that destroying poppy fields just won't work. You have to give farmers another way to make a living and root out the corruption in the govt. Ironically, the Taliban had considerably decreased the amount of heroin prodution, which is way up beyond pre-invasion levels.

They can't possibly stop the heroin/ poppy trade. Many of the so-called drug lords are back in the govt, as everyone knows.

[Alfa]

Why can't they stop the drug lords? The Taliban did.

The brother of the Afghan president, who is his personal representative in Kandahar is the unofficial regional governor of southern Afghanistan and leads the whole trafficking structure. This may explain why opium production has never been as high as the last 2 years. It will continue to rise as long as this government is in place. So the government which had opium pretty much under control (Taliban had it down with 90% in just one year) has been replaced by a bunch of drug lords. And I do not believe for a second that the US was not aware of this. Hell, they actually did quite a job getting so many drug lords in the government. That must have been hard to acomplish!

[motorhead]

US: Nato - Drug Trade Bigger Threat Than Insurgency In
by Drew Brown, (07 Mar 2006) San Jose Mercury News United States
WASHINGTON - The top military commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization said Monday that the narcotics trade poses a greater threat to Afghanistan than a rekindled insurgency by Taliban and Al-Qaida fighters.

Marine Corps Gen. James Jones, NATO's supreme commander, said he doesn't believe Taliban and Al-Qaida remnants can "restart an insurgency of any size or major scope," but that they're part of a "wider span of problems" that includes the opium trade and rampant criminality.

The government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai undertook an opium eradication program in 2004, and last year Afghanistan experienced a 21 percent decline in land devoted to poppy cultivation, the first since 2001. But opium production is likely to rise again this year, according to a U.N. report issued Monday.

The U.N. report, based on a survey carried out in December and January, said poppy cultivation is increasing in 13 Afghan provinces, remaining the same in 16 and decreasing in three.

Despite last year's decrease in overall land devoted to poppies, good weather and a low incidence of plant disease yielded a bumper crop of opium, the United Nations reported in November.

Last year, Afghanistan produced an estimated 4,100 tons of opium, the main ingredient in heroin, about 87 percent of the world's supply, the report said.

Most of the resulting heroin ended up in Europe, which is partly why NATO member countries have a keen interest in upcoming changes in the Afghanistan mission, Jones said.

About 21,000 NATO personnel from 36 countries are preparing to take over stability and security operations in southern and eastern Afghanistan in coming months. NATO will very likely take over stability operations throughout Afghanistan by the end of 2006, Jones said.

Jones said NATO troops won't participate directly in eradication of poppies, but will provide intelligence-gathering and surveillance.

Some U.S. troops will be included in the NATO force, but that number hasn't been determined. Most U.S. troops, however, will concentrate on areas in eastern Afghanistan along the Pakistan border, where Taliban, Al-Qaida and other anti-government groups remain active and where Osama bin Laden is believed to be hiding.

Meanwhile, U.S. officials noted that the threat from the insurgency had hardly disappeared.

Last week, Defense Intelligence Agency chief Lt. Gen. Michael D. Maples said attacks by Taliban and Al-Qaida forces had increased 20 percent in the past year.

Maples told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the insurgents represent a greater threat to Afghanistan now "than at any point since 2001," when U.S. troops and Afghan Northern Alliance rebels ousted the fundamentalist Taliban government.

A total of 129 soldiers from the United States and its allies died in Afghanistan last year, more coalition deaths than in any other year since the Taliban was ousted in 2001, according to icasualties.org, a Web site that tracks U.S. and allied casualties. Of those, 99 were Americans. Those fatalities included combat deaths and deaths resulting from accidents and other non-combat-related causes.

Jones said Monday that a 20 percent increase in attacks "is statistically not very significant" because the average number of daily attacks by Taliban and Al-Qaida fighters had been "quite low."

"I don't think we're heading toward a revitalized insurgency," Jones told reporters at the Pentagon

[enquirewithin]

The government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai undertook an opium eradication program in 2004....

This is a joke! Karzai is as corrupt as they come-- an ideal US client! The Taleban said that "Allah will provide" for the opium farmers. Now they are working for their old masters again. The farmers, as everyone knows, get very little money anyway.

[Lunar Loops]

The following article appeared in the Telegraph in the UK on 8/5 (interesting alternative from the Senlis council):

Afghan opium could do some good

The dreadful weekend events in Basra tragically demonstrated what a dangerous job British soldiers are required to perform in Iraq and how difficult it is for a foreign force, however well-intentioned, to win over the indigenous population.
Wherever Britain's soldiers are sent, they almost invariably do an excellent job and prove a credit to their nation.
But the heart sank to see last week's deployment of some 3,500 men to the Helmand province of southern Afghanistan because, however well they perform, the venture has fiasco written all over it.
The area where they are going is the world's biggest producer of opium and part of their task is to help the Afghan authorities curb its output.
Local farmers are now nearing the end of the opium harvest and by the time the troops are fully ensconced, the crop will be in and thoughts of destroying it in the ground can be put off for a while. The raw opium will be turned into heroin and sent to the West.
It is by no means clear how far the Government expects the troops to get stuck into fighting local drug production but it does seem to be one of its principal targets, albeit in a support role to Afghan troops and police.
The function of the Armed Forces is to act in Britain's national interests and, since 90 per cent of the heroin on our streets originates in Afghanistan, smashing the opium trade could justify the deployment without the additional task of confronting Taliban insurgents, supporting the administration in Kabul and preventing al-Qa'eda from setting up its terrorist training camps again.
Afghan opium poppy production is back to the levels that existed before the overthrow of the Taliban in 2001.
According to UN drugs watchdogs, Afghan farmers grew more than 4,100 tons in 2005 and millions of addicts worldwide are hooked on the heroin they produced.
There was some progress last year because one in five opium fields cultivated in 2004 was not replanted; but that trend was reversed this year and better weather could turn this year's harvest into the best ever.
Afghanistan remains far and away the world's largest supplier of opium, which the UN estimates is responsible for 100,000 annual deaths around the world. The cost of the crime associated with the trade is incalculable, but must run into billions of pounds.
So, it would seem to make political sense to take on the growers, destroy their crops and keep an iron grip on an industry that causes so much harm.
However, it would also be military folly, because 1.7 million Afghan farmers are economically dependent on opium production, the trade is run by warlords backed by armed gangs and 52 per cent of the country's GDP is linked to it.
Our soldiers will hardly win the "hearts and minds" of the local people by depriving them of their livelihood.
The Commons defence committee recently reported that the Taliban has been encouraging farmers to grow poppies this year.
It warned: "There is a fundamental tension between the UK's objective of promoting stability and security and its aim of implementing an effective counter-narcotics strategy. It is likely the more successful the deployment is at impeding the drugs trade, the more it will come under attack from those involved in it. In the short term at least, the security situation is likely to deteriorate."
For more than two years now, an international think tank, the Senlis Council, has argued that there is an alternative. It wants the West to license Afghanistan's opium crop for use in palliative medicines, rather than trying to destroy it. There is a world shortage of pain-killing drugs, chiefly morphine and codeine, so why not put the Afghan production on a legitimate basis?
These drugs have to be grown somewhere (they come mainly from India, where 130,000 farmers raise poppies under strict controls). Ironically, Afghanistan is one of many developing countries that has little or no access to these medications. The World Health Organisation says a handful of Western industrialised countries consume three quarters of available opium-based medicines and even they do not have enough to meet demand.
The Senlis idea has been widely pooh-poohed. In a recent report, the International Narcotics Control Board, a UN agency, said: "The idea that legalising opium poppy cultivation would somehow enable the government to obtain control over the drug trade and exclude the involvement of criminal organisations is simplistic and does not take into account the complex situation in the country."
As the UN 10 years ago set a target of eradicating illegal drugs consumption worldwide by 2008, it is not especially qualified to talk about unrealistic expectations in this field. But its attitude appears to be shared by the British and American governments. Ministers see the plan as "inappropriate".
There are flaws. If opium production were licensed, the whole country could become a drug-producing state. In countries where the crop is grown legally, it makes up a tiny proportion of national agricultural output, whereas in Afghanistan it is a majority.
It could also discourage farmers from growing other crops, as in the "Golden Triangle" countries, where land once under opium poppies now grows such cash crops as asparagus.
On the other hand, the attempted eradication of the coca plant spectacularly failed in Colombia. There is no reason to believe it will work in Afghanistan - and certainly not without great cost, both financial and military.
It could make those parts of the country that Kabul wants to bring within its writ harder to govern.
Hilary Benn, the international development secretary, said recently that "sustainable drug elimination will take many years" and would be best achieved by targeting the trafficker, encouraging different crops and reducing the demand for drugs.
But Senlis has, at the very least, suggested another route that must be worth exploring if we are to avoid transferring the tragedies of Iraq to Afghanistan.

[klaatu]

4th May 2006

http://www.opendemocracy.net

The expansion of the opium economy in Afghanistan is contributing to a deteriorating security situation in the country.

On 1 May, British troops assumed control of security operations in Helmand province, southern Afghanistan. More than 2,000 troops are now in the province after the transfer of authority from the United States, a figure that will rise to 3,300 by June. They join the further contingent of 2,000 British soldiers in other parts of Afghanistan, but the significance of Helmand is that it is one of the least stable parts of the country. An early indication of what the troops may face is a comment from a local militia leader that Britain is "an old enemy of Afghanistan".

Several opposition politicians in Britain have questioned the nature of the British military role, specifically whether the forces' function is to aid reconstruction and development, conduct counter-narcotics actions or engage in counter-insurgency against the Taliban and other militias. The defence secretary, John Reid, has described the mission as "to protect the reconstruction and development of the Afghan economy, democratic government and security forces", but he added: "However, it will be necessary to protect that development against terrorists who seek to destroy all three of those elements, or to attack British troops."

The warning is apt. March was a particularly violent month in the ongoing war in Afghanistan; there were numerous attacks on Afghan police and security forces and government offices, assassinations of government officials and murders of aid and construction workers.

The new British deployment thus comes at a time of deteriorating security in Afghanistan. This problem also extends across the border in Pakistan, especially the districts of North and South Waziristan.

The wider internal predicament of President Musharraf's regime is suggested in its decision on 2 May to close the investigation surrounding the leaking of nuclear secrets by Abdul Qadeer Khan to Libya, North Korea and Iran. The United States regards AQ Khan's proliferation activities as the most serious example of aid to "rogue states", yet his domestic status as the figurehead of Pakistan's own nuclear-weapons programme has made him something of a national hero.

Afghanistan's heroinisation

The military challenge facing the new British deployment in Helmand is considerable. The threat of direct military attack, in some cases by insurgents drawing on expertise developed in Iraq, is however only one part of a complex security mosaic. In the longer term, the issue of opium production is likely to prove an equally grave test, not least because of two significant developments over the past year or so:

* the increasing tendency for opium to be processed into heroin within Afghanistan
* the use of narcotics profits directly to finance the developing insurgency.

The background to these trends is the extent of opium production in Afghanistan. During the 1990s, the total area of opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan varied between 50,000 and 90,000 hectares. A temporary ban by the Taliban in 2001 resulted in an immediate fall, something reversed by the war and regime change of October-November 2001.

In the period following the Taliban's overthrow, a sharp rise took opium poppy cultivation to a new extent: 74,100 hectares in 2002, 80,000 hectares in 2003 and a peak of 131,000 hectares in 2004 (see the United Nations office of drugs and crime, 2005 annual report). A decrease to 103,000 hectares in 2005 was accompanied by an increase in productivity, with the result that the actual production of opium fell only from 4,200 tonnes to 4,100 tonnes.

In the first months of 2006, cultivation and production is now increasing substantially. The UN office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs (Unocha) estimates that poppy cultivation is increasing in thirteen Afghan provinces, is stable in sixteen and is decreasing in just three. The increase in seven of the thirteen provinces is described as "strong", including Helmand itself. The overall picture is one of large-scale and persistent opium production with Afghanistan producing almost 90% of the world's opium.

The additional development is a marked tendency for the opium to be refined into heroin and morphine within Afghanistan. There is evidence of a substantial increase in the transit of precursor chemicals into the country such as acetic anhydride (see the 2005 annual report of the International Narcotics Control Board). Some of these precursors (like acetic anhydride itself) are controlled substances; others such as activated charcoal and ammonium chloride are not. In either case, movement of controlled and non-controlled precursors is a good indication of heroin production; it follows that both classes of chemicals will tend to be trafficked into Afghanistan rather than imported through legal routes.

What this means is that the trafficking in of precursors, the actual refining of the opium and the subsequent trafficking of heroin out of Afghanistan are all highly profitable areas of illegal activity, even more than the straightforward production and trafficking of raw opium. The end result is that the various factions, groups and individuals involved in all these stages have access to increasing financial resources.

As a result, Afghanistan is now a much more profitable site for the drug trade than a decade ago. The coalition has not simply failed to curb opium poppy cultivation, but is allowing an increasingly profitable enterprise to develop as the processing of opium into heroin and morphine expands.

The implications for the insurgency are straightforward. The various militias – local warlords, Taliban groups and others – all have the capacity to exert control over different aspects of the whole production process, from raw materials through to finished products. In doing so, they can access finance for their own purposes. In the case of the guerrillas, this means the resources to finance the purchase of weapons, explosives, vehicles, food and other equipment with greater ease; funds can also be used to offer financial inducements to potential supporters, including those willing to report on the activities of Afghan police and security agencies and foreign troops.

A Helmand welcome

Washington sources and Nato representatives based in Kabul continue to portray a positive picture of developments in Afghanistan. By contrast, a number of recent columns in this series have reported on an upsurge in Taliban activity. It does seem clear that the reality in southern Afghanistan is of rapidly deteriorating security.

A rare dispatch in a major western media source is a report from Oruzgan (Uruzgan) province that describes the recent expansion of Taliban activity (see Carlotta Gall, "Taliban power creeps back in Afghan south", New York Times, 3 May 2006). The author writes: "The arrival of large numbers of Taliban in the villages, flush with money and weapons, has dealt a blow to public confidence in the Afghan government, already undermined by lack of tangible progress and frustration with corrupt and ineffective leaders."

Oruzgan's new governor, Maulavi Abdul Hakim Munib, says: "The security situation is not good … The number of Taliban and enemy is several times more than that of the police and Afghan National Army in this province". A government official comments on a pattern of small numbers of police being allocated to individual districts where, at any one time, "half of them are protecting the district chief as bodyguards and the other half are on leave".

Much of the expansion of Taliban activity is linked to improvements in their financial base. It is in this way that production, manufacture and export of drugs from Afghanistan links to the insurgency.

In the context of Helmand – which borders Oruzgan to the west – the stationing of 3,300 British troops in one province may sound a lot, but very few of these will be involved in active patrols at any one time. In an adverse security environment, large numbers of troops have to be dedicated to base security, and others have to constitute highly mobile rapid-reaction units ready to go to the aid of patrols that come under attack.

In 2002, United Nations specialists warned that Afghanistan needed massive aid and a substantial peacekeeping force if the country was to break out of the cycle of insecurity that it had experienced for more than two decades. If successful, that could also have meant a sharp decline in opium production. Neither the aid nor the security assistance was offered on the scale required. Four years later, the situation is deteriorating and the troops now deployed to Helmand province are likely to be at the epicentre of an increasingly perilous environment.

--------------

Klaatu

[Lunar Loops]

Now, if Singapore starts to export its practices we'll all be looking for a paddle to cling onto amidst the brown torrent. A state where even poppy seed crackers are illegal. This from Malaysian Star online today:

Afghanistan officers visiting Singapore to learn anti-drug strategies

SINGAPORE (AP) - More than a dozen law enforcement officers from Afghanistan, the world's biggest opium producer, are in Singapore to learn the strategies used by the strict city-state to maintain low drug abuse rates.
Singapore has some of the world's harshest - and most thoroughly enforced - drug laws, including a mandatory death penalty by hanging for anyone caught with more than 15 grams (0.53 ounce) of heroin or more than 500 grams (17.64 ounces) of marijuana.
Over two weeks, 15 Afghan officers will be trained in search procedures, profiling techniques and financial investigation methods, among other skills, a statement from the Central Narcotics Bureau said late Wednesday.
Singapore's leaders say the country's tough laws have helped keep this wealthy city-state of 4.3 million people free of the drug scourge plaguing some of its Southeast Asian neighbours.
The training programme, which started Wednesday and ends June 2, underscores Singapore's belief in international cooperation against the global drug trade, a government official said.
"While countries may have different approaches towards tackling their domestic drug problems, the global nature of the drug scourge makes it critical for countries to share experiences and learn from one another,'' said Ho Peng Kee, junior minister of law and home affairs.
Afghanistan is the world's biggest producer of opium, the raw material of heroin. Last year, more than 4,500 tons of opium were harvested, about 90 percent of the global supply.
The main drug threat Singapore has faced in recent years is the trafficking and abuse of synthetic drugs such as "Ecstasy.'' Singaporean narcotics officers will also demonstrate drug detection procedures and allow the program's participants, to observe anti-drug operations, the statement said.

[Lunar Loops]

Official corruption? Surely not...this from Reuters:

U.N. says Afghanistan "addicted to its own opium"
24 May 2006 12:54:44 GMT
By Kamil Zaheer
NEW DELHI, May 24 (Reuters) - Government officials, lawmakers and police were linked to the drug trade across Afghanistan, making the fight against opium cultivation difficult, the head of the U.N.'s Drug and Crime office said on Wednesday.
"Unfortunately, Afghanistan is addicted to its own opium," Antonio Maria Costa, the Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations, said after addressing a seminar on drug use in India during a visit to New Delhi.
He said the drug trade had made deep inroads into Afghan society, underming efforts to control it in the world's largest producer of illicit opium and heroin.
"It is also because members of the local administration, police officials...and even politicians and members of parliament benefit from the trafficking and that is rendering the process of reducing the cultivation much more difficult."
Costa said all of Afghanistan's 34 provinces were now affected by "the drug cultivation tragedy".
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) was seeing a "great amount" of poppy cultivation on Afghanistan's southern and eastern borders with Pakistan and its northern frontiers with Central Asia, he added.
"The borders are not policed... and that is part of the problem," he said.
There has been upsurge in fighting in Afghanistan and hundreds of people including 10 U.S. soldiers have been killed in the past few months in stepped up attacks by Islamist Taliban fighters.
American and Afghan officials say many Taliban and al Qaeda fighters were launching attacks from bases in Pakistan.
Afghan President Hamid Karzai said his country's drug trade was partially funding the Taliban and al Qaeda.
The spike in fighting was underming anti-narcotic efforts, Costa said.
"No doubt, the instability in some of the southern provinces is making the process of eradication of cultivation more difficult."
Afghanistan's opium output last year was about 4,500 tonnes. About 90 percent of the world's heroin comes from the war-wracked nation whose rugged mountain terrain and history of warlords make it perfect for production of the illegal drug.
Although there was a 21 percent fall in the land devoted to poppy growing in 2005, according to the U.N., the yield per hectare rose due to favourable weather, resulting in overall output dipping just 2.4 percent.
Experts say the threat of eradication is key in persuading farmers to stop growing poppies but Karzai has opposed using aircraft to spray fields with herbicide, fearing it would anger farmers and bolster support for the Taliban in the south.

[Nature Boy]

What the hell do they expect when they prevent them from growing cannabis anymore? They need some sort of cash crop and opium is the last resort right now.

[Lunar Loops]

Understandable in the case of the farmers themselves, but I think the article was more taking a look at offficials who were creaming off their slice of the poppy pie.

[Lunar Loops]

Hmmm, all in a days work.

Just as an add on to this story, this appeared on the e-Ariana website (http://www.e-ariana.com/ariana/earia...F?OpenDocument).

Inside the Afghan drug trade


The Christian Science Monitor
06/13/2006
By Scott Baldauf

KABUL - The Afghan police chief doesn't realize his voice is being taped. So pardon him if he brags about his life as a drug trafficker.
In a friendly conversation recorded in his home last summer, he tells of his quarrels with another drug-dealing police commander in the country's northern Takhar Province; about driving through a rival's police checkpoint with 500 kilos of heroin in his car; and his adventures in rescuing three heroin-smuggling friends from the clutches of Tajik policemen. It's just another part of the job, he says.
"If my adventure were filmed, it would be a very exciting movie," chuckles the commander, referred to hereafter as "Ahmed Noor." On the tape, he laughs. "The UN should give me an award."
But on one point the former mujahideen commander is certain: "Even if all the world were to come to Afghanistan, they will not be able to stop smuggling."
In relative terms, Mr. Noor is a small player in an illegal business that generates $2.7 billion a year, more than half the value of the country's legal economy. Afghan officials and foreign diplomats increasingly call this central Asian country a "narco-state," as top officials find it more profitable to flout laws than enforce them.
Very few major Afghan officials have been removed for involvement in drug trafficking, in part because of the lack of evidence, and in part because the country has only recently created special tribunals to handle major drug cases.
For this reason, the Monitor launched its own investigation in a province known for trafficking, to see how prevalent the drug trade is among police chiefs and what evidence could be found. Sending an investigative unit with a hidden minidisk recorder to the northern province of Takhar – where Afghanistan's medium and low-grade heroin is trafficked into Tajikistan, and on toward Europe – the Monitor recorded four police commanders.
All of the names in this story have been changed. The Monitor deemed it too dangerous for our investigators to confront each of these commanders with the taped evidence, and too unfair to their reputations to release their names without giving them a chance to defend themselves. But the statements in these tapes – gathered by investigators who have excellent reputations collecting testimony for the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, among others – provide a rare inside view of how drug corruption has trickled down to the front lines in the country's faltering war on drugs.
p>"Commander Dost" is commander of a border police unit that patrols a large swath of the border with Tajikistan. In his taped conversation, Dost reveals how widespread the drug trade has become, as police commanders compete with each other to dominate the drug trade in Takhar Province.
"For one year I did the smuggling," he says, on the lawn of his home. "It was not hidden from anybody. It was obvious to everybody. I put my RPG (rocket-propelled grenade launcher) on my shoulder.... I became a dangerous smuggler."
But increasingly, Dost finds himself being run out of the drug business by a group of more powerful police commanders. These commanders have been shutting out all other competitors in the drug trafficking business, says Commander Dost.
A few years back, one of these commanders sent eight men to ambush Commander Dost. "Fortunately I had 25 of my [tribesmen] with me," says Dost. "I used the RPG and fired at the enemy in front of us, and behind us. Finally I made about $70,000 for myself from the drug money."
But at one point, he was captured with $370,000 worth of heroin, and had to sell everything he had – including his Swiss Rado watches and most of his heavy weapons – in order to pay back the owners of that drug. In another instance, Dost was captured by his chief competitor, another police commander.
The commander "caught me once with 56 kg of drugs. He asked me, 'Will you do it again?' and I told him that I would never do that again. Right after I promised him that I would not do that again, I came home and took another 100 kilos of drug and put it in my Russian jeep and took it to sell."
"These persecutors do it themselves, like 300 kilos to 400 kilos each time," Dost complains. These days, "all the smuggling is now in the hands" of these commanders, "and no one can do anything without [their] permission. Except me. When I do it, I tell my boys, 'Anybody who wants to stop you, you should kill them.' "
Commander Nasir
"Commander Nasir" is the police commander of a border district in Takhar Province. Like Commander Dost, Nasir is a relatively small player in the drug trade, but he gives an inside picture of how some of the bigger police commanders – both in Afghanistan and in neighboring Tajikistan – punish drug-trafficking competitors to burnish their law-enforcement credentials, or take bribes from those willing to pay for favorable treatment.
"One day I counted how much I had given" a top police commander, says Nasir, who was a longtime commander during the Russian war, fighting alongside Northern Alliance commander Ahmed Shah Masood. From drug sales and fees, "it was $680,000, just in cash." Nasir pauses. "$680,000! A lot of money, isn't it? But believe me, he [the commander] never had any intention to do anything good for me in return, ever."
Nasir says all the big smuggling these days is being conducted by relatives of this top commander, some of whom are police commanders in Takhar. One relative "takes $50 per kilo to carry it from this side to that side of the border near Tajikistan. And if he catches somebody else smuggling, he takes $5,000 to $10,000 each time."
Nasir says he has stopped taking drugs across the border himself, because he is too well known, but he continues to send his men to do the job instead. Instead of paying his men immediately after a successful mission, now he pays them a week later, so that competing police commanders don't discover his smuggling until it's over.
"When I was a big smuggler, I had relations with the Tajik officers on the other side of the border. But my competitor has relations with the Russian KGB," he says. "[His] people have damaged my business a lot. Once I lost $500,000 of heroin, another time $600,000, another time $700,000, another time $900,000, another time $1.1 million because of [his] people." Nasir laughs. "My opponents have knocked out my 32 teeth."
But as bad as things are with the powerful commander – and after an assassination attempt by the top commander against Nasir, relations are pretty bad – Nasir says he wants to be practical and keep the peace, for now.
"I have a lot of proof and evidence against [the commander]," he says, "but I want to keep my relations good with him."
Ahmed Noor
"Ahmed Noor" is the police commander of a market town along the Afghan-Tajik border in Takhar Province. In the tape, Mr. Noor admits that he's involved in drug trafficking, and gives an up-to-date breakdown of how much profit corrupt police officials make per kilo in the drug trade. But Noor notes with chagrin that other, more powerful commanders are making much more money than he is.
Mentioning one police commander by name, Noor says, "[He] is not happy with $20,000 a night from drug money," he says. "He charged $40 per kilo to transport it to the other side of the border. [He] himself is at home, resting and watching movies, and he plays cards with friends."
This commander moves more than 600 kilos every night, and at $40 a kilo, that's a hefty profit, Noor says. "Believe me, I know he did this six times a week."
But while big players like this commander are able to move large quantities of heroin through Takhar Province, and even through Noor's own district, Noor says that this powerful commander won't share this business with other commanders.
Once, Noor says, this commander warned Noor to stop trafficking in drugs. Noor refused. So the commander started setting up checkpoints to try to catch Noor in the act of smuggling. At one such checkpoint, Noor was driving the car himself, and rather than stop at the checkpoint, he floored the accelerator and attempted to run over an armed soldier blocking the road.
"I had 500 kilos of drugs with me, and I was not going to give up that easily," he says. "So I drove fast to run over the soldier. The soldier runs away and shoots in the air. After I unloaded the car at the border, I came back to the commander of the checkpoint, and asked him why his soldier wanted to stop me. [The checkpoint commander] told me it was the order of [the top commander]. So I warned [the checkpoint commander] and told him that the drug money goes to [the commander's] pocket, but why he is stopping other people's cars. I told him, 'the next time you try to stop me, I will shoot your head to pieces with bullets.' "
Noor admits that the drug business is getting more difficult, and his business partners are becoming less trustworthy. "One day, I took 60 kilos of drugs to the other side of the border to Dushanbe, but the Tajik smuggler took it and did not pay me," he says. "No one can do anything to Tajik smugglers on their soil."
Noor blames the incident on his own sense of trust. "I believed one of my Afghan friends, who told me that this Tajik guy pays better than the others. I believed him."
Commander Bilal
"Commander Bilal" is a senior administrator in the provincial Takhar police force, and a former police commander of a border district along the Tajik border. In his tape, Bilal complains that police discipline is breaking down, and the trafficking has become so fractured that even low-level cops are starting to skim profits. More important, he reveals that drug corruption has infiltrated deep within the Ministry of Interior, the chief law- enforcement organization, as top officials take bribes to appoint corrupt drug dealers into top police positions.
On paper, Bilal is one of the most powerful police commanders in his province, with many district commanders under him. But in reality, with district commanders deeply involved in the drug trade, few of the police officials in Takhar pay attention to him. Things were better, Bilal says, when he was a district police commander.
But even then, it wasn't so good. As a trafficking point, his border town was highly overrated.
"What have they seen [about that town]?" he asks. "There is only one bridge, and anyone you send – even your brother – will not bring any smuggler to you. If some one is caught there and brought to me, I will get $10,000 from him [in bribes]. But that poor soldier standing there will accept $200 from the smuggler [to let him pass through] instead of bringing him to me. I can't stand there myself on the bridge, because it is shameful."
In any case, Bilal says his relations with the drug smugglers was never very warm. "I don't know why, but the smugglers did not trust us," says Bilal.
He thinks for a moment, and then continues. One of his colleagues in the police department in the border town, "was playing games with the smugglers. [This commander] is the kind of person who cut a deal with smugglers, takes money from them, and further on up the road, stops and seizes their drugs, too. That was the reason the smugglers did not trust us. "
Bilal says almost all the police commanders in Takhar have paid officials at the Ministry of Interior to get their jobs, and nowadays, commanders have to pay increasing amounts just to keep their jobs.
"Every three months the commanders are pushed a little bit or they are told that they may be replaced. Then everybody rushes toward the ministry with $10,000."
But Bilal says he likes his job. It's not the responsibilities that he likes the most, though. It's the access to the drug trade. "It is a good position," he says. "I pay $1,000 and get $20,000 in profit."
"It has some advantages," he says.
At the Ministry of Interior, little effort – or ability – to end a corrosive trade
Top Afghan officials privately admit that perhaps 80 percent of the personnel at the Ministry of Interior, Afghanistan's chief law-enforcement agency – from local police chiefs up to the top bureaucrats – may be benefiting from the drug trade. At a press conference announcing his resignation last fall, Interior Minister Ali Jalali said that the ministry had a list of 100 top officials who were being watched for evidence of drug trafficking. The result is a government that is either incapable or unwilling to prevent a trade that is rapidly undermining the country's rule of law and the Afghan people's faith in their leadership.
"The wrong elements can be a sapling in our society, and if we act now, we can remove it with less damage," says Habibullah Qaderi, Afghan minister for counternarcotics, a government agency that is separate from the Ministry of Interior. "But if it becomes a tree, there will be more destruction when you remove it."
Already the corrupt sapling is becoming a tree, Mr. Qaderi says, adding that Afghanistan cannot afford to wait for the proof of guilt. "If we had removed these people one by one, the country would have been much much better." The Afghan people need to trust that their government is working in the national interest. "People have to be close with their government. The day there is a distance, that becomes very dangerous."
A note on how we reported this story
The Monitor used a reporting device in this story that it normally avoids: The key interviews, all taped, were with sources who did not realize they were speaking to the press. This presents a risk to fairness and privacy, in that the interviewees might speak more casually and loosely than they would if they knew they were speaking to a reporter. We decided to go forward for several reasons. The subjects in these interviews are all public officials, not private citizens, discussing what should be public business. The issue of drug trafficking, illegal in Afghanistan as nearly everywhere else, is critically important to the future of that country and others. We could find no other safe way to collect direct evidence of this official corruption. But because we could not directly confront these police chiefs without endangering the lives of reporters or interpreters, we decided to withhold their names.
– The editors

[BlueMystic]

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk

Afghanistan: Afghan Parliament Wants Opium Lobby Thrown Out
Daily Times (Pakistan)
Sun, 28 May 2006

KABUL: The upper house of Afghan parliament wants a London-based group pushing for the legalisation of Afghanistan's huge opium crop to leave the country, the counternarcotics ministry said Saturday.

A meeting of the upper house last week decided the Senlis Council "should stop their activities in Afghanistan and leave this country," the ministry said in a statement. The international think-tank has been pushing for Afghanistan to legalise its opium crop, which supplies up to 90 percent of the heroin used in Europe, saying crop eradication will never work. The group says opium production should be licenced and the crop used to make legal painkillers for developing countries, which it says have a growing demand for these drugs.

The upper house said the activities of the Senlis Council were against a ruling by religious leaders against drugs, as well as the constitution, which also prohibits their production and use.

The government and the United Nations, a key partner in Afghanistan's efforts to cut its opium production, have long rejected the council's ideas as impractical. In "the current circumstances, there is no control mechanism and strong security in many areas of Afghanistan," the ministry's statement said. "If allowed, licencing poppy cultivation would have helped and supported the enemies of this country, particularly the drug traffickers."

Senlis Council country manager Guillaume Fournier said they had not been officially told to pack up and leave. The group's message, that crop eradication does not work, should be part of the political debate of a democratic Afghanistan, Fournier added. Afghanistan is trying to deal with its flourishing opium trade, which experts say is fuelling the Taliban-led insurgency, by destroying opium fields and encouraging farmers to grow other less lucrative crops. The United Nations and the Afghan government have estimated the total export value of Afghanistan's opium in 2005 at 2.7 billion dollars, equivalent to 52 percent of the country's official gross domestic product.

[BlueMystic]

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcont....17d74e41.html

In desperate times, daughter is currency

Afghan drug lord will take 13-year-old for bride as payment for farmer's debts

Tuesday, May 30, 2006
By RACHEL MORARJEE / Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News

DEH MAGAS, Afghanistan – A hailstorm wiped out his poppy crop, so Abdul Satar will have to hand over his 13-year-old daughter, Esther, to a 70-year-old drug lord to pay off the family's debt.

Officially, it's a marriage.

"We don't have any choice. If the money lender wants our land or daughters, we have to do whatever makes him happy," the aging farmer says, his eyes welling with tears as his daughter sits next to him in their mud-brick shack.

Esther quietly fingers the black scarf that covers her hair. Asked how she feels about her impending wedding to local drug baron Khan Mohammed, she looks down at her feet.
ASH SWEETING / Special Contributor
Abdul Satar lost his poppy harvest to a hailstorm. His daughter Esther (left) will be given as a second wife to a 70-year-old drug lord to pay debt accrued at a grocery shop the dealer runs in Deh Magas, in Badakhshan, Afghanistan.

"I don't want to marry him," she whispers.

Almost five years after a U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan led to the overthrow of the Taliban and the establishment of a democratically elected government, Esther's predicament underscores the persistence of a feudal economic system in parts of rural Afghanistan and the continuing low status of women and girls.

Parents traditionally arrange the marriages of their daughters, who often have little say in the matter.

Few fathers would want their daughters to become the second wife of an elderly drug dealer, but Abdul Satar says he has no choice. He is at the bottom of Afghanistan's economic ladder – an indebted poppy farmer in northeastern Badakhshan province, where the land is too poor to grow much else.

The drug lord in the poor village of Deh Magas demanded a daughter to settle the debt the family accumulated over the winter, buying dry goods from the shop the dealer runs.

When its harvest of poppies, which are used to make opium, was wiped out, the family had no other way to repay him.

"We would just buy tea, sugar and flour, small amounts. I'm sure we didn't spend $2,000, but he says we did and there is nothing we can do," says the girl's mother, Bibi Sahra.

She says the family struggles to feed its 10 children.

And there is nowhere to turn for help in the mountain villages of Badakhshan, where government authority is weak and the richest and most powerful men are the drug dealers.
War on drugs

President Hamid Karzai declared a war on drugs when he was elected in 2004, but the central government has little reach outside Kabul.
ASH SWEETING / Special Contributor
Abdul Satar and wife Bibi Sahra have another daughter to give to the drug lord besides Esther, but Chai-Esther, an outspoken 14-year-old, threatened to report her family for human rights violations if forced to marry.

In fact, almost half of the local police in the remote northeastern province are profiting from the drug trade, despite a government drive to wipe out poppy crops, local officials said.

U.S.-backed eradication teams journeyed to Badakhshan last year to cut down poppy fields in an effort that Western governments have proclaimed a success.

The number of hectares of poppies under cultivation across Afghanistan fell by 20 percent in 2005, according to the U.N. Office of Drugs and Crime. A hectare is about 2 ½ acres.

In Badakhshan, the number of poppy fields fell by 53 percent last year, but farmers say the poorest families suffered as a result.

And since last year, there has been a surge in reports of child marriage to pay off debts, although precise numbers are not available.

"Ten years ago, before people started growing opium, you saw people selling their daughters, selling their children, and now it's happening again. People are desperate and are looking for husbands for girls as young as 8 to make ends meet," said Fazel Rahman, a trader in the Argu bazaar, a market near Deh Magas where opium and heroin are traded.

In rural Afghanistan, opium functions as a form of credit, with drug dealers advancing small farmers money to be paid back in raw opium at harvest time.

If the harvest fails or is eradicated, the loan sharks move in.
Few choices

"Usually when people borrow from money lenders, they have to sell their land, cows and sheep, and if they don't have those things, then they have to give up their daughters," says Abdul Hadi Karimi, director of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission.

"Even if the father is not happy, his hand is forced.

By law, the age of consent is 17 for girls, he says, but indebted farmers have few choices: "Across Badakhshan, where the government has promised compensation, they have not done anything to help poor farmers."

Despite the advent of democracy in Afghanistan, women are still widely viewed as the property of their families.

"When the dealer asked for a daughter to marry to pay off the debt, I didn't think to ask my family. I just said yes," Abdul Satar says, adding that when he went home and broke the news, his oldest daughter became hysterical and threatened suicide.

"It's not like the old days when you could just lead the girls by the nose like cattle into marriage. Now they have heard all about human rights on the radio," he adds.

Esther's older sister, Chai-Esther, 14, threatened to walk for 24 hours over the mountains to the office of the human rights commission in the provincial capital of Faizabad to report her family if she was forced into marriage.

Her mother said the family sent Chai-Esther to stay with relatives in another village to calm her down.

"My daughter has been to school for years. She can read, and she won't accept the marriage quietly," the mother explains.

Now the old man has a problem. Neither of the girls wants to marry the drug dealer.

"I love my sister. She spent all day crying, and I was crying, too," Esther says. "I'm still telling my father that if he gives either of us to that man, we will kill ourselves."

But the drug dealer won't take no for an answer. Khan Mohammed has told the father that he wants a bride soon, regardless of whether she is willing.

"The money lender said: 'I don't care how many times a day she is crying. I want you to marry her to me,' " Abdul Satar says, looking around the muddy shack at the other hungry children he has to feed. "But if she is not happy, how can I force her?"

Rachel Morarjee is a freelance writer based in Kabul.

[Abrad]

Ashley Bommer International Herald Tribune

Published: June 20, 2006
HERAT, Afghanistan In the growing confrontation between the United States and Iran, there is one area which has been overlooked and could provide an area of mutual cooperation: the fight against drugs.

The Afghanistan-Iranian border has become the narco- gateway to much of the world. It is an open door to up to 90 percent of the world's $65-billion opium trade. That is at once a threat to the West, and, until now, an unseized opportunity for real dialogue with Tehran.

Approximately 4,100 metric tons of poppy grown in Afghanistan is refined in factories throughout the country that turn the raw gum into heroin, morphine and opium. Then it is driven across the Iranian border and smuggled to South Asia, Central Asia, Europe and North America.

The United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime (UNODC) lists Iran as the world's fastest growing opium addiction state. With 4 million regular users, its society is being crippled. In an interview in The Washington Post last September, the director of the Iranian National Center for Addiction Studies said that 20 percent of the adult population is "somehow involved in drug abuse."

Iran has spent more than $900 million building trenches, drug posts and watch towers on its side of the Afghan border. But not much has been done on the Afghan side.

According to Major Michael Adelberg of the U.S. Army, from the Office of Security Cooperation-Afghanistan, the only physical barriers on the border are 69 mud huts!

Drug smugglers and the Taliban are taking advantage of this nonexistent security. UNODC estimates that gross annual profits to Afghan traffickers now range up to $2.14 billion.

The security forces responsible are the Afghan National Police. Stationed in those mud huts without boots and uniforms, many have not been paid since last summer. Seventy percent are illiterate. With just five weeks of training by U.S. advisors, they are incapable of ground-air coordination. They are, an American adviser told me, "just out there eating rice."

More disturbing, their commanders appear to be involved in the drug trade. Last week, President Hamid Karzai promoted 85 men to the rank of one- and two-star police generals. These positions include provincial police chiefs who are the most powerful government officials in the provinces.

According to an American official in Kabul, at least 13 of these have poor human rights and criminal records. Yet all have been asked to head the police in drug-producing or drug-trading areas.

Many of the border towns are off-limits. In Nimroz, which members of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Forces call "Mars" (no one goes there, and those who do are shot), cultivation of poppies increased last year more than a thousand-fold. In the neighboring province of Farah, it has increased by almost 350 percent.

The opium produced and transformed into morphine and heroin in western Afghanistan leaves the country via Iran. Because prices are high along the western border, northern Afghan opium is being routed towards markets in the southern Helmand province and elsewhere along the Iranian border for export.

Helmand province has the highest levels of opium poppy cultivation in all of Afghanistan. It is also the most significant province in terms of heroin processing and trafficking.

Without improved security, the drug problem will continue to escalate. Thus the incentives offered to Tehran to halt its nuclear program should include an aggressive antinarcotics campaign along the Iranian-Afghan border - new border posts, fences, watchtowers and trenches.

In addition, the United States must adequately train the Afghan National Police and provide support for it with ISAF or coalition troops; it must provide equipment for the border posts, including vehicles; it must not allow the police to be led by thugs.

The West and Iran do have a common interest, to eradicate the drug trade along the Afghan-Iranian border.

Ashley Bommer is chief of staff to Richard Holbrooke, vice chairman of Perseus LLC and a former U.S. chief representative at the United Nations.

HERAT, Afghanistan In the growing confrontation between the United States and Iran, there is one area which has been overlooked and could provide an area of mutual cooperation: the fight against drugs.

The Afghanistan-Iranian border has become the narco- gateway to much of the world. It is an open door to up to 90 percent of the world's $65-billion opium trade. That is at once a threat to the West, and, until now, an unseized opportunity for real dialogue with Tehran.

Approximately 4,100 metric tons of poppy grown in Afghanistan is refined in factories throughout the country that turn the raw gum into heroin, morphine and opium. Then it is driven across the Iranian border and smuggled to South Asia, Central Asia, Europe and North America.

The United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime (UNODC) lists Iran as the world's fastest growing opium addiction state. With 4 million regular users, its society is being crippled. In an interview in The Washington Post last September, the director of the Iranian National Center for Addiction Studies said that 20 percent of the adult population is "somehow involved in drug abuse."

Iran has spent more than $900 million building trenches, drug posts and watch towers on its side of the Afghan border. But not much has been done on the Afghan side.

According to Major Michael Adelberg of the U.S. Army, from the Office of Security Cooperation-Afghanistan, the only physical barriers on the border are 69 mud huts!

Drug smugglers and the Taliban are taking advantage of this nonexistent security. UNODC estimates that gross annual profits to Afghan traffickers now range up to $2.14 billion.

The security forces responsible are the Afghan National Police. Stationed in those mud huts without boots and uniforms, many have not been paid since last summer. Seventy percent are illiterate. With just five weeks of training by U.S. advisors, they are incapable of ground-air coordination. They are, an American adviser told me, "just out there eating rice."

More disturbing, their commanders appear to be involved in the drug trade. Last week, President Hamid Karzai promoted 85 men to the rank of one- and two-star police generals. These positions include provincial police chiefs who are the most powerful government officials in the provinces.

According to an American official in Kabul, at least 13 of these have poor human rights and criminal records. Yet all have been asked to head the police in drug-producing or drug-trading areas.

Many of the border towns are off-limits. In Nimroz, which members of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Forces call "Mars" (no one goes there, and those who do are shot), cultivation of poppies increased last year more than a thousand-fold. In the neighboring province of Farah, it has increased by almost 350 percent.

The opium produced and transformed into morphine and heroin in western Afghanistan leaves the country via Iran. Because prices are high along the western border, northern Afghan opium is being routed towards markets in the southern Helmand province and elsewhere along the Iranian border for export.

Helmand province has the highest levels of opium poppy cultivation in all of Afghanistan. It is also the most significant province in terms of heroin processing and trafficking.

Without improved security, the drug problem will continue to escalate. Thus the incentives offered to Tehran to halt its nuclear program should include an aggressive antinarcotics campaign along the Iranian-Afghan border - new border posts, fences, watchtowers and trenches.

In addition, the United States must adequately train the Afghan National Police and provide support for it with ISAF or coalition troops; it must provide equipment for the border posts, including vehicles; it must not allow the police to be led by thugs.

The West and Iran do have a common interest, to eradicate the drug trade along the Afghan-Iranian border.

Reputation Comments on this post:

good

[stoneinfocus]

Yes, it´s digsauting around here, all tbe hill are ful of drug plant cultivated and then market with sluggish or non-existing restrictions, even to the youngest and even in a family-emviroment.

I hate those primitves, but then again, who would throw a bomb on those
wine-hills and imprison and detroxify all the dealers and their victims?

we need to fight them together, ´cause that´s what I´ve hear din the chiruch and the TV and I´ve got too much time at the moent andÌ´m bored,. so I coulnd´t stand someone felling better than me who´s taking some risks and researchign about drugs.

[sadskills1987]

why don't we just call it ameristan?

[Alfa]

Originally Posted by sadskills1987

why don't we just call it ameristan?

Take a look at the current US bases in Pakistan and Afghanistan and note how 2/3 of IRAN is surrounded by US-Allied military: MIDEAST DEPLOYMENT MAP LINK


After the US is finished with that they can just use one name for the new country ranging from Iraq to Iran to Afghanistan. Any suggestions for a name? Texaco? Halliburton incorporate area?
No wonder they are in need of nuclear weapons over there. They must be working day and night to get them nukes ready in time.
I wonder; is the flood of opium part of war tactics to weaken Iran? If it is, then it is working very well.

[Nagognog2]

Unfortunately, co-incidence is serious about wishing to get rid of pot and pot-smokers. At least according to a lengthy post made down the hall. He extolls the virtues of using amphetamines daily, but wants to rid the world of cannabis and it's proponents. Rather odd.

[Bajeda]

BACK AFGHAN OPIUM LEGALISATION, TORIES URGE CAMERON

Senior Conservative MPs are urging David Cameron to push for the licensing of legal opium farming in Afghanistan as he pays a surprise visit to the country today, Guardian Unlimited has learned.

Opposition whip Tobias Ellwood said that the lives of British troops in the south of the country were being endangered because of the coalition's insistence on eradicating opium crops, which are often the sole means of livelihood for impoverished families in the region.

Six British soldiers have died in Helmand province over the past six weeks, most in the former opium market town of Sangin where they are fighting a fierce insurgency of Taliban warlords who have gained the support of local farmers.

"The poppy crops are the elephant in the room of the Afghan problem. We're in complete denial of the power that the crops have on the nation as a whole, and the tactics of eradication are simply not working," Mr Ellwood told Guardian Unlimited.

"Last year we spent 600m on eradication and all that resulted was the biggest-ever export of opium from the country."

He said that opium farming should be licensed so that the harvest could be sold legally on the open market, bringing in income for Afghan farmers and helping to plug a global shortage of opiate-based medicines.

The plan would also limit the supply of opium to the black market, where it finds its way into Britain as heroin, he said.

Mr Ellwood said the plan had the support of several Conservative MPs and senior military figures in Afghanistan. He will meet international development secretary Hilary Benn to discuss the issue later this week.

Last week Lieutenant General David Richards, the head of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, said that eradicating poppies would have to take a back seat to development work and infrastructure improvements in Helmand province, where Nato forces are taking charge of security from the American military.

Conservative leader David Cameron is paying a surprise visit to troops in the south of Afghanistan today. He arrived in the southern capital of Kandahar early this morning promising that he would be "listening, learning and showing our support for what is being done".

Mr Cameron has previously supported more liberal drugs policies, calling for heroin addicts to be prescribed diamorphine - the medical name for the drug - to "stabilise" them and wean them off their addictions.

Last October the Conservative leader called for media restraint after revelations that he had been intimately involved in attempts to get a close relative off their heroin addiction.

One NGO worker who has travelled extensively in Helmand province on drugs issues said that poor families were being driven into the arms of the Taliban because of the failure of reconstruction efforts in the south of the country.

"The better-off farmers pay local commanders bribes so they don't have to eradicate, but the others have their main source of income cut off," said the worker, who did not wish to be named because of the danger of being identified in southern Afghanistan.

"Then the Taliban come to their villages and say, 'We will pay your son to work for us and give him weapons and food'.

"If you look at the timing of the eradication programmes and the flare-ups of the violence, often it happens in the same week."

The worker said that on recent visits to Helmand's capital Lashkar Gar there had been Taliban members walking down the streets carrying weapons in broad daylight, and locals said that Arab fighters - possibly connected to al-Qaida - had been spotted less than nine miles south of the town.

"We're pouring gas on the flames of the violence with this eradication campaign. By alienating the locals we're playing into a sophisticated political plan on the part of al-Qaida and the Taliban to destabilise southern Afghanistan. The political naivety of the international community in doing this is mind-boggling," the worker said.

Jorrit Kamminga, the head of policy research at the drug policy think-tank the Senlis Council, said that a similar programme to license opium had wiped out the illegal drug market in Turkey in the early 1970s, despite fierce opposition from the US Drug Enforcement Administration.

"In the 1960s and early 1970s Turkey was producing most of the world's heroin, but eradication efforts failed and the government came up with the idea of licensing. Turkey is now the main supplier of legal opiates to the US," he said.

The world market in opiates is regulated by the International Narcotics Control Board, a UN-backed organisation that sets quotas for the quantity of opium that can be legally grown and issues licences to certain countries where it is manufactured.

Mr Kamminga said the system failed to account for a global shortage of painkilling drugs that had been acknowledged by the World Health Organisation.

"Seven developed countries use 80% of the world's morphine, and developing countries with growing numbers of Aids and cancer cases simply don't have access to these medicines. Even developed countries such as Italy have shortages. We could use Afghan morphine for those countries that desperately need it," he said.

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/forei...827679,00.html

[Lunar Loops]

Hmmm, a poppy free country eh? How exactly do they hope to achieve that?

This from Reuters.com :
Troops clash with drug smugglers in Pakistan

Thu Jul 27, 2006 5:00 PM BST

QUETTA, Pakistan (Reuters) - Five Pakistani paramilitary troops and six drug smugglers were killed in a clash on Thursday in the southwestern town of Chaghi, bordering Afghanistan, officials said.
The gunfight broke out when security forces intercepted a gang of drug traffickers 300 km (185 miles) west of Quetta, capital of southwestern Baluchistan province.
"It was a heavy fighting that lasted for more than two hours. Our five soldiers were martyred and six smugglers were killed," a military official, who asked not to be identified, told Reuters.
Earlier in the day, paramilitary troops seized more than 1,000 kg (2,200 lb) of hashish and 96 kg (210 lb) of morphine in two raids in Zhob and Dalbandin towns.


Most of the world's opium is produced in Afghanistan, where Taliban fighters have allied with drug runners to fight Afghan and Western forces trying to extend the Kabul government's authority into the lawless south.
Pakistani officials say about 70 percent of Afghanistan's drugs are smuggled through Pakistan and Iran, while the rest goes north through Central Asia.
Pakistan itself is trying achieve status of a poppy-free country by the end of the year.

[Lunar Loops]

There's none so blind.....this from the Guardian in the UK:

US defends opium policy despite Afghanistan violence

David Fickling
Tuesday August 8, 2006
Guardian Unlimited


A British patrol passes opium poppies in southern Afghanistan's violent Helmand province. Photo: John Moore/Getty



America's drug tsar, John Walters, today acknowledged that US allies have voiced doubts about the wisdom of opium eradication in parts of southern Afghanistan where insurgents have killed 10 British troops over the past two months.
Speaking during a visit to London for talks with British officials, Mr Walters recognised that the situation in Helmand province had been "difficult".
In recent months, officials within the British government and military have privately expressed growing disquiet about the role of opium eradication in fuelling the Afghan insurgency.
Unrest in Helmand, where 4,800 British troops are stationed under the command of the International Security Assistance Force (Isaf), has claimed the lives of 10 British soldiers since the start of June. Before then, only two British soldiers had been killed in the whole country since October 2001.
The British army chief, General Sir Mike Jackson, has said eradication would be "counterproductive" unless done when all other conditions were right and the Conservative whip, Tobias Ellwood, last month called for the opium crop to be legalised.
But Mr Walters today said that eradicating the opium crop was the only way for Afghanistan to achieve lasting peace.
"Sometimes we talk as if security and drugs control are at odds, but the places where we have the best security are the places where we have some of the best drugs control," he said. "[Afghan farmers] know that their future and that of Afghanistan depends on rule of law, not being ruled by drug mafias."
Local officials say that the eradication programme is corrupting local government and driving support for the insurgency, as richer farmers pay bribes to protect their opium crops and poor farmers who can't afford bribes are forced into the pay of the Taliban.
Emmanuel Reinart, the director of the Senlis Council, a pro-licensing thinktank, said that the eradication policy was destroying trust between Afghan farmers and central government.
"Directly attacking the livelihood of farmers like this has very counterproductive side effects. Locals see these eradication programmes are conducted by foreigners and they often assume that they're being organised by Nato troops, which makes it harder for those troops to gain local trust," he said.
But Mr Walters dismissed the group's proposals to license opium production as "a sideshow" and said there was no market for the legal opium that licensing would produce.
"[Farmers] understand that the Taliban and the drug barons are on one side and [the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai] and the international community are on the other side, and we are trying to allow them to make the choice between those sides in a way that works," he said.
The total number of hectares under opium poppy cultivation dropped 48% in Afghanistan during 2005, although a more recent study by the UN office of drugs control found that production only sank 2.4% as individual farms became increasingly productive.
Around 90% of the UK's illegal heroin originates in Afghanistan and, despite around £36m being spent annually on opium eradication by the US and Britain, officials expect the opium crop to increase this year.
Mr Walters said there was a perception that the US was pursuing crop eradication before any attempts had been made to provide farmers with alternative means of income. But he insisted that many areas of the country had shown considerable progress in wiping out the trade.
"To say that we are losing ground or [eradication is] not making progress requires you to look at this in a very, very distorted way," he said. Afghanistan's counter-narcotics minister, Habibullah Qaderi, will visit London tomorrow to discuss the role of US drug policy in his country at a conference that will also be attended by Mr Walters.