KABUL, Afghanistan – Profits from Afghanistan’s thriving poppy fields are increasingly flowing to Taliban fighters, leading U.S. and NATO officials to conclude that the counterinsurgency mission must now include stepped-up anti-drug efforts.
This year’s heroin-producing poppy crop will at least match last year’s record haul and could exceed it by up to 20 percent, officials say, meaning more money to fuel the Taliban’s violent insurgency.
“You have to deal with both at the same time,” Ronald Neumann, who recently stepped down as U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, said of the link between anti-drug and anti-terrorism efforts.
Afghanistan accounts for more than 90 percent of the world’s heroin supply, and a significant portion of the profits from the $3.1 billion trade is thought to flow to Taliban fighters, who tax and protect poppy farmers and drug runners.
Drug control has not been part of the official mandate of international forces in Afghanistan. But there is a growing push for NATO’s International Security Assistance Force to play a more active role in sharing intelligence and detecting drug convoys and heroin labs, said Daan Everts, NATO’s senior civilian official in Afghanistan.
There is “increasing international interest in seeing a more assertive supportive role in ISAF in the counternarcotics strategy implementation,” he said before quickly adding that it would not include eradication.
International forces also might provide support for operations targeting senior drug traffickers, Neumann said.
Military commanders who viewed drugs as a minor irritant in 2002, when poppy production was much lower, have reassessed the importance of the vast fields of red and white poppies their soldiers drive past in security convoys, said a Western official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he didn’t want to be seen as criticizing the military.
It’s too early to say definitively what this year’s crop will be. But another Western official with knowledge of the drug trade said it could exceed last year’s record 407,000 acres by as much as 20 percent. The official declined to give his name because of the nature of his work.
The United States would like to see Afghanistan undertake ground-based spraying of poppy fields with herbicides. But some Afghan Cabinet members have expressed reservations about the effect on legitimate crops or livestock.
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