Pubdate: Sat, 11 Jun 2005
Source: Globe and Mail (Canada)
Copyright: 2005, The Globe and Mail Company
Contact:  http://www.globeandmail.ca/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/168
Author: Bruce Cheadle, Canadian Press
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/heroin.htm (Heroin)

AFGHAN DRUGS A NATO CONCERN GRAHAM SAYS

OTTAWA -- Coming to grips with Afghanistan's booming narcotics trade is 
NATO's next big challenge in the country, Defence Minister Bill Graham said 
yesterday.

But troops of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization -- including a large 
Canadian contingent being redeployed over the coming year -- can't take 
over domestic policing duties in a country desperately in need of social 
order beyond the precincts of the capital, Kabul.

Mr. Graham, in Brussels for a meeting of NATO defence ministers, said 
combatting the drug trade while establishing firm rules of engagement was a 
major topic of discussions this week.

"All the NATO ministers recognize that our troops cannot go in and spray 
[opium poppy] fields and arrest drug traffickers and things like that," Mr. 
Graham said. "That's a police matter for the Afghan police to do. But our 
people can create a situation of security where the police can go in and do 
that."

NATO can also help train local police, Mr. Graham said said.

But providing police security and training, while refraining from actual 
police operations, is far more complicated on the ground than in theory.

"That's why we have to have clear rules of engagement . . . that all the 
NATO partners subscribe to," Mr. Graham said.

The first 250 Canadian soldiers of a provincial reconstruction team will 
head into the lawless territory around Kandahar in southern Afghanistan 
this summer. By next year, Canada will have more than 1,000 troops in the 
country.

It will be a far different deployment than Canada's last, which wrapped up 
about a year ago in Kabul. While Afghanistan's fledgling democratic 
government is finding its legs, the growing poppy trade is creating a new 
set of problems far from the capital.

The country is a prime feeder of the international heroin market, providing 
more than 75 per cent of the world's opium poppy crop.

The acreage of poppy cultivation in Afghanistan is believed to have 
quadrupled over the past three years.

That puts a strain on more than just Afghanistan's fragile social structures.

There was also a geopolitical dimension to this week's NATO discussion, 
because Britain holds the presidency of the G8 this year and is making the 
global drug trade one of its major concerns.

It's a difficult sell to tell NATO troops, including the British, that they 
can't arrest traffickers in Afghanistan, where poppies are grown 
commercially in 28 of 32 provinces, Mr. Graham suggested.

"There's a Catch-22 in all this because ultimately we recognize that if we 
don't solve the drug problem, the whole object of bringing stability to 
Afghanistan is itself being threatened."
- ---
MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom