Pubdate: Fri, 08 Dec 2006 Source: San Francisco Chronicle (CA) Page: A - 28 Copyright: 2006 Hearst Communications Inc. Contact: http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/388 Author: Josh Meyer, Los Angeles Times Referenced: The Los Angeles Times report http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v06/n1653/a03.html Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topic/Afghanistan Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topics/opium PENTAGON VOWS TO AID DEA IN AFGHANISTAN DRUG RAIDS Military Finally Responds to Complaints From Capitol Hill Washington -- The Pentagon, which has resisted appeals from federal drug agents to play a bigger role in the campaign to curb Afghanistan's flourishing opium trade, has pledged more support for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration's counter-narcotics efforts. While the $2.3 billion profit from opium trafficking has helped to arm the Taliban and al Qaeda insurgents in Afghanistan, the Pentagon has long maintained that drug interdiction is primarily a law enforcement responsibility, one that belongs to Afghan authorities and the British troops in the NATO operation. But Rep. Henry Hyde, R.-Ill., chairman of the House Committee on International Relations, and other critics have urged the Pentagon to do more, including transporting and protecting the DEA agents who are working in the dangerous country. In a letter Hyde received Wednesday, Undersecretary of Defense Eric Edelman wrote, "We have taken your concerns seriously and will work more closely with DEA to make use of this important capability." Edelman's letter arrived a day after the Los Angeles Times reported that U.S. military units in Afghanistan largely overlook drug bazaars, rebuff some requests to take U.S. drug agents on raids and do little to counter organized crime syndicates. Hyde, U.S. and U.N. counter-narcotics experts and Afghan officials told the Times that the Department of Defense needs to target major drug traffickers in Afghanistan, the well-known labs that process opium into heroin, the bazaars where the drugs are sold openly and the convoys that carry the drugs out of Afghanistan for shipment to Europe, Asia and, increasingly, the United States. In particular, the officials said, U.S. and allied NATO troops in Afghanistan need to provide DEA agents with helicopter airlifts and heavily armed troops to allow them to investigate major trafficking rings and take out the leaders of the criminal syndicates. Hyde praised the Pentagon Thursday for its vow of help. "I welcome the support from our Department of Defense," Hyde said. "Now we can better target the narco-terrorism which threatens Afghanistan today." Also on Thursday, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Duncan Hunter, R-Alpine (San Diego County), asked for a classified briefing on the status of the military's counter-narcotics efforts in Afghanistan. The hearing is set for today. While the Pentagon and the DEA have been at odds, poppy cultivation has exploded in Afghanistan, increasing by more than half this year. The country now supplies about 92 percent of the world's opium, and the bumper crop of poppies, much of it from Taliban strongholds, finances the insurgency the U.S. is trying to dismantle. On Oct. 12, Hyde and Rep. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., sent Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld a letter asking for more military help for DEA, including a formal policy that would allow drug agents to ride along on more military helicopter missions and that would have soldiers summon the DEA to the scene whenever they found a drug stash or operation. Eight days later, Rumsfeld wrote that he had asked Edelman, his undersecretary for policy, to look into it. Nearly two months later, the Times article noted, Hyde had not received a formal response. Edelman wrote that the Pentagon has already been working closely with the DEA in Afghanistan. He said Rumsfeld authorized troops more than a year ago to embed DEA agents and other nonmilitary counter-narcotics personnel on missions in areas of known or suspected drug-related activity. And he said U.S. troops have been instructed to notify DEA "regarding the disposition of significant drug caches discovered during operations." Edelman's letter does not make clear how the Pentagon intends to work more closely with the DEA. Connie LaRossa Fabiano, a Pentagon counter-narcotics official, said she could not comment on either the new steps being taken or on the current cooperative efforts. On Thursday, two senior U.S. counter-narcotics policy officials on Capitol Hill said they have seen no evidence of those efforts. "They had an ad hoc policy where the guys on the ground, a colonel here or there, would occasionally bring DEA along. What we've been pushing for is a more formal institutional policy," said a senior staff member on the House International Relations Committee. He quoted a recent e-mail from a U.S. counter-narcotics official in Afghanistan who said he has seen virtually no cooperation between the Pentagon and DEA in Afghanistan on tactical operations. If Rumsfeld had ordered troops to work with drug agents, the counter-narcotics official wrote, "It was not well known, understood or accepted." A senior staff member on the House subcommittee on drug policy reported similar findings: "We were told in briefings that there were multiple times that DEA asked for help and for intelligence and it was never honored." Both staff members spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing committee policies that prohibit them from discussing such matters publicly. - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake