Pubdate: Sun, 05 May 2002
Source: Scotland On Sunday (UK)
Copyright: 2002 The Scotsman Publications Ltd.
Contact:  http://www.scotlandonsunday.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/405
Author: Brian Brady, Westminster Editor
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/heroin.htm (Heroin)

SAS TROOPS GO TO WAR ON AFGHAN HEROIN

SAS troops in Afghanistan are waging a secret war against drug producers 
who make the heroin that eventually arrives on the streets of Britain.

Defence sources admitted that detachments of the SAS had been ordered to 
mount a series of 'search and destroy' missions against poppies in the 
ground and on stockpiles of heroin waiting to be smuggled into Europe.

The top-secret missions have been running side-by-side with Britain's 
continuing efforts to track down the remaining members of Osama bin-Laden's 
al-Qaeda still in Afghanistan following the collapse of the Taliban.

Details of the action against the opium harvest offer the first concrete 
evidence that Britain and the US are seriously pursuing a key 'war aim', 
declared before the military action against Afghanistan began.

Tony Blair was among world leaders who pledged to stamp out Afghanistan's 
opium trade, which accounted for 90% of the heroin traded on the streets of 
Europe.

But complaints that he had not met his promise escalated this year when UN 
experts warned that farmers were threatening to reclaim their position as 
the world's biggest producers of illicit heroin. The bumper crop waiting to 
be harvested was 14 times bigger than that grown in the country last year, 
when production was outlawed as 'un-Islamic' by the fundamentalist Taliban 
regime

Now it has emerged that Blair has ordered special forces to attack the 
opium network, which could produce up to 250 tonnes of pure heroin this 
year if left untouched.

It is believed that the incursions began early on in the war against the 
Taliban, before the government agreed the huge deployment of British troops 
to the region.

Britain is also bankrolling a scheme compensating Afghan farmers for 
destroying their opium crops - with payments of UKP 870 for each hectare 
they put beyond use.

Hamid Karzai, chairman of the country's interim government, warned that 
forces from the interior ministry and provincial and local authorities 
would "carry out enforcement" against those who refused to participate.

His officials have since mounted a concerted operation to eradicate poppy 
cultivation and opium trading, in a bid to speed up the arrival of almost 
UKP 500m in international aid promised to the war-torn country earlier this 
year.
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