(1) U.S., MEXICO IN TALKS TO BOLSTER DRUG FIGHT Pubdate: Thu, 09 Aug 2007 Source: Los Angeles Times (CA) Copyright: 2007 Los Angeles Times Author: Sam Enriquez Amid Plans to Increase Levels of American Aid and Intelligence, Calderon Tries to Balance the Need for Security and Preservation of His Nation's Sovereignty. Mexico and the Bush administration are negotiating plans to greatly increase levels of U.S. aid and intelligence sharing on narcotics trafficking, presenting President Felipe Calderon with a politically challenging balancing act as his nation tries to stem runaway drug violence and assuage fears of a greater U.S. role in Mexican affairs. [continues 7433 words]
The UK government is considering reclassifying cannabis from a class C drug to a class B drug, carrying higher penalties for using and dealing. As an economist with a strong commitment to personal liberty and responsibility, my preference would be to see all illegal drugs legalised. The only exception would be substances whose consumption leads to behaviour likely to cause material harm to others. Following legalisation, the production and sale of these drugs should be regulated to ensure quality and purity. They should also be taxed, as are tobacco products and alcoholic beverages. Greater resources should be devoted to educating the public, especially children and teenagers, about the health hazards associated with the drugs; more money should be spent on the rehabilitation of addicts. [continues 1004 words]
If you think the war on terrorism is going badly -- and our intelligence agencies warn that al Qaeda has reconstituted itself -- take a look at the war on drugs. It has been twenty-five years since Ronald Reagan declared war on drugs. Our prison population has quadrupled since then. A multi-billion dollar prison-industrial complex has sprouted up to house all those sentenced for dealing or using illicit drugs. Instead of building schools, states are building prisons. Billions more has been spent at the borders, and in efforts to eradicate drug cartels from Colombia to Afghanistan. And yet today, experts report that drugs cheaper and more potent than ever are easily available across the country. [continues 713 words]
KABUL, Afghanistan -- With this conflict-torn country on track to produce another record amount of opium this year, U.S. officials want to significantly step up efforts to eradicate poppy crops before the fall harvest. The problem for the U.S. officials is that their Afghan and North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies oppose their aggressive plans. The United Nations estimates that farmers in Afghanistan are cultivating about 457,000 acres of poppy, the source of opium. That would represent a 10% increase from last year and an 80% jump from the 254,000 acres harvested in 2005, according to the U.N. [continues 674 words]
Whipping westward across Manhattan in a limousine sent by Comedy Central's "Daily Show," Ron Paul, the 10-term Texas congressman and long-shot Republican presidential candidate, is being briefed. Paul has only the most tenuous familiarity with Comedy Central. He has never heard of "The Daily Show." His press secretary, Jesse Benton, is trying to explain who its host, Jon Stewart, is. "He's an affable gentleman," Benton says, "and he's very smart. What I'm getting from the pre-interview is, he's sympathetic." [continues 5088 words]
Several Lawmakers Say Multinationals That Aid Violent Groups in Return for Protection Are Not Being Prosecuted. WASHINGTON -- For more than a decade, leftist guerrilla and right-wing paramilitary groups in Colombia have kidnapped or killed civilians, trade union leaders, police and soldiers by the hundreds and profited by shipping cocaine and heroin to the United States. In that time, several American multinational corporations have been accused of essentially underwriting those criminal activities -- in violation of U.S. law -- by providing cash, vehicles and other financial assistance as insurance against attacks on their employees and facilities in the South American nation. [continues 2730 words]
Colombia's FARC A Threat Still Worth Fighting Shortly before the 9/11 attacks, America's biggest declared threat was not the one posed by al-Qaeda but rather by Latin America's oldest guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. The war on terrorism has distracted this nation from the war on drugs, which continues to absorb billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars in Colombia. Considering the ongoing carnage in Iraq and Afghanistan, it almost seems quaint to return our attention to that ragtag gang of Marxist leftovers roaming Colombia's countryside. [continues 294 words]
There Are Hidden Costs of Recreational Drug Use We hate to be a drag about recreational drug use, but hypocrisy can be such a bummer. Take, for example, the vegetarian, leather-free, anti-globalization activist who bristles at the thought of killing a cow and yet thinks nothing of lighting up a joint in her college dorm room just like her parents did. Consider the twentysomething law clerk who sees no problem partying late into the night with a snort or two of cocaine. [continues 275 words]
Re John Negroponte's May 22 Other Views article, Helping Colombia is in our national interest: Negroponte wants to keep pumping in $15 million a week to fund military drug enforcement. The results? Cheap cocaine on our streets, traffickers pushed from Colombia to destabilized neighbors, twisted paramilitary pay-offs and corruption in counter-narcotics programs. Since 2000, we've spent billions of dollars in Colombia through Plan Colombia. The only thing we've bought besides 475 extradited drug traffickers is a military presence next to Venezuela. [continues 92 words]
U.S. Hopes For Colombia-Like Stability KABUL: In a walled compound near Kabul, two members of Colombia's counternarcotics police force are trying to teach raw Afghan recruits how to wage close-quarter combat. Using mock wooden AK-47 assault rifles, Lieutenant John Castaneda and Corporal John Orejuela demonstrate commando tactics to about 20 new members of what is intended to be an elite Afghan drug strike force. The recruits - who U.S. officials say lack even basic law enforcement skills - watch wide-eyed. [continues 1814 words]
KABUL, Afghanistan - In a walled compound outside Kabul, two members of Colombia's counternarcotics police force are trying to teach raw Afghan recruits how to wage close-quarters combat. Using wooden mock AK-47 assault rifles, Lt. John Castaneda and Cpl. John Orejuela demonstrate commando tactics to about 20 new members of what is intended to be an elite Afghan drug strike force. The recruits - - who American officials say lack even basic law enforcement skills - watch wide-eyed. "This is kindergarten," said Vincent Balbo, the United States Drug Enforcement Administration chief in Kabul, whose office is overseeing the training. "It's Narcotics 101." Another D.E.A. agent added: "We are at a stage now of telling these recruits, 'This is a handgun, this is a bullet.' " [continues 2652 words]
Cannabis smokers are unwittingly funding Islamist extremists linked to terror attacks in Spain, Morocco and Algeria, according to a joint investigation by the Spanish and French secret services. The finding will be seized on both by campaigners for a harsher clampdown on cannabis and by those who argue that legalization is the only way to end a petty dealing trend that is dragging growing numbers of teenagers into crime. The investigation by the Centro Nacional de Inteligencia and the Renseignements Generaux was launched after Spanish police found that the Islamists behind the March 2004 bombings in Madrid bought their explosives from former miners in return for blocks of hashish. The bombings claimed 191 lives. [continues 215 words]
Cannabis smokers are unwittingly funding Islamist extremists linked to terror attacks in Spain, Morocco and Algeria, according to a joint investigation by the Spanish and French secret services. The finding will be seized on both by campaigners for a harsher clampdown on cannabis and by those who argue that legalisation is the only way to end a petty dealing trend that is dragging growing numbers of teenagers into crime. The investigation by the Centro Nacional de Inteligencia and the Renseignements Generaux was launched after Spanish police found that the Islamists behind the March 2004 bombings in Madrid bought their explosives from former miners in return for blocks of hashish. The bombings claimed 191 lives. [continues 210 words]
"Respected people of Helmand," the radio message began. "The soldiers of the International Security Assistance Force and the Afghan National Army do not destroy poppy fields. They know that many people of Afghanistan have no choice but to grow poppy. ISAF and the ANA do not want to stop people from earning their livelihoods." It was such a sensible message that it almost had to be a mistake, and of course it was. The message, written by an ISAF officer and broadcast in Helmand province last week on two local radio stations, was immediately condemned by Afghan and American officials from President Hamid Karzai on down. So does that mean that ISAF really is going to destroy the farmers' poppyfields? [continues 540 words]
Bush Can't Successfully Fight The "War On Terror" And The "War On Drugs" At The Same Time "Respected people of Helmand," the radio message began, "the soldiers of the International Security Assistance Force and the Afghan National Army do not destroy poppy fields. They know that many people of Afghanistan have no choice but to grow poppy. ISAF and the ANA do not want to stop people from earning their livelihoods." Such a sensible message that it had to be a mistake, and of course it was. [continues 454 words]
"Respected people of Helmand," the radio message began. "The soldiers of the International Security Assistance Force and the Afghan National Army do not destroy poppy fields. "They know that many people of Afghanistan have no choice but to grow poppy. ISAF and the ANA do not want to stop people from earning their livelihoods." It was such a sensible message that it almost had to be a mistake, and of course it was. The message, written by an ISAF officer and broadcast in Helmand province last week on two local radio stations, was immediately condemned by Afghan and American officials from President Hamid Karzai on down. So does that mean that ISAF really is going to destroy the farmers' poppy fields? [continues 751 words]
Respected people of Helmand," the radio message began. "The soldiers of the International Security Assistance Force and the Afghan National Army do not destroy poppy fields. They know that many people of Afghanistan have no choice but to grow poppy. The ISAF and the ANA do not want to stop people from earning their livelihoods." It was such a sensible message that it almost had to be a mistake, and of course it was. The message, written by an ISAF officer and broadcast in Helmand province last week on two local radio stations, was immediately condemned by Afghan and American officials from President Hamid Karzai on down. [continues 764 words]
The Government is right to send extra troops to Afghanistan, which needs all the help it can get. WITHIN days, 300 elite Special Forces troops will go to Oruzgan Province in southern Afghanistan. Later this year, 75 RAAF personnel will be sent to Kandahar to help with air-traffic control, followed by a helicopter contingent next year. The dispatch of extra troops to this long-troubled country, announced on Tuesday by Prime Minister John Howard, will double Australia's deployment to about 1000. Presciently but wisely, Mr Howard has warned of the dangers faced by the troops, who will be under Australian command as part of the International Security Assistance Force. "There is the distinct possibility of casualties, and that should be understood and prepared for by the Australian public," Mr Howard said. [continues 573 words]
MEXICO CITY -- Bloody bodies -- slumped at steering wheels, stacked in pickup trucks, crumpled on sidewalks -- clog nearly every frame of the music video that shook Mexico's criminal underworld. Posted on YouTube and countless Mexican Web sites last year, the video opens with blaring horns and accordions. Valentin Elizalde, a singer known as the "Golden Rooster," croons over images of an open-mouthed shooting victim. "I'm singing this song to all my enemies," he belts out. Elizalde's narcocorrido, or drug trafficker's ballad, sparked what is believed to be an unprecedented cyberspace drug war. Chat rooms filled with accusations that he was promoting the Sinaloa cartel and mocking its rival, the Gulf cartel. Drug lords flooded the Internet with images of beheadings, execution-style shootings and torture. [continues 1071 words]
While watching an Olympic Torch Relay in 2002 pass through his hometown of Juneau, Alaska, Joseph Frederick and several of his classmates unveiled a banner reading "Bong Hits 4 Jesus." He was suspended from school for displaying the banner. In justifying the suspension, the school principal stated that Frederick's banner contained a message contrary to the school's educational policy to discourage drug use. In other words, the principal suspended Frederick because of the content of his speech. Regulating the content of Frederick's speech by suspending him from school is clear violation of Frederick's First Amendment free speech rights. It makes little difference that Frederick did not speak his message. The U.S. Supreme Court has granted First Amendment protections to expressive actions - -- actions with a communicative element -- such as the display of a banner. Frederick's stated purpose in displaying the banner was not to promote drug use, but to exercise his free speech rights. [continues 379 words]
My father is 96. A month ago he shuffled around the house, up and down the stairs - quite well by himself. Then, as he put it, "I fell on my arse!" Oops! Compression fracture of the spine. Treatment: painkillers and bed rest. But, if he is ever to walk again, he must get up regularly and spend two or three hours a day sitting in a chair. The doc prescribes hydrocodone-acetaminophen (Tylenol) with a touch of codeine. That doesn't begin to control the pain if he sits or stands. [continues 476 words]
On March 21, in a speech to mark the fourth anniversary of Australian troops being dispatched to Iraq as part of an illegal US invasion responsible for the deaths of more than half a million Iraqis, Prime Minister John Howard conceded that despite the "surge" in the occupiers' troop numbers "success is by no means assured". He also said, "I am well aware of the sharp political differences that exist in Australia today over Iraq, differences that have existed since the government's initial decision to commit forces four years ago", a reference to the fact that a majority of Australians have always opposed his criminal war. [continues 1166 words]
How else can I sum up my weekly report? I'll try to give you a sense of what filled last week back there on the Hill. First, remember that old TV ad about fitness that said "the average 60-year-old Swede is in better shape than the average 30-year-old Canadian?" (I was never sure how true that was because I knew some portly 60-year-old Swedes who loved inhaling sweets, but whatever.) The point is, the program was called ParticipAction. And guess what? It worked. So we've brought it back to life to get people thinking fitness. [continues 457 words]
Why Canada Shouldn't Pull Its Troops Out Of Afghanistan Camp Julien was set down on a barren plain on the outskirts of Kabul, against a stark, mountainous backdrop. Across the road sat the ghostly, bombed-out remnants of Afghanistan's royal palace. Once a majestic building surrounded by immaculate gardens, it was now a looming reminder of destruction wrought by decades of war. In sturdy canvas tents within the heavily fortified camp, about 1,700 Canadian soldiers slept side-by-side in cots. Everything they ate or drank was shipped in. The only time they left was to go on patrol. [continues 3458 words]
Drunken driving is a serious national problem. So here's a proposal: Wine drinkers would not be arrested for DUI unless they have a blood- alcohol level of .10. But anyone drinking hard liquor would be considered intoxicated at .02. I know it sounds nutty, since drunk is drunk, regardless of what you use to get there. But it's no crazier than the federal law on crack cocaine. Two decades after the great crack scare provoked a draconian response, we still treat it as an unparalleled scourge. [continues 646 words]
For a week and a half in April 2005, one of the favorite warlords of fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar was sitting in a room at the Embassy Suites Hotel in lower Manhattan, not far from where the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center once stood. But Haji Bashar Noorzai, the burly, bearded leader of one of Afghanistan's largest and most troublesome tribes, was not on a mission to case New York City for a terrorist attack. On the contrary, Noorzai, a confidant of the fugitive Taliban overlord, who is a well-known ally of Osama bin Laden's, says he had been invited to Manhattan to prove that he could be of value in America's war on terrorism. "I did not want to be considered an enemy of the United States," Noorzai told TIME. "I wanted to help the Americans and to help the new government in Afghanistan." [continues 4030 words]
WASHINGTON -- In April 2005, federal law enforcement officials summoned reporters to a Manhattan news conference to announce the capture of an Afghan drug lord and Taliban ally. While boasting that he was a big catch -- the Asian counterpart of the Colombian cocaine legend Pablo Escobar -- the officials left out some puzzling details, including why the Afghan, Haji Bashir Noorzai, had risked arrest by coming to New York. Skip to next paragraph United States Drug Enforcement Administration Haji Bashir Noorzai has dealt on and off with the United States since 1990, his lawyer said. The Reach of War Go to Complete Coverage) [continues 1722 words]
WASHINGTON -- In April 2005, federal law enforcement officials summoned reporters to a Manhattan news conference to announce the capture of an Afghan drug lord and Taliban ally. While boasting that he was a big catch -- the Asian counterpart of the Colombian cocaine legend Pablo Escobar -- the officials left out some puzzling details, including why the Afghan, Haji Bashir Noorzai, had risked arrest by coming to New York. Now, with Mr. Noorzai's case likely to come to trial this year, a fuller story about the American government's dealings with him is emerging. [continues 1691 words]
New Strategy For Opium Farmers Necessary For Support Of Mission, Duceppe Warns MONTREAL -- The Canadian government has to work on an international strategy to purchase poppy crops from farmers in Afghanistan in order to stop the heroin trade and end the fighting in the war-ravaged country, Bloc Quebecois Leader Gilles Duceppe said yesterday. In a speech in Montreal, Mr. Duceppe said a new strategy on opium is mandatory if the Canadian government wishes to continue enjoying the Bloc's support for the military mission in Afghanistan. [continues 431 words]
The number of Americans killed while fighting in the Middle East has now topped the number of Americans killed in the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. We're fast approaching 3,000 killed in Iraq. In her weekly column, Ann Coulter recently wrote that if we stayed in Iraq 10 years and lost another 3,000, that would be an acceptable loss if we don't have another terrorist attack on American soil. I disagree. Not just because I think she has the worst legs in America (which would have been unleashed at Abu Ghraib if not in direct violation of the Geneva Accords), but also because I think that Ann (at this point, if I were Ann, I'd insert something like, "Ann, which is short for Hassann"--she does that all the time when referring to Democrats and thinks it's funny) epitomizes the face of false and deceptive bravado that is a hallmark of the far right of American politics. [continues 815 words]
On a dimly lit road in Wazir Akbar Khan, the Upper East Side of Kabul, a couple of street kids gesture toward an unmarked iron gate behind which they assure us we can find what we are looking for. An Afghan guard gives us a wary once-over and opens the gate onto a dark garden at the end of which a door is slightly ajar. I open it and step into a world far removed from the dust-blown avenues of Kabul, where most women wear burqas and the vast majority of the population live in grinding poverty. [continues 2904 words]
While the politicians, diplomats, generals and spies engage in an increasingly academic debate over whether America is winning, losing or indeed has already lost the war in Iraq, the comprehensive nature of its defeat in another, more protracted war was rubbed in this week. According to a report citing United States Government figures, marijuana is now America's most valuable cash crop, worth more than corn and wheat combined. Weed is bigger than cotton in Alabama, than grapes in California and peanuts in Georgia. [continues 765 words]
There are currently 37 countries supplying 30,000 troops to NATO in an effort to help to stabilize the situation in Afghanistan. Canada's contribution to the effort is about 2,500 strong according to the Department of National Defence. Our troops are trying to stabilize a nation and bring it entirely under the control of the Afghan government, in addition to a number of other tasks, including rooting out al-Qaeda and maybe even finding Osama bin Laden. What is making our troops' job so difficult you might ask? Simply put, the country of Afghanistan is largely ruled not by its own government, but by local warlords who can afford to run their own private armies. Those private armies are being paid with money from the opium trade, which brings in enough money to make it impossible to unseat these warlords. [continues 409 words]
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. [continues 739 words]
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 counternarcotics efforts. While the $2.3 billion profit from opium trafficking has helped 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. [continues 143 words]
The DEA Wants the Military to Take a Larger Role in Stopping the Drug Trade, Which Experts Say Finances the Insurgency. WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon, engaged in a difficult fight to defeat a resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan, has resisted entreaties from U.S. anti-narcotics officials to play an aggressive role in the faltering campaign to curb the country's opium trade. Military units in Afghanistan largely overlook drug bazaars, rebuff some requests to take U.S. drug agents on raids and do little to counter the organized crime syndicates shipping the drug to Europe, Asia and, increasingly, the United States, according to officials and documents. [continues 1334 words]
Report: Heroin Trade Thrives U.S. and European efforts to end heroin production in Afghanistan have done little to hamper the drug industry and have hurt the country's poorest people, according to a report by the United Nations and the World Bank. The report, released today, is the latest indication of the difficulties faced by the British-led effort to eradicate Afghanistan's opium crop, which drives the economy in parts of the embattled nation and has helped to fund a resurgence of the Taliban. The report says the cultivation of poppies that produce opium, from which heroin is made, permeates daily life in Afghanistan, and eliminating the illegal drug trade there could take decades. [continues 350 words]
The conservative ideological majority on the U.S. Supreme Court that determined the 2000 election in favor of President Bush should have grown stronger when Bush chose Justice Samuel Alito to replace the moderate Sandra Day O'Connor. Yet in carrying out its first priority, the war on terror, the White House has encountered unwelcome resistance from the court. Objections to Bush's sweeping view of executive power have come not only from liberals and centrists, like Justice Anthony Kennedy but, more remarkably, from Justice Antonin Scalia, who may end up playing a pivotal role in future war-on-terror cases. [continues 1479 words]
New Zealand Troops in Afghanistan Have Destroyed a Haul of Opium With a Potential Street Value of US$12 Million ($18m). The almost one tonne of drugs was confiscated on November 1 by a team of Afghan National Police after they caught up with smugglers on a deserted road. The New Zealand Defence Force in Bamyan received a call from the province's governor Habibi Serabi asking if they could incinerate the drugs. Wooden pellets filled with opium were stacked on top of each other and doused in petrol before being set alight. [continues 177 words]
KABUL, Afghanistan -- Farmers now planting opium poppies in Afghanistan will probably reap a harvest comparable to this year's record crop, in part because insurgents are preventing effective counternarcotics work, officials said Thursday. Planting is under way in southern regions responsible for the bulk of the estimated 6,100 metric tons of Afghan opium produced in the 2005-06 growing season. Anti-drug officials say that despite anti-cultivation campaigns, they foresee little improvement by harvest time next spring. Drug production has skyrocketed since a U.S.-led offensive toppled the Taliban regime five years ago. Last spring's poppy harvest accounted for 92 percent of the global opium supply and was enough to make 610 tons of heroin--more than all the world's addicts consume in a year. [continues 461 words]
KABUL, Afghanistan - Afghan farmers now planting opium poppies will probably reap a harvest comparable to this year's record crop, in part because insurgents are preventing effective counternarcotics work, officials said yesterday. Planting is under way in southern regions responsible for the bulk of the estimated 6,100 tons of Afghan opium produced in the 2005-6 growing season. Drug production has skyrocketed since a U.S.-led offensive toppled the Taliban regime five years ago for giving refuge to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda camps. Last spring's poppy harvest accounted for 92 percent of the global opium supply and was enough to make 610 tons of heroin - more than the world's addicts consume in a year. [continues 203 words]
Lawyer Norine Macdonald Argues That the Campaign to Eradicate Illegal Crops Is Devastating Farmers, Disillusioning Families and Playing Afghans into the Hands of the Taliban Saskatchewan-born lawyer Norine MacDonald has been in Afghanistan since January 2005 to conduct research for the Senlis Council, a security and development policy group. MacDonald, who founded the international think-tank in 2002, is now its president and lead field researcher. Based in Kandahar, MacDonald returns to Canada this week to take part in a Senlis Council symposium on Canada's involvement in Afghanistan. The symposium will discuss the steps that need to be taken to address both security and poverty in Afghanistan. It begins Tuesday in Ottawa at the Marriott Hotel. [continues 1495 words]
The passage of HR 5295 was an expedited affair. On September 19, the Student and Teacher Safety Act of 2006 went to the floor of the House of Representatives without a hearing or vote in committee and was passed by a voice vote of the two dozen or so Representatives in the chamber at the time. "School officials should have the authority to handle potentially dangerous situations and take the steps necessary to intervene when the safety of our children is in jeopardy," said House majority leader John Boehner, praising Kentucky Republican Geoff Davis, the bill's author, in a statement released the same day. But because there was no roll call, there is no way of knowing whether Boehner or the seventeen Republicans who joined Davis as co-sponsors actually turned up for the vote. [continues 1263 words]
Deciding to Fight Inside the old city walls of Peshawar, Pakistan, a half-hour drive from the Afghan border, in a bazaar named after the storytellers who enthralled Central Asian gold and silk merchants with their tales of war and tragic love, sits the 17th-century Mohabat Khan Mosque. It is a place of cool, marble calm amid the dense market streets. Yousaf Qureshi is the prayer leader there and director of the Jamia Ashrafia, a Deobandi madrasa. He had recently announced a pledge by the jewelers' association to pay $1 million to anyone who would kill a Danish cartoonist who caricatured the Prophet Muhammad. Qureshi himself offered $25,000 and a car. I found Qureshi seated on a cushion behind a low glass desk covered with papers and business cards -- ambassadors, N.G.O. workers, Islamic scholars, mujahedeen commanders: he has conversed with them all. His office resembles an antiques shop, the walls displaying oversize prayer beads, knives inlaid with ivory and astrakhan caps. It was day's end, and Qureshi was checking the proofs for his 51st book, called "The Benefits of Koran." [continues 4730 words]
One afternoon this past summer, I shared a picnic of fresh mangos and plums with Abdul Baqi, an Afghan Taliban fighter in his 20's fresh from the front in Helmand Province in southern Afghanistan. We spent hours on a grassy slope under the tall pines of Murree, a former colonial hill station that is now a popular resort just outside Pakistan's capital, Islamabad. All around us was a Pakistani rendition of Georges Seurat's "Sunday on La Grande Jatte" -- middle-class families setting up grills for barbecue, a girl and two boys chasing their errant cow with a stick, two men hunting fowl, boys flying a kite. Much of the time, Abdul Baqi was engrossed in the flight pattern of a Himalayan bird. It must have been a welcome distraction. He had just lost five friends fighting British troops and had seen many others killed or wounded by bombs as they sheltered inside a mosque. [continues 5294 words]
Five years ago, the Taliban regime in Afghanistan fled along with its Arab terrorist allies in the US invasion that followed the Sept 11, 2001 attacks on the United States. Since then, the country has failed to establish a decent, functioning government. Despite much aid and strong support from the United Nations and the world, Afghanistan is in desperate trouble. The viable economy consists almost entirely of opium production and drug trafficking. Terrorism, particularly suicide bombers, threatens life everywhere. The Taliban army, routed but not disintegrated in 2001, has regrouped and remains a deadly military threat. There are open fears in Afghanistan that the Taliban rebels pose an actual threat to central power. The commander of Nato forces, British Gen David Richards, believes the Kabul government and international supporters have as little as six months before the Taliban begin to make major gains. The extremists have survived by mounting tough military resistance in the Afghan mountains. But, says Gen Richards and his Nato staff, the Afghan people are beginning to miss the social order and security of the Taliban days more than they appreciate their current freedom. The Afghanistan government, the United Nations and Nato must solve three major problems if they are to prevent failure. [continues 453 words]
DRUGS AND TERROR: BRITAIN'S ROLE [] Tony Blair's ambition to eradicate opium production in Afghanistan has failed miserably. More poppies are grown than ever, financing the Taliban's resurgence and thus fuelling the war on terror. Britain is caught in a vicious circle in Helmand Province. Its ill-conceived war on drugs in Afghanistan may hand the Taliban a huge victory - the collapse of Nato. It was perhaps appropriate that Britain, as the biggest consumer of Afghan heroin, take on the role of "lead nation" in counter-narcotics in Afghanistan. But this has been prosecuted on the cheap while Nato has refused to back the poppy eradication schemes that the British government regards as critical to the success of the programme. Now the Taliban are making money hand over fist from drugs, ensuring that their forces remain well stocked with weapons. [continues 2294 words]
OTTAWA -- The Harper government plans legislation this week to strengthen Canada's ability to fight terrorism financing and money laundering -- on the heels of a federal watchdog's report that the value of suspected dirty cash it uncovered last year had doubled to $5-billion. Yesterday, the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada, known as Fintrac, said the $5-billion in suspicious transactions detected in its 2006 operating year includes more than $250-million in suspected terrorist-financing. The overall figure is more than double the $2-billion uncovered last year and terrorist funding is up 40 per cent from the previous year. [continues 490 words]
Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) may not have expected his $700 million amendment to the defense-spending bill to pass; Democratic amendments are usually shot down one by one. But the senator's proposal to allocate money for narcotics eradication in Afghanistan passed by voice vote in early September. It won the vote of the Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner (R-Va.) among others, and has support from several key GOP members in the House. One is Rep. Mark Souder (R-Ind.), chairman of the Government Reform subcommittee with jurisdiction over drug policy, who admitted on the House floor last week that he is "not always a big ally of Sen. Schumer." [continues 833 words]
Drug Warriors Are Playing Into The Taliban's Hands After years of hard work by drug warriors in Afghanistan, the country no longer produces 87 percent of the world's illicit opium. Now it produces 92 percent, according to the latest suspiciously precise estimate from the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). On Tuesday, citing ties between opium trafficking and the Taliban insurgency, UNODC Executive Director Antonio Maria Costa called upon NATO forces in Afghanistan to get more involved in efforts to stamp out the opium trade. This is exactly the right strategy to pursue if the aim is to alienate the Afghan people, undermine their government, and strengthen the insurgency. [continues 571 words]
