Rumsfeld urged to alter Afghan drug trade policy

[mhatrw]

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-10-23-drug-trade-policy_x.htm

A leading House Republican is urging Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to revamp the U.S. strategy against heroin production in Afghanistan, saying record opium poppy harvests show efforts to target farmers are not working.

Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill., chairman of the House International Relations Committee, said in an Oct. 12 letter to Rumsfeld that the U.S.-supported poppy eradication program in Afghanistan is a failure. In the previously unreported letter, provided by Hyde's committee office, Hyde urges the military to help agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) take out drug kingpins and heroin processing centers. The current program, backed by the State Department and international agencies, focuses on low-level poppy farmers.

The "opium crisis" has "increased violence and terrorism against coalition forces there, and is now threatening to totally corrupt all of the new Afghan democratic institutions we support," Hyde's letter said, echoing concerns voiced by many U.S. officials — including Rumsfeld — that drug money is aiding a resurgence of the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. Rumsfeld has not answered Hyde, but Air Force Lt. Col. Karen Finn, a Pentagon spokeswoman, said Monday, "We take this matter very seriously, and we will be responding."

Hyde's letter followed a report by the United Nations last month that said an estimated 407,724 acres of opium poppy were grown in Afghanistan this year. That's up 59% from 2005 and more than double the acreage farmed in 2000, before the U.S.-led assault on the former Taliban government.



It's actually more than 100 times the amount grown in 2000, but perhaps that's the whole point. The Taliban took us seriously and basically shut down opium production between 1999 and 2000. However, the CIA and other US intelligence agencies depend on that black market cash to fund their black ops.