Pubdate: Tue, 14 Mar 2006
Source: Ledger-Enquirer (GA)
Copyright: 2006 Ledger-Enquirer
Contact:  http://www.ledger-enquirer.com/mld/enquirer/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/237
Author: Daniel Cooney, Associated Press

AFGHANS TO DRUG LORDS: KEEP PROFITS HOME

LASHKARGAH, Afghanistan - Afghanistan will encourage its powerful drug
lords to invest their illegally earned profits in the war-shattered
country, according to the governor of the nation's top opium-growing
region.

The offer comes amid warnings of another bumper poppy crop that will
fuel a booming narcotics trade, which already accounts for 35 percent
of the impoverished country's income.

"We as a government will provide them the opportunity to use their
money for the national benefit," Helmand Gov. Mohammed Daud said
during a trip to the region this week by U.S. Ambassador Ronald Neumann.

"They must invest in industries. They must invest in construction
companies," he said.

But he said that so far the government has had no success in
attracting the drug traffickers to open new businesses and that most
of the money is being sent overseas.

The drug trade employs about one in 10 Afghans and brought in $2.8
billion last year, Afghan and U.S. officials say. The vast majority of
that goes to traffickers and only a small fraction to farmers.

About 345,000 acres of poppies are believed to have been planted this
year - an increase of up to 40 percent from 2005. The opium is refined
into heroin before being smuggled out of the country to meet 90
percent of the world's supply.

A U.S. diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the
sensitivity of the matter, said the drug trade was so entrenched that
it was difficult to confront the narco bosses head on.

He said the government could grant them an "informal amnesty" if they
end their involvement in drugs, swear allegiance to President Hamid
Karzai's government, invest their money at home and pay taxes.

The diplomat said one or two major traffickers have approached the
government for talks, but no deals have been reached. Most of their
money is stashed in banks in the United Arab Emirates, he said.

Asked about the offer in an interview Monday at the main U.S.-led
coalition base in Helmand, Ambassador Neumann compared it to a broad
national reconciliation program with Taliban militants and others that
aims to bring peace after a quarter century of war.

"It's part of a larger problem, you have militia commanders, you have
drug lords, you have all kinds of people that at the end of the day,
some of them need to be arrested and put in prison, but basically
Afghanistan has to come back together," he said.

But Neumann said he was unaware of a formal program specifically
targeting drug traffickers to get them to invest in
Afghanistan.

"There is a lot of effort to get Afghans as a whole to invest ...
(but) I don't know of any easy way that we are going to distinguish
where the money comes from," he said.

Afghanistan would not be the first nation with a vast drug industry to
let barons launder their ill-gotten money.

The U.S. government has accused military-run Myanmar - once the
world's top producer of opium and still treated as a pariah for its
poor rights record - of allowing drug kingpins and ethnic armies that
reached cease-fires with the government to invest in commercial banks
and other businesses.

Afghanistan's drug traffickers have acted with virtual impunity since
U.S.-led forces in 2001 ousted the Taliban, which in its last two
years in power enforced a virtual ban on opium cultivation.

The new judiciary system is weak and has never prosecuted senior
traffickers. Afghan and Western officials say the police force is
corrupt with officers suspected of involvement in the narcotics trade.

The government's approach until now in dealing with drugs has been to
eradicate poppy fields forcibly as part of a U.S. and British-backed
program, while also providing farmers with the means to grow legal
crops.

Although last year saw a notable decline in opium cultivation, only a
tiny percentage of the opium fields that were planted were destroyed.
That prompted farmers to plant more this year because of the apparent
likelihood that they will be able to get away with it, the U.S.
diplomat said.

The government has vowed to eradicate more this year, and lines of
tractors have already ground up some 12,000 acres of the plants before
the milky white, oozing opium gum could be harvested, according to
U.S. officials.

Drug agents in recent years have considered using airplanes to spray
herbicides on the poppies, but strong opposition from Karzai halted
the idea, the diplomat said.

The ground eradication campaign has also met with resistance.

Taliban rebels have vowed to defend the opium farmers. In some small
towns in southern Helmand and Kandahar provinces, posters purportedly
by the insurgents have been pasted on walls, promising to prevent
widespread destruction of the poppies.

Eradication started last month in Kandahar and last week in Helmand,
but there have been only small skirmishes in both provinces so far. 
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