Los Angeles Times
October 4, 2004
WASHINGTON — Afghanistan's opium crop this year is set to break all
previous records, surging past even the highest levels cultivated during the
Taliban regime, top American and international counter-narcotics officials
said.
At the same time, U.N. and U.S. officials are increasingly
worried by signs of a nascent drug trade developing in Iraq, where smugglers are
taking advantage of the continuing chaos and unguarded borders.
Instability in the wake of the U.S.-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq has
resulted in one booming market for the production of drugs, and a second
potential market for narcotics sale and transit, officials said.
"All
post-conflict situations, whether in Iraq or Afghanistan, are always
characterized by a significant increase in addiction," said Antonio Maria Costa,
the head of the United Nations' Office on Drug and Crimes. "The problem is
definitely there."
In testimony last month, Robert B. Charles, the
assistant secretary who heads the State Department's Bureau for International
Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, told Congress that CIA figures, expected
to be released in a matter of weeks, show Afghanistan's opium poppy cultivation
approaching 250,000 acres, an increase of more than 60% from 2003 levels.
In an interview late last week, Charles acknowledged that the cultivation
levels apparently exceed even the previous record of about 160,000 acres of
opium poppy reached in 2000 during the Taliban regime, which was aggressively
promoting the crop at the time to finance military operations.
Afghanistan is already the world's leading supplier of opium, which can be
processed into a variety of narcotics, including heroin. Most of Afghanistan's
heroin is exported to Europe and surrounding countries, with less than 10%
reaching the United States.
Charles said that although there was
growing momentum behind efforts to halt production, the U.S. continued to fear
the development of a narco-economy that could swamp Afghanistan's nascent
democracy.
"There is a dark shadow that hangs over the country,"
Charles said. "If we don't do the right thing about tackling this potentially
damaging heroin economy, we're certainly all going to regret it." The country's
exploding drug production has already become an issue in the U.S. presidential
campaign. In Thursday's debate in Florida, Democratic candidate Sen. John F.
Kerry cited the burgeoning opium crop as evidence of President Bush's "colossal
misjudgment" in turning his attention from Afghanistan to wage war in Iraq.
Repeating a U.N. estimate, Kerry said heroin production now equals as much
as 40% to 60% of Afghanistan's gross domestic product. The U.N. and the
Economist magazine's Intelligence Unit have estimated that the value of last
year's heroin and opium crop in Afghanistan ranged from $1 billion to as much as
$2.3 billion — equivalent to the whole aid package pledged by the U.S. at
a March donor's conference in Berlin.
"Iraq is not even the center of
the focus of the war on terror; the center is Afghanistan," Kerry said.
Indeed, U.S., U.N. and Afghan officials believe that opium smuggling is a
source of funding for Taliban insurgents, Al Qaeda terrorists and criminal gangs
operating in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Much of the opium is exported
through the lawless border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan where Al
Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is believed to be hiding, officials said.
Insurgents encourage small farmers in areas they control to grow the drug, and
charge a tax on it for transportation.
During a surprise visit to
Afghanistan in August, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld described the
drug boom as one of the biggest threats to Afghanistan's democracy, which is
preparing for presidential elections Saturday.
"To the extent the
demand for drugs continues to produce hundreds of millions of dollars for
revenue to ... criminals engaged in the drug-trafficking trade, it is harmful,"
Rumsfeld said. "We see what happens in countries where that takes place. It's
corrosive. It can affect the entire political process. It leads to other types
of crime and corruption. It is a very dangerous thing." So far, efforts to
stem the production boom have been ineffectual. The British have taken the lead
in Afghanistan in eradication efforts, and seized some 34 tons of opiates this
year — about 1% of the estimated production.
Efforts by Afghan
and coalition forces to convince farmers to give up growing poppy plants also
have yielded few results. In a country whose economy remains a shambles, the
crop represents one of the few profitable enterprises.
The U.S. has
cited Colombia, where leftist guerrillas and right-wing militants also have
traded in narcotics to fund their operations, as a model for drug reduction
efforts. Coca production is down 21% in Colombia, which remains the single
largest source of cocaine consumed in the United States. The U.S. has poured
more than $3 billion into Colombia's drug eradication effort, the key component
of which is an aggressive aerial fumigation campaign. There are no such efforts
underway in Afghanistan.
"Very little has been done effectively to
stop" opium cultivation in Afghanistan, said Bathsheba Crocker, a scholar at the
nonpartisan Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington who has
closely followed reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq. "There's not
been anywhere near as serious or robust an effort as there should have been."
In Iraq, meanwhile, both the U.N. and U.S. officials are concerned about
recent anecdotal evidence of an increase in drug trafficking and consumption.
Iraq is believed to have been relatively drug-free under Saddam Hussein's
rule.
State Department counter-narcotics experts believe Syrian
traffickers are making use of Iraq's poorly guarded borders to transport
fenethylline, a synthetic drug more commonly known as Captagon that is similar
to amphetamine.
The drug is a favorite among the wealthy party crowd in
Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states.
Troops from the U.S. Army's 1st
Infantry Division recently encountered a "large" amount of drugs and drug
paraphernalia during raids against insurgents in north-central Iraq, said Master
Sgt. Robert Powell, a spokesman for the unit. He said details of the raid were
not immediately available.
Costa, the U.N. official, said his
investigators had detected signs of drug trafficking in Iraq last year, during a
visit shortly before the bombing of the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad in August
2003.
A decade of sanctions had created a vast network of smugglers in
Iraq who sold oil on the world market. After the U.S. invasion, however, oil
exports became legal and thousands — perhaps tens of thousands — of
people involved in smuggling rings suddenly found themselves out of work, Costa
said. Many, it is believed, have turned their skills toward transporting other
illicit substances.
"It's not only drugs. We're talking about arms
smuggling, artifacts, looted goods," said Mustafa Alani, the head of security
and terrorism studies for the Gulf Research Center, a think tank in Dubai,
United Arab Emirates. "There is no control of the borders." The effort to
combat drugs in Iraq is all but nonexistent, with both U.S. and Iraqi efforts
focused on controlling the insurgency.
So far, a handful of Iraqi
police officers has received counter-narcotics training. The State Department
has five drug experts in Iraq, but their mission is only partially focused on
trafficking. And the military does not consider counter-narcotics a part of its
mission in Iraq, a Pentagon spokesman said.
So far, Iraq's drug trade
is limited, but it has few law enforcement barriers to keep it from growing.
"We have to keep our eye on it," said Charles, the State Department
official. "It has the potential to become a much larger problem."