A while ago I commented on what should have been an election issue but was only briefly mentioned by Kerry during the debates- the burgeoning poppy (read heroin) trade in Afghanistan since the Americans "liberated" it fromTaliban control.
Below is an interesting article from the NY Times.
Afghan Poppy Growing Reaches Record Level, U.N. Says
November 19, 2004
By CARLOTTA GALL
KABUL, Afghanistan, Nov. 18 - Poppy cultivation in
Afghanistan, the source of most of the opium and heroin on
Europe's streets, was up sharply this year, reaching the
highest levels in the country's history and in the world,
the United Nations announced on Thursday.
"In Afghanistan, drugs are now a clear and present danger,"
said Antonio Maria Costa, director of the United Nations
Office of Drugs and Crime, on the release of the 2004
Afghanistan opium survey. "The fear that Afghanistan might
degenerate into a narco-state is becoming a reality."
Afghan officials and foreign diplomats called the sharp
rise in cultivation and production a major failure for
President Hamid Karzai and the international effort to
counter narcotics.
More than 321,236 acres of land were planted with poppy in
2004, a 64 percent increase over last year, the United
Nations survey found. Poppy has spread to every province in
the country, it said.
It was only by chance that drought and disease ravaged much
of the crop and prevented the harvest from exceeding the
all-time high, the report said. The harvest in 2004 was
estimated at 4,200 metric tons, an increase of 17 percent
from last year.
The scale of poppy cultivation is particularly alarming,
because of the growing stranglehold wealthy traffickers and
drug lords hold over farmers, and their influence over the
economy and government, Afghan officials and foreign
experts said.
The income from production and trafficking of opium in 2004
was estimated at $2.8 billion, equivalent to about 60
percent of the country's legal gross domestic product, or
more than a third of the total economy, the report said.
If the drug problem persists, "the political and military
successes of the last three years will be lost," Mr. Costa
said in a preface to the report. There are indications that
Al Qaeda and the Taliban are profiting from the Afghan
trade, the report said.
Gen. Muhammad Daoud, the recently appointed deputy interior
minister in charge of countering narcotics, noted that "87
percent of the world's opium is produced by Afghanistan."
He added, "Unfortunately that is a very negative point for
our country, and we will not gain any benefit from it,
except a few smugglers in our country and neighboring
countries."
Indeed, most of the profits go to a very few traffickers,
warlords and militia leaders, rather than the impoverished
farmers, who are often heavily in debt to the drug lords,
the United Nations report said.
There are signs, too, of a move toward a greater vertical
integration of the business and the growing involvement of
international organized crime, according to a recent report
by Barnett Rubin of the Center on International Cooperation
at New York University.
Law enforcement teams destroyed 78 drug-processing
laboratories this year, General Daoud said. The existence
of laboratories and seizures of more heroin than opium in
neighboring countries are signs that heroin processing is
increasing inside Afghanistan, the United Nations said.
The surge in cultivation, however, is a sign of the general
impunity with which farmers can grow and harvest poppy,
despite decrees outlawing it by Mr. Karzai, interim leader
of Afghanistan for the last three years, foreign officials
in Afghanistan say.
Until now, the Afghan government has not made the narcotics
problem a priority. But since his election to a five-year
term last month, Mr. Karzai has made more determined
statements about combating the trade. In his acceptance
speech, he vowed to make the fight against narcotics his
first priority.
His administration has included known drug lords, and many
of his provincial governors, police and army chiefs are
widely rumored to profit from the trade, diplomats and
Afghan officials acknowledge. Commanders of the powerful
Northern Alliance, which with American help overthrew the
Taliban in 2001, continue to profit from the trade in
northeastern Badakhshan Province.
The minister of tribal affairs, Muhammad Arif Nurzai, and
the governor of southern Helmand Province, Sher Muhammad
Akhund, both staunch Karzai allies, are widely believed to
profit from the drug trade, although both have denied any
involvement and voiced support for the government's
anti-narcotics stand.
Diplomats say there are even reports linking Mr. Karzai's
brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, an influential figure in the
southern city of Kandahar, to the trade. A senior
presidential adviser denied the reports, saying it is
propaganda aimed against the president as well as his
brother.
The government is finally trying to get the word out that
poppy cultivation is illegal and that farmers will be
penalized. The council of senior clerics recently issued a
religious edict forbidding poppy growing.
But international assistance has been inadequate and ill
focused, Mr. Rubin says. "U.S. cooperation with warlords
and militia leaders tied to trafficking has sent the wrong
signal about the U.S. commitment to combating narcotics,"
he said.
Britain, which has been leading the counternarcotics
program here, says the job is a long-term one, and includes
building up the justice system so traffickers can be
imprisoned and creating alternatives for farmers.
But critics call the effort small and ineffective, and the
British themselves are quick to recognize that their
program is underfinanced and have welcomed new American
involvement. The United States said Wednesday that it would
give $780 million to combat narcotics in Afghanistan this
year.
American plans, which focus on eradication, possibly with
the use of defoliants, also have their critics, including
Mr. Rubin, who argues that effort should concentrate on
intercepting the narcotics at the borders and catching the
big smugglers. Agriculturalists warn that defoliants could
damage Afghanistan's already precarious agriculture.
Gen. Muhammad Zaher Agbar, head of a new unit set up within
the Interior Ministry to eradicate poppy, said the
experience this summer showed that the task was not as
simple as cutting down poppy fields.
"It is not the ordinary people that are the problem," said
Col. Miakhel Muhammad Mangal, commander of the force's
Third Battalion, who found mines laid in the fields against
his unit. "It is the groups behind them, the mafia."
