Pubdate: Tue, 14 Mar 2006
Source: Oklahoman, The (OK)
Copyright: 2006 The Oklahoma Publishing Co.
Contact:  http://www.oklahoman.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/318
Author: Associated Press
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/heroin.htm (Heroin)

AFGHANS TO DRUG LORDS: KEEP PROFITS HOME

LASHKARGAH, Afghanistan -- Afghanistan will encourage its powerful 
drug lords to invest their illegally earned profits in the 
war-shattered country, according to the governor of the nation's top 
opium-growing region.

The offer comes amid warnings of another bumper poppy crop that will 
fuel a booming narcotics trade, which already accounts for 35 percent 
of the impoverished country's income.

"We as a government will provide them the opportunity to use their 
money for the national benefit," Helmand Gov. Mohammed Daud said 
during a trip to the region this week by U.S. Ambassador Ronald Neumann.

"They must invest in industries. They must invest in construction 
companies," he said.

But he said that so far the government has had no success in 
attracting the drug traffickers to open new businesses and that most 
of the money is being sent overseas.

The drug trade employs about one in 10 Afghans and brought in $2.8 
billion last year, Afghan and U.S. officials say. The vast majority 
of that goes to traffickers and only a small fraction to farmers.

About 345,000 acres of poppies are believed to have been planted this 
year - an increase of up to 40 percent from 2005. The opium is 
refined into heroin before being smuggled out of the country to meet 
90 percent of the world's supply.

A U.S. diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the 
sensitivity of the matter, said the drug trade was so entrenched that 
it was difficult to confront the narco bosses head on.

He said the government could grant them an "informal amnesty" if they 
end their involvement in drugs, swear allegiance to President Hamid 
Karzai's government, invest their money at home and pay taxes.

The diplomat said one or two major traffickers have approached the 
government for talks, but no deals have been reached. Most of their 
money is stashed in banks in the United Arab Emirates, he said.

Asked about the offer in an interview Monday at the main U.S.-led 
coalition base in Helmand, Ambassador Neumann compared it to a broad 
national reconciliation program with Taliban militants and others 
that aims to bring peace after a quarter century of war.

"It's part of a larger problem, you have militia commanders, you have 
drug lords, you have all kinds of people that at the end of the day, 
some of them need to be arrested and put in prison, but basically 
Afghanistan has to come back together," he said.

But Neumann said he was unaware of a formal program specifically 
targeting drug traffickers to get them to invest in Afghanistan.

"There is a lot of effort to get Afghans as a whole to invest ... 
(but) I don't know of any easy way that we are going to distinguish 
where the money comes from," he said.

Afghanistan would not be the first nation with a vast drug industry 
to let barons launder their ill-gotten money.

The U.S. government has accused military-run Myanmar - once the 
world's top producer of opium and still treated as a pariah for its 
poor rights record - of allowing drug kingpins and ethnic armies that 
reached cease-fires with the government to invest in commercial banks 
and other businesses.

Afghanistan's drug traffickers have acted with virtual impunity since 
U.S.-led forces in 2001 ousted the Taliban, which in its last two 
years in power enforced a virtual ban on opium cultivation.

The new judiciary system is weak and has never prosecuted senior 
traffickers. Afghan and Western officials say the police force is 
corrupt with officers suspected of involvement in the narcotics trade.

The government's approach until now in dealing with drugs has been to 
eradicate poppy fields forcibly as part of a U.S. and British-backed 
program, while also providing farmers with the means to grow legal crops.

Although last year saw a notable decline in opium cultivation, only a 
tiny percentage of the opium fields that were planted were destroyed. 
That prompted farmers to plant more this year because of the apparent 
likelihood that they will be able to get away with it, the U.S. diplomat said.

The government has vowed to eradicate more this year, and lines of 
tractors have already ground up some 12,000 acres of the plants 
before the milky white, oozing opium gum could be harvested, 
according to U.S. officials.

Drug agents in recent years have considered using airplanes to spray 
herbicides on the poppies, but strong opposition from Karzai halted 
the idea, the diplomat said.

The ground eradication campaign has also met with resistance.

Taliban rebels have vowed to defend the opium farmers. In some small 
towns in southern Helmand and Kandahar provinces, posters purportedly 
by the insurgents have been pasted on walls, promising to prevent 
widespread destruction of the poppies.

Eradication started last month in Kandahar and last week in Helmand, 
but there have been only small skirmishes in both provinces so far.
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MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman