WASHINGTON - With Afghanistan's record poppy crop supplying nearly all the world's heroin, lawmakers are questioning the Pentagon's narcotics-fighting efforts there. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) yesterday demanded that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld explain why he only requested $18 million to fight Afghan drug trafficking, which has helped fuel the Taliban's violent resurgence. The U.S. military has only mounted three joint combat operations to hit opium processing labs with U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration commando teams since agents arrived in Kabul 18 months ago, sources told the Daily News. [continues 203 words]
WASHINGTON - DEA agents are eager to hammer Colombian drug thugs in Haiti after an ambush last month in which an American narc single- handedly fought off more than a dozen gunmen, U.S. officials told the New York Daily News. The Drug Enforcement Administration agent, his wife and a female U.S. Embassy official escaped unharmed from the previously undisclosed roadside firefight on Feb. 16, a week into the uprising that toppled ex- President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. "The DEA is eager to improve drug enforcement efforts in Haiti," DEA Administrator Karen Tandy told The Daily News. "Although events are still unfolding, we hope to have opportunities to do so in the near future." [continues 217 words]
