Afghan drug fight may grow

The Associated Press and The Washington Post

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WASHINGTON — Drug-enforcement agencies asked Congress for an additional $780 million yesterday to fight the rapidly expanding heroin trade in Afghanistan.

Assistant Secretary of State Robert Charles said the new money would go for a broad effort to eradicate poppies, help provide alternative crops or livelihoods for growers, find and prosecute traffickers and destroy production labs.

Afghanistan ranks as the world's largest producer of heroin, with more than 450 square miles of poppies under cultivation.

Most of the opium produced by Afghanistan goes to Europe, not the United States, feeding 95 percent of Europe's heroin demand.

But the drug business has become a critical strategic concern for U.S. authorities because it helps finance the activities of insurgents and regional warlords.

The Drug Enforcement Administration said about 895 pounds of heroin were seized in Afghanistan in 2002, before interdiction began. During the first nine months of 2004, about 32,850 pounds were seized, the agency said.

In an impoverished country with an average per-capita income of less than $200 a year, the cash lure of the poppy is hard to resist.

The U.S. plan calls for eradicating an area five to seven times larger than the nearly 10,000 acres of poppy fields destroyed this year.

The destruction is to be offset by more than $100 million in aid to Afghan farmers to plant wheat, barley, corn and other crops and for other rural economic-development projects.
 
A special Afghan interdiction force, trained by the British, and other Afghan counternarcotics police units will be expanded.

The $780 million next year would be on top of several billion to be spent for aid to the new government of President Hamid Karzai and to pay for the lingering war in Afghanistan.

Congress recently approved $977 million in economic and military assistance for Afghanistan next year, making the country one of the largest recipients of foreign aid. The money includes $400 million to help train and equip the Afghan army, $350 million more than this year.

Separately, the Pentagon is spending an average of $769 million a month in Afghanistan.

The intensified campaign stops short of using U.S. troops to target opium labs and attack drug kingpins.

At the Pentagon's insistence, U.S. forces will be limited to supporting Afghan law-enforcement efforts by providing airlift and intelligence leads to Afghan police and by helping tighten security along Afghanistan's borders, administration officials said.