Pubdate: Mon, 25 Mar 2002
Source: Washington Times (DC)
Copyright: 2002 News World Communications, Inc.
Contact:  http://www.washingtontimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/492
Author: Bill Gertz
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/heroin.htm (Heroin)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/area/afghanistan (Afghanistan)

MILITARY OPPOSES SPRAYING POPPIES

The military officials, including representatives of the U.S. Central 
Command, have argued in interagency meetings that attacking Afghanistan's 
poppy fields is a nonmilitary function that should be left to others.

Proponents of the effort, in the White House and State Department, want the 
Pentagon to send special aircraft to drop herbicide on Afghanistan's poppy 
fields before the opium-producing plants are harvested in the next four to 
six weeks.

"This is asymmetrical warfare, and it would be a prudent force-protection 
measure," said a U.S. official close to the debate.

The money obtained from Afghanistan's poppy harvest will fuel the guerrilla 
war that is expected to escalate against U.S. and allied forces in the 
coming months.

The money from the poppies also will bolster anti-U.S. elements in the 
Pakistani ISI intelligence service, the officials said.

"If this opium is harvested and permitted to go to market, it will 
re-empower the negative elements in Pakistan's security service and lead to 
instability in Pakistan," the official said. "And it will fund a new round 
of international terrorism."

A National Security Council spokesman had no comment, noting that the 
subject is part of an ongoing internal debate.

Gen. Tommy Franks, commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, has rejected 
the idea of using U.S. military forces for poppy crop eradication, 
according to a Pentagon official.

"That's not our mission," an official quoted Gen. Franks as saying.

Drug Enforcement Administration chief Asa Hutchinson told Congress on March 
12 that the DEA has obtained "multisource information" linking al Qaeda and 
its leader, Osama bin Laden, to heroin trafficking.

"The very sanctuary previously enjoyed by bin Laden was based on the 
existence of the Taliban's drug state, whose economy was exceptionally 
dependent on opium," Mr. Hutchinson said.

Afghanistan produced over 70 percent of the world supply of illicit opium 
in 2000, and U.S. officials said the current crop is expected to be large.

A DEA intelligence report in September said that Afghanistan produced 74 
metric tons of opium from 4,162 acres of poppy fields last year.

The opium produced was significantly less than in 2000, when 3,656 metric 
tons of opium were produced from 64,510 hectares of land that year.

Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, who was ousted during U.S. military 
operations in December, issued a decree in July 2000 banning poppy 
cultivation in Afghanistan. He ordered the militia to eradicate any poppy 
fields under Taliban control.

The State Department, which is in charge of nonmilitary policies toward 
Afghanistan, has been unable to purchase the special aircraft required to 
spray herbicide on the poppies, the officials said.

One option under consideration is to purchase two Air Tractor aerial 
spraying aircraft and send them to Afghanistan. The plan called for using a 
special defoliant designed to kill poppy and coca plants without injuring 
other plants.

But the State Department was slow to take steps to arrange the aircraft 
purchase, so the aircraft cannot be procured until August - well after the 
poppy fields have been harvested and the material turned into opium and heroin.

The DEA intelligence report said "numerous" laboratories are located in 
Afghanistan and Pakistan and there are "significant" numbers of opium 
dealers in the Jalalabad and Ghani Khel areas.

The laboratories are known to be located in Afghanistan's northwest border 
areas of Kunduz and Badakhstan provinces.

Military officials are said to have opposed the crop-spraying plan as being 
too risky in Afghanistan, where al Qaeda and Taliban fighters still pose a 
threat.

Most of the drug-producing crops are located in Afghanistan's Helmand, 
Kandahar, Nangarhar and Lowgar provinces.

Administration officials also are upset that the Central Command did not 
conduct bombing raids against opium warehouses in Afghanistan during the 
military campaign that began Oct. 7.

The facilities went unscathed after legal advisers at Central Command 
headquarters in Tampa, Fla., determined the opium storehouses were not 
legitimate military targets.

Interim government leader Hamid Karzai has continued the Taliban ban on 
poppy growing. Mr. Karzai also has sought international support for 
anti-drug efforts in the country.

Iran's official Islamic Republic News Agency reported last week that Afghan 
farmers have begun cultivating poppy fields. Brig. Gen. Mehdi Abouei, chief 
of Iran's counter-drug efforts, said on March 18 that poppy cultivation is 
increasing since the U.S.-led bombing campaign and could result in a crop 
of up to 2,500 ton of opium this season.
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MAP posted-by: Ariel