نیویارک تایمز و نام های برخی مافیای سیاسی مواد مخدر افغانستان
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Pubdate: Fri, 19 Nov 2004
Source: New York Times (NY)
Copyright: 2004 The New York Times Company
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Author: Carlotta Gall
AFGHAN POPPY GROWING REACHES RECORD LEVEL, U.N. SAYS
KABUL, Afghanistan - Poppy cultivation in Afghanistan, the source of most of
the opium and heroin on Europe's streets, was up sharply this year, reaching
the highest levels in the country's history and in the world, the United
Nations announced on Thursday.
"In Afghanistan, drugs are now a clear and present danger," said Antonio
Maria Costa, director of the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime, on
the release of the 2004 Afghanistan opium survey. "The fear that
Afghanistan might degenerate into a narco-state is becoming a reality."
Afghan officials and foreign diplomats called the sharp rise in cultivation
and production a major failure for President Hamid Karzai and the
international effort to counter narcotics.
More than 321,236 acres of land were planted with poppy in 2004, a 64
percent increase over last year, the United Nations survey found. Poppy has
spread to every province in the country, it said.
It was only by chance that drought and disease ravaged much of the crop and
prevented the harvest from exceeding the all-time high, the report said.
The harvest in 2004 was estimated at 4,200 metric tons, an increase of 17
percent from last year.
The scale of poppy cultivation is particularly alarming, because of the
growing stranglehold wealthy traffickers and drug lords hold over farmers,
and their influence over the economy and government, Afghan officials and
foreign experts said.
The income from production and trafficking of opium in 2004 was estimated at
$2.8 billion, equivalent to about 60 percent of the country's legal gross
domestic product, or more than a third of the total economy, the report
said.
If the drug problem persists, "the political and military successes of the
last three years will be lost," Mr. Costa said in a preface to the report.
There are indications that Al Qaeda and the Taliban are profiting from the
Afghan trade, the report said.
Gen. Muhammad Daoud, the recently appointed deputy interior minister in
charge of countering narcotics, noted that "87 percent of the world's opium
is produced by Afghanistan."
He added, "Unfortunately that is a very negative point for our country, and
we will not gain any benefit from it, except a few smugglers in our country
and neighboring countries."
Indeed, most of the profits go to a very few traffickers, warlords and
militia leaders, rather than the impoverished farmers, who are often heavily
in debt to the drug lords, the United Nations report said.
There are signs, too, of a move toward a greater vertical integration of the
business and the growing involvement of international organized crime,
according to a recent report by Barnett Rubin of the Center on International
Cooperation at New York University.
Law enforcement teams destroyed 78 drug-processing laboratories this year,
General Daoud said. The existence of laboratories and seizures of more
heroin than opium in neighboring countries are signs that heroin processing
is increasing inside Afghanistan, the United Nations said.
The surge in cultivation, however, is a sign of the general impunity with
which farmers can grow and harvest poppy, despite decrees outlawing it by
Mr. Karzai, interim leader of Afghanistan for the last three years, foreign
officials in Afghanistan say.
Until now, the Afghan government has not made the
narcotics problem a priority. But since his election to a five-year term
last month, Mr. Karzai has made more determined statements about combating
the trade. In his acceptance speech, he vowed to make the fight against
narcotics his first priority.
His administration has included known drug lords, and many of his provincial
governors, police and army chiefs are widely rumored to profit from the
trade, diplomats and Afghan officials acknowledge. Commanders of the
powerful Northern Alliance, which with American help overthrew the Taliban
in 2001, continue to profit from the trade in northeastern Badakhshan
Province.
The minister of tribal affairs, Muhammad Arif Nurzai, and the governor of
southern Helmand Province, Sher Muhammad Akhund, both staunch Karzai allies,
are widely believed to profit from the drug trade, although both have denied
any involvement and voiced support for the government's anti-narcotics
stand.
Diplomats say there are even reports linking Mr. Karzai's brother, Ahmed
Wali Karzai, an influential figure in the southern city of Kandahar, to the
trade. A senior presidential adviser denied the reports, saying it is
propaganda aimed against the president as well as his brother.
The government is finally trying to get the word out that poppy cultivation
is illegal and that farmers will be penalized. The council of senior
clerics recently issued a religious edict forbidding poppy growing.
But international assistance has been inadequate and ill focused, Mr. Rubin
says. "U.S. cooperation with warlords and militia leaders tied to
trafficking has sent the wrong signal about the U.S. commitment to
combating narcotics," he said.
Britain, which has been leading the counternarcotics program here, says the
job is a long-term one, and includes building up the justice system so
traffickers can be imprisoned and creating alternatives for farmers.
But critics call the effort small and ineffective, and the British
themselves are quick to recognize that their program is underfinanced and
have welcomed new American involvement. The United States said Wednesday
that it would give $780 million to combat narcotics in Afghanistan this
year.
American plans, which focus on eradication, possibly with the use of
defoliants, also have their critics, including Mr. Rubin, who argues that
effort should concentrate on intercepting the narcotics at the borders and
catching the big smugglers. Agriculturalists warn that defoliants could
damage Afghanistan's already precarious agriculture.
Gen. Muhammad Zaher Agbar, head of a new unit set up within the Interior
Ministry to eradicate poppy, said the experience this summer showed that the
task was not as simple as cutting down poppy fields.
mafia."
"It is not the ordinary people that are the problem," said Col. Miakhel
Muhammad Mangal, commander of the force's Third Battalion, who found mines
laid in the fields against his unit. "It is the groups behind them, the
mafia."
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Warlord politics heats Afghan vote
World
>
Asia:
South & Central
6th
October, 2004 edition
| Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
KANDAHAR, AFGHANISTAN – Drug accusations
Kandahar Police Chief Khan Mohammad, recently demoted by President Karzai from the more powerful position of military chief, has become an avid supporter of Qanooni. Yet in his new job, he says he has learned unsettling things about Ahmed Wali Karzai's involvement in drugs.
About two months ago, Mr. Mohammad says, he received a call from a police chief in a district outside of Kandahar, who reported that he had captured a large shipment of heroin hidden in a truck under bags of cement. Then, said Mohammad, he received another call, and another, and another, from Ahmed Wali Karzai.
"He was saying, 'This heroin belongs to me, you should release it,'" says Mohammad, sitting in his office in Kandahar, under a large portrait of President Karzai. "I said, 'No, this is my duty, and I handed it over to the Ministry of Interior.'"
"There is no doubt they are involved in drugs," Mohammad says. "But we don't have hard evidence, we have just confirmed it with other people."
The police officer who made the arrest in this case says, "This is not the first time we have captured trucks full of drugs. So many times, we get calls from Ahmed Wali Khan to 'release the drugs, otherwise, we will tell the American forces that you are Al Qaeda.'" He pauses. "We are not powerful. We have just five men. And he's the president's brother."
Charges denied
For his part, Ahmed Wali Karzai calls these charges of drug-trafficking unfounded "propaganda."
"This is character assassination," says Mr. Karzai, in his large lush campaign office, where dozens of tribal leaders await outside his door for a meeting. "What else can they say? Is there any proof? I am ready for any kind of investigation. I'm willing to take a polygraph test. What else can they say?"
"They can't accuse that I am a military man, that I am taking bribes, that I am taking government land or selling government land, so then they are doing this," he says. "I am a big problem for these people, because they can't survive" if Karzai succeeds.
