Pubdate: Thu, 29 Jun 2006
Source: Washington Times (DC)
Copyright: 2006 News World Communications, Inc.
Contact:  http://www.washingtontimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/492
Author: Jerry Seper
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/heroin.htm (Heroin)

DEA SAYS AFGHANISTAN'S HEROIN BEGETS VIOLENCE

The head of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration yesterday told a 
House committee that Afghanistan's stability "rises and falls with 
the drug trade," and its production of 92 percent of the world's 
heroin supply has driven ongoing violence and lawlessness. But DEA 
Administrator Karen P. Tandy said her agency is making "great 
progress" in targeting the drug warlords and the Afghan criminal 
organizations who control the heroin supply. "Thechallenges we face 
fighting the drug trade in Afghanistan are tough, with conducting 
law-enforcement operations in a war zone often controlled by powerful 
heroin warlords in a country where the drug trade and culture is 
deeply entrenched with an undeveloped infrastructure and fledgling 
Afghan law-enforcement organizations," Mrs. Tandy told the House 
Armed Services Committee. "But these challenges are not 
insurmountable," she said. "In the past year alone, we've made great progress.

Afghanistan has promulgated new narcotics laws. They have conducted 
their first arrest and search warrants under those laws. They have 
ordered the first extradition of a major drug trafficker connected to 
the Taliban." Mrs. Tandy said a newly created central tribunal court 
and recently appointed prosecutors, which the country did not have 
under the Taliban, successfully have prosecuted more than 100 drug 
traffickers, including Misri Khan, the longtime head of a major 
Afghan heroin ring and two of his key lieutenants who were convicted 
and each sentenced to 17 years in prison. Over the past six months, 
the DEA's Foreign-deployed Advisory and Support Teams, or FAST teams, 
have seized more than 38 tons of opium -- a 700 percent increase over 
the prior six months, she said. Earlier this month, the DEA received 
$9.2 million to combat Afghan drug warlords as part of the $94.5 
billion House-passed emergency spending bill for the wars in Iraq and 
Afghanistan. The money will allow the agency to continue to disrupt 
drug operations in Afghanistan, especially those that use the drug 
trade to finance terrorist organizations and attacks on coalition 
forces. Despite the ongoing conflict in that country, Afghanistan has 
emerged as the world's largest producer of opium and its refined form, heroin.

Last year, Afghanistan's opium output was about 5,000 tons, and the 
DEA has called opium production in that country a significant threat 
to its future and the region's stability. Mrs. Tandy said the Afghan 
drug trade has the capability of financing terrorists and those who 
support them, noting that the Taliban's association with the opium- 
and heroin-smuggling trade continues today.

She said the Taliban continues to use the proceeds from the sale of 
drugs, which it taxes and protects, as a source of revenue for the 
anti-coalition activities. "We are strengthening Afghanistan's 
institutions of justice and policing capabilities, and we are helping 
to protect the U.S. and coalition troops from deadly attacks that are 
funded in part by drug traffickers," she said.
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MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman