Pubdate: Sun, 13 Mar 2005
Source: Christian Science Monitor (US)
Copyright: 2005 The Christian Science Publishing Society
Contact:  http://www.csmonitor.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/83
Author:  Scott Baldauf and Faye Bowers
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/heroin.htm (Heroin)

AFGHANISTAN RIDDLED WITH DRUG TIES

The Involvement Of Local As Well As High-Level Government Officials In The 
Opium Trade Is Frustrating Efforts To Eradicate Poppy Fields

KABUL, AFGHANISTAN; AND WASHINGTON - The case of an Afghan village police 
chief, named Inayatullah, is a small example of a much larger problem. Is 
Commander Inayatullah a courageous law-and-order crusader responsible for 
smashing the drug mafia in his hamlet?

Or, is he an opium smuggler?

Or, as his bosses say, is he both?

It's a question that hangs over more and more public officials here. The 
post-Taliban boom in opium production means that drug money now permeates 
every stratum of Afghanistan's society - from the farmers cultivating 
poppies in the east to those in the highest levels of the central 
government of Kabul, according to senior Afghan and European officials 
working here. "We are already a narco-state," says Mohammad Nader Nadery at 
the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, which has studied the 
growing impunity of former military commanders and drug dealers who now 
work within the Afghan government. "If the governors in many parts of the 
country are involved in the drug trade, if a minister is directly or 
indirectly getting benefits from drug trade, and if a chief of police gets 
money from drug traffickers, then how else do you define a narco-state?"

Abdul Karim Brahowie, Afghanistan's minister of tribal and frontier 
affairs, says that the government has become so full of drug smugglers that 
cabinet meetings have become a farce. "Sometimes the people who complain 
the loudest about theft are thieves themselves," he says.

In the past two years, the UN reports that poppy cultivation increased by 
two-thirds in 2004 to 51.7 million acres.

The US estimate was even higher - at 87.5 million acres.

Afghanistan now produces 90 percent of the world's opium - most of it ends 
up on the streets of Europe and Russia as heroin.

European officials warn that this fledgling democracy is being undermined 
as Afghan officials make decisions based on what's good for the drug trade, 
rather than the electorate.

"There is a danger that all the stabilization and reconstruction efforts 
will be neutralized unless the narcotrafficking problem is addressed," says 
Ursula Muller, political counselor at the German Embassy in Washington. "We 
have to fight this corruption ... those guys involved in the drug business 
[who] are in all levels of Afghanistan's government," adds Ms. Muller, who 
has been actively involved in rebuilding Afghanistan since the US toppled 
the Taliban in late 2001. The Afghan government of US-backed President 
Hamid Karzai has made countering the narcotics trade - over fighting 
terrorism - its central aim. And the international community, with Britain 
taking the lead, is planted firmly behind him. Germany, for example, is 
training local Afghan police, and the US has budgeted $780 million this 
year to support the antinarcotics battle. But the opium trade is deeply 
rooted in Afghan society.

Many regional warlords and opponents of the Taliban are now top officials 
in the Karzai government. One of the most complicated - and delicate - 
tasks is to get corrupt officials to turn away from the drug trade as a 
source of personal income. Muller says it can be done. She tells of a 
former Afghan provincial official who was nominated to become a deputy 
minister in Kabul. "We had doubts, and the [Bush] administration had doubts 
about him," Muller says. "It was an open secret that he was heavily 
involved in the drugs business." But, she says, he has turned his back on 
his former trade and has become a responsible government official leading 
efforts to staunch the illicit drug business. The effort in working with 
local governors has been mixed, though, according to Steve Atkins, a 
spokesman for the British Embassy in Washington. Britain provided funding 
and advice to Afghans on an eradication program in 2004. Governors who 
participated claimed they eradicated 37,000 acres, but a verification team 
found that only 13,000 acres had actually been eradicated. "We have always 
been clear of the limitations of the governor-led eradication, given that 
many governors are themselves implicated in the trade," says Mr. Atkins. 
The problem, as illustrated by Commander Inayatullah's case, starts at the 
lowest levels of government. Three months ago, the Afghan police chief made 
his biggest drug bust yet. In a village in the northeastern province of 
Badakhshan, the commander arrested a suspected smuggler named Safiullah, 
and at the time confiscated 80 kilos of opium.

But Inayatullah later refused to hand over the opium to the provincial 
police as evidence, say police officials.

He was fired. The provincial police officials also say that Inayatullah may 
have arrested Safiullah only to get rid of competition from a fellow opium 
trader. But Inayatullah steadfastly maintains his innocence. "I cannot see 
the minister of interior directly to ask him what the evidence is against 
me," says Inayatullah, who is in Kabul awaiting reassignment in another 
district. "I'm the only police commander who has arrested smugglers in 
Badakhshan. Why am I accused of smuggling?"

Afghan officials interviewed say that Inayatullah's case isn't an isolated 
one. They say that the people facilitating the drug trade are often the 
very people who have been assigned to stop it - the police.

But these police would not be able to act alone, they say, without the 
knowledge or consent of their superiors, including governors, provincial 
police chiefs, and even deputy ministers. "Whatever number of police cars 
there are in Kabul, I can tell you that more than 50 percent of them are 
carrying drugs inside from one place to another," says a senior police 
commander in Kabul, requesting anonymity for his own safety. "The problem 
is that Afghanistan is training police to stop drug smugglers, and when 
they go out into the field, their police commander tells them how to 
protect the drug smugglers."

Those who confront the drug lords often find themselves in danger.

Syed Ikramuddin, former governor of the northern province of Badakhshan, 
was nearly assassinated by a roadside bomb last October, as was vice 
presidential candidate Ahmed Zia Massoud in Faizabad. Mr. Ikramuddin 
survived, but the person sitting next to him was killed and two others were 
injured.

"Except for the minister of the interior himself, Mr. Ali Jalali, all the 
lower people from the heads of department down are involved in supporting 
drug smuggling," says Ikramuddin, who now serves as Afghanistan's minister 
of labor. Ikramuddin says that many of these policemen and commanders are 
former warlords who have disarmed and reintegrated into government jobs, 
and are now using their position to facilitate the drug trade and get rich. 
Among those corrupt commanders, he says, is Inayatullah, the police chief 
from Yawan, a district in the former governor's province. "Commander 
Inayatullah is a smuggler, I know him well," Ikramuddin says. "There is a 
competition among smugglers, that is why Inayatullah arrested Safiullah and 
the others.

It's not to do his job honestly, but just to weaken a competitor." The 
police chief who replaced Inayatullah is involved in the drug trade, 
according to several interior ministry officials.

Kabul officials have ordered that he be removed from the position but say 
he is being protected by provincial police authorities. One senior Interior 
Ministry official says that the new chief paid a $60,000 bribe to get the job.

Despite corruption in the police ranks, many Afghan politicians say that 
Afghanistan's drug problem can be solved. "People inside the mafia should 
be introduced to the power of law," says Yunous Qanooni, a former 
presidential candidate in last year's elections and a top leader in the 
northern-based mujahideen party, Shura-e Nazar. "I'm sure that this will 
solve 70 percent of the problem, and the remaining 30 percent will be 
solved easily, step by step." Minister of Labor Ikramuddin agrees that 
Afghanistan's drug problem is solvable, both with outside help and a little 
more political will from within. "If the world could not tolerate 
Afghanistan as the center of terrorism, then the world is not going to 
tolerate Afghanistan as the world's biggest producer of drugs. If we have 
good and honest people in this government, then gradually this problem can 
be solved.

The carpet of the smugglers will be rolled up forever." But Commander 
Inayatullah, the former police chief of Yawan, warns: "If we don't solve 
the problem now, there will be a day when all decisions will be made by 
smugglers."
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MAP posted-by: Elizabeth Wehrman