Pubdate: Fri, 15 Sep 2006
Source: Daily Telegraph (UK)
Copyright: 2006 Telegraph Group Limited
Contact:  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/114
Author: Damien McElroy and Tom Coghlan, in Kabul

AFGHAN FIGHTING BLAMED FOR OPIUM BONANZA

The Government was accused of self-delusion last night over the 
Army's mission in Afghanistan after a Foreign Office minister 
admitted that the campaign against the Taliban was responsible for a 
bumper opium crop.

Kim Howells said instability in Helmand province, where 4,500 British 
troops are trying to eliminate Taliban forces, had hindered efforts 
to purge poppy fields.

An emboldened coalition of "drug-runners" and "gangsters" was 
thriving as programmes to discourage cultivation ground to a halt. He 
said: "The operation to establish stability has set us back a good 
deal and it's going to be hard work to establish the stability the 
Afghans need.

"That's why the reserve force that Nato has requested to provide the 
flexibility to cope and stabilise the province is so important.

"I am very disappointed in the latest [opium] figures. Clearly, we 
face a very difficult task to ensure this year that the crop next 
year is not the same or even bigger."

Nato forces were deployed in Afghanistan's southern provinces in the 
summer to back up Afghan police and army units that Kabul charged 
with eradicating opium crops.

But attempts to establish an official presence in areas beyond state 
control since the fall of the Taliban fell victim to counter-attacks 
by re-energised Taliban units. Mr Howells has a reputation for 
speaking frankly about the consequences of Government policy but his 
latest remarks will cast a further cloud on an operation which has 
cost the lives of 26 British troops.

Nato forces in Helmand and other southern provinces replaced American 
units which had focused on hunting down Taliban and al-Qa'eda leaders.

With a mandate to bring schools, police posts and medical clinics to 
the villages of southern Afghanistan, Nato quickly fell foul of local 
rumours that foreign forces were out to destroy the poppy crop. To 
farmers with no other means of gaining cash, such claims became a 
rallying cry for the insurgency.

Liam Fox, the Conservative defence spokesman, said the Government 
should abandon any pretence of prosecuting a counter-narcotics policy 
in Afghanistan.

"This Government was living in cloud cuckoo land on this," he said. 
"To tell Parliament and the Labour Party that this deployment was 
part of the war on drugs was self-delusion.

"This is the Government belatedly catching up with reality. It was 
not going to happen. The military didn't believe it.

"Stability and military victory should come first to extend the writ 
of the Afghan, so that it can run its own counter-narcotics policy."

When John Reid, as Defence Secretary, announced the commitment to 
Helmand, he declared a hope that they would return "without a shot 
being fired."

The phrase has come to symbolise the Government's failure to 
appreciate the extent of the threat.

A United Nations survey this week reported that the planted area of 
the Afghan opium crop rose by 59 per cent this year.

Helmand was a particular blackspot with a tripling of planting. The 
drug lords' revenue from opium sales is expected to exceed $3 billion 
(UKP 1.7 billion) this year.

The record Afghan harvest means that the supply of heroin will exceed 
last year's global demand for the drug by 30 per cent, which is 
likely to lead to narcotics of very high purity flooding Europe.
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MAP posted-by: Elaine