Pubdate: Fri, 09 Jan 2004
Source: Financial Times (UK)
Copyright: The Financial Times Limited 2004
Contact:  http://www.ft.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/154
Author: Victoria Burnett, in Kabul
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/heroin.htm (Heroin)

UK TRAINS AFGHANS IN ANTI-DRUGS DRIVE

British special forces are secretly training an elite team of Afghan 
commandos, whose mission is to destroy big heroin laboratories and 
confiscate drug caches and shipments, Afghan and western officials in Kabul 
told the Financial Times.

The covert programme, called Operation Headstrong, gives a hard nose to UK 
anti-narcotics efforts in Afghanistan, which is the world's largest 
producer of opium and accounts for about 90 per cent of the heroin consumed 
in the UK.

It constitutes the most aggressive component of anti-drug strategy in the 
country, where the government and its international allies have struggled 
to formulate a coherent policy for tackling the problem.

The officials, who have close knowledge of anti-narcotics policy, said a US 
air strike on a heroin lab in the northern province of Badakhshan on 
January 2 was part of a raid by the elite force, operating with the 
guidance of British agents. It was the first significant deployment of the 
force, which numbers around 100, they said.

A team of Afghan commandos raided the lab about 10 miles north of the 
provincial capital of Faisabad, and arrested several people working there. 
An A-10 aircraft that was providing air support for the operation then 
destroyed the lab.

A senior British official in Kabul said the UK had "a number of projects in 
interdiction" and was "keen to increase the risks of heroin production and 
processing", but refused to be drawn on whether British agents were 
involved either in training a covert interdiction force or in what he said 
was "an Afghan military operation" on January 2.

Lt Col Matthew Beevers, a coalition spokesman, said 1.5 tons of opium were 
seized and several people arrested. He said the raid was carried out by 
Afghan and coalition special operations forces but declined to comment on 
whether British agents were involved.

The UK government is divided over how to curb production and stop 
trafficking in a country whose rural economy is in tatters and whose local 
law enforcement capacity is negligible. The UK has a UKP70m, three-year 
strategy to beef up Afghan law enforcement and judicial capacity and 
develop economic alternatives for poppy farmers.

Officials in Kabul familiary with UK drug policy say Downing Street is keen 
to pursue eradication and interdiction, but the international development 
agency, DFID, is wary of eradicating poppy fields without first making sure 
farmers have an alternative source of income - a policy some Afghan and 
other western officials consider unrealistic.

A DFID memo to the Afghan government in December laid out a long and 
complicated list of criteria on which eradicators should establish a 
farmer's ability to support himself.

Afghan and foreign anti-narcotics officials were meeting this weekend to 
try and thrash out a concerted eradication strategy, said Mirwais Yasini, 
head of the government's counter-narcotics directorate.

With poppy planting underway in the south, the government will probably opt 
for using local eradication teams advised by UK and US officials, Mr Yasini 
said. It hopes a plan for a more robust, mobile teams protected by a 
military force from a third, Muslim, country, may fall into place in time 
to tackle eradication in the north, where spring arrives later.

In a sign of growing readiness to tackle the drugs problem, the Bush 
administration has earmarked $175m for Afghan law enforcement over the next 
two years, compared with $24.6m in 2003, plus an extra $50m next year for 
counter-narcotics, according to a US anti-drug official. The Pentagon plans 
to spend $59m in the year starting October 2003, compared with nothing last 
year.

But Afghan and western officials involved in drug policy say the coalition 
does not want to get involved in a messy anti-drug war or cause short-term 
instability by upsetting provincial warlords and powerful government 
officials who benefit from the industry.

"Primarily because of our capacity, given the mission we have right now 
which is to kill and capture terrorists and improve security, our ability 
to be actively involved is limited," General David Barno, head of the 
US-led coalition, said in an interview last month.

Some western organisations are disdainful of the argument used by some 
high-level American and British officials that the drug industry at least 
generates money in a destitute economy.

"Too damned bad if it's going to have a negative economic impact," said 
Adam Bouloukos of UNODC in Kabul. "Long term, this country cannot survive 
on an illegal economy."
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom