Afghan officials in Washington are redoubling their advocacy efforts to capitalize on Congress and the Bush administration's renewed focus on their country -- and to prevent their country from slipping back into Taliban hands. Embassy officials are calling the Bush administration's drug-eradication policy in Afghanistan a flawed solution to the problem and are speculating on how a new U.S. ambassador to their country will influence the struggle against the narcotics trade and how the U.S. will change the management of foreign aid there. [continues 918 words]
LONDON -- Counter-narcotics policies in Afghanistan need to be urgently overhauled before they push the people of southern Afghanistan into the arms of the Taliban insurgency, a security think tank said yesterday. A poppy-eradication program that began last month has already sparked a new wave of violence, said Norine MacDonald, president of the Senlis Council, a European security think tank. She said the program was costing NATO the popular support it needed to counter a looming Taliban offensive. [end]
I went to Afghanistan to help rebuild people's lives. But I learned the hard way that good intentions aren't enough. The news came in a phone call from Afghanistan. Ten days ago, a suicide bomber tried to talk his way into a compound in Lashkar Gah where I had worked until last October. He blew himself up without getting in and no one else was seriously hurt, but the story shook me. What I had expected for so long had finally happened. [continues 4303 words]
LONDON -- A Pakistani sewed opium into the beads of a tapestry. An Afghan taped bags full of drugs to his body. A Chinese woman tucked narcotics into hollowed heels. Afghan Gen. Aminullah Amarkhil says he arrested them all, and that has been the source of all his problems. The Afghan government, however, accuses Amarkhil of corruption and wants him returned to his homeland for questioning. Until October, Amarkhil was a top customs official in the world's largest opium producing nation, responsible for halting the flow of drugs through Afghanistan's main airport. Now he is seeking asylum in London, saying that his life is in danger from drug lords who pressured the government to fire him amid corruption charges. [continues 558 words]
LONDON - A Pakistani man sewed opium into the beads of a tapestry. An Afghan taped drug bags to his body. A Chinese woman tucked narcotics into hollowed heels. Afghan Gen. Aminullah Amarkhil says he arrested them all, and that has been the source of all his problems. The Afghan government, however, accuses Amarkhil of corruption and wants him returned to his homeland for questioning. Until October, Amarkhil was a top customs official in the world's largest opium producer, responsible for halting the flow of drugs through Afghanistan's main airport. Now he is seeking asylum in London, claiming his life is in danger from drug lords who pressured the government to fire him amid corruption charges. [continues 566 words]
The Kabul government is planning to take the war to its illegal drugs trade. And once again, it will put Britain's exhausted troops back into the firing line. British troops in southern Afghanistan, already engaged in stiff fighting with the Taliban, face a new threat as the Kabul government prepares to crack down on the country's rampant drugs trade. The Independent on Sunday has learned that in the next week to 10 days, 300 members of the Afghan Eradication Force (AEF), protected by an equal number of police, will begin destroying fields of ripening opium poppies in the centre of lawless Helmand province, where Britain has some 4,000 troops. While British forces will not be directly involved in the operation, commanders concede that they will have to go to the aid of the eradication teams if they encounter armed resistance. "A backlash is definitely possible," said one senior officer. [continues 1171 words]
Afghan Farmers Often Have Little Alternative KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - Canadian diplomats are quietly trying to steer Afghan counter-narcotics agents away from a proposal to use chemical spraying to destroy opium-producing poppy fields. Responding to international pressure, particularly from the United States, Afghan President Hamid Karzai's government is seriously looking at instituting an aerial spray program to combat the explosion in the illegal narcotics trade. "The Canadian position on eradication ... is that it is one of the pillars of the Afghan national drug control strategy," said Gavin Buchan, the political director of the provincial reconstruction base in Kandahar. [continues 406 words]
How To Solve Afghanistan's Drug Problem The British Empire once fought a war for the right to sell opium in China. In retrospect, history has judged that war destructive and wasteful, a shameless battle of colonizers against colonized that in the end helped neither side. Now NATO is fighting a war to eradicate opium from Afghanistan. Allegedly, this time around the goals are different. According to the modern British government, Afghanistan's illicit-drug trade poses the "gravest threat to the long term security, development and effective governance of Afghanistan," particularly since the Taliban are believed to be the biggest beneficiaries of drug sales. [continues 743 words]
Liberal MP Suggests Alternatives to Destroying Critical Afghanistan Crop Opium is a key element of the current conflict in Afghanistan. Opium poppies are now a form of livelihood for many farmers. But U.S. commanders with NATO forces have ordered poppy fields destroyed, sending farmers stripped of their livelihood straight to the Taliban. At least the Taliban and drug lords allow the farmers means to put food on the table, Liberal MP Keith Martin (Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca) said. "The Americans only want to destroy more of the poppy crop, which drives the subsistence farmers to the Taliban." [continues 331 words]
Liberal MP Offers Alternatives To Destroying Afghanistan Crop Opium is a key element of the current conflict in Afghanistan. Opium poppies are now a form of livelihood for many farmers. But U.S. commanders with NATO forces have ordered poppy fields destroyed, sending farmers stripped of their livelihood straight to the Taliban: at least the Taliban and drug lords allow the farmers means to put food on the table, Liberal MP Keith Martin (Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca) said. "The Americans only want to destroy more of the poppy crop, which drives the subsistence farmers to the Taliban." [continues 329 words]
Much Gain, Less Pain How One Country's Problem Could Ease the World's Suffering An Abundance of Deadliness SOPHIE-MARIE SCOUFLAIRE, the chief pharmacist for the French humanitarian agency Mdecins Sans Frontires, has spent a lifetime watching people in disaster-stricken areas of the world writhing in pain.and she has put in many hours frantically trying to procure enough opiates to relieve her patients' agony. That is surprisingly hard. Part of the trouble is that most countries are allowed under a United Nations regime to import only a very small quantity of narcotics for medical use.and governments are often slow to apply for an increase in their quotas. Sometimes, sincerely or otherwise, they say they doubt their own capacity to handle increased quantities of drugs. So in a real disaster MSF has to beg the local health ministry to seek an increase. And in places where no government exists, MSF doctors go straight to the UN for permission to import drugs on their own responsibility. But that process is burdensome. [continues 559 words]
KANDAHAR CITY, Afghanistan - She strides into a dingy hotel restaurant, a diminutive Canadian lawyer with hired guns following behind. One of her men is a burly Australian who packs an automatic rifle. He installs himself at the hotel's entrance, his weapon hidden but at the ready. It's not unusual for civilians in this dangerous city to protect themselves with private security. But rarely does a woman move about in such a manner -- commanding an armed guard and eschewing a burka, or even a shawl, for male Afghan clothes. [continues 1293 words]
A CAMPAIGN of enforced crop-spraying to destroy the opium poppy fields will get under way in southern Afghanistan in the next few weeks, despite fears that it will undermine attempts to win the battle for hearts and minds with the Taliban. British defence and diplomatic sources claim the campaign is the result of "US political interference" and is throwing Nato plans into turmoil. Coupled with the imminent replacement of the British general commanding Nato troops with an American, the sources predict a breakdown in security. [continues 573 words]
On a dimly lit road in Wazir Akbar Khan, the Upper East Side of Kabul, a couple of street kids gesture toward an unmarked iron gate behind which they assure us we can find what we are looking for. An Afghan guard gives us a wary once-over and opens the gate onto a dark garden at the end of which a door is slightly ajar. I open it and step into a world far removed from the dust-blown avenues of Kabul, where most women wear burqas and the vast majority of the population live in grinding poverty. [continues 2904 words]
Our Engineers on the Move It's one and a half kilometres of dust and gravel, running straight as a pool cue through the Arghandab River valley in the Panjwayi district. To Lieut. Anthony Robb, 24, of the 23 Field Squadron Combat Engineers, it could well be the most precious section of dirt in all Afghanistan. "When you consider all the bloody work we had to do during Op Medusa just claiming this ground, it's pretty important to us," he said, looking to where the flat stretch of dirt road turns past the town of Pashmul. [continues 596 words]
Opium, Thugs Bloom Under U.S. Policies in Afghanistan War A little more than five years since the start of the Bush administration's Afghan war, the "ousted" Taliban is back in full flower, and so is the notorious Afghan poppy. There's no doubt the two are intimately connected. The Taliban, which briefly banned poppy cultivation in 2000 in an effort to gain U.S. diplomatic recognition and aid, now both supports and draws support from that profitable crop; Afghanistan provides 92 percent of the world's heroin. [continues 1485 words]
US Drug Control Policy head John Walters announced that Afghanistan's poppy crops will be sprayed with herbicides in an effort to put a crimp in the country's booming opium and heroin trade. But the Afghan government, which is not enthusiastic about spraying, has yet to confirm Walters' pronouncement. This year, Afghan opium production increased 49% over last year, and the country produced 6,100 metric tons of opium, or 670 tons of heroin. That's 90% of the illicit opium supply, and more than the world's junkies can shoot, smoke, or snort in a year. This as the US spent $600 million on anti-drug efforts in Afghanistan this year. [continues 236 words]
KABUL, Afghanistan - The top U.S. anti-drug official said Saturday that Afghan poppies will be sprayed with herbicide to combat an opium trade that produced a record heroin haul this year, a measure likely to anger farmers and scare Afghans unfamiliar with weed-killers. John Walters, the director of the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy, said Afghanistan could turn into a narco-state unless "giant steps" are made toward eliminating poppy cultivation. "Proceeds from opium production feed the insurgency and burden Afghanistan's nascent political institutions with the scourge of corruption." [continues 156 words]
The top U.S. anti-drug official said Afghan poppies would be sprayed with herbicide to combat an opium trade that produced a record heroin haul this year. The Afghan government has not publicly said it will spray, but John Walters, the director of the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy, said President Hamid Karzai and other officials had agreed to ground spraying. [end]
Kabul, Afghanistan (AP) -- Afghanistan's criminal underworld has compromised key government officials who protect drug traffickers, allowing a flourishing opium trade that will not be stamped out for a generation, an ominous U.N. report released Tuesday said. The fight against opium production has so far achieved only limited success, mostly because of corruption, the joint report from the World Bank and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime said. The findings show a "probability of high-level (government) involvement" in drugs, said Doris Buddenberg, the UNODC's Afghanistan representative and co-editor of the report. [continues 709 words]
Inside Afghanistan
