Drug trade questions ‘integrity’ of Afghan government: US
By Our Correspondent
WASHINGTON, Aug. 18: The US State Department said on Friday that a sudden increase in the production of illicit drugs in Afghanistan was ‘a problem for the integrity’ of the Afghan government.
Recent reports by the UN and other agencies suggest that the production of poppies and opium in Afghanistan has almost doubled over the last year.
“This is a serious problem. It’s a problem for the integrity of the government of Afghanistan,” the department’s deputy spokesman Tom Casey told a briefing in Washington.
Acknowledging that the US government considers poppy production in Afghanistan to be a major problem, Mr Casey said the illicit drug trade “helps promote violence (and) can potentially be used as a source of funding for all kinds of criminal activities, including terrorism.”
The United States, he said, had been working actively with the Afghan government on a variety of programmes designed to help reduce production as well as interdict drugs.
He said he did not have statistics to confirm or deny reports suggesting a steep rise in the production of poppy and opium in Afghanistan but the US government has a plan to deal with the situation.
The plan will be implemented “in a more serious way, as more funds have been made available in this year’s budget,” he added.
Agencies add: The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation’s top general appealed to the international community on Thursday to do more to curb Afghanistan’s growing drug trade, which he said is helping finance a resurgent Taliban and fuelling instability.
“It certainly cries out for more international focus,” said U.S. Marine Corps Gen. James Jones, NATO’s supreme allied commander Europe.
Gen Jones, briefing reporters at the Pentagon, also said NATO troops who assumed control of security in volatile southern Afghanistan on July 31 would aim to improve stability gradually in the region in the coming months.
Afghanistan is experiencing its most violent period since 2001, with U.S. and NATO forces pitted against a resistance concentrated in the south and east.
“The international community understands that we have to have more success in the narcotics field, and we have to do that in the fairly near future,” Gen Jones said.
Ninety percent of the Afghan drug output is sold in Europe, with profits used ‘to finance at least some part of the terrorist organisations that are doing battle with us in Afghanistan’, Gen Jones said.
Narcotics money is supporting violent drug cartels, resurgent Taliban militants and possibly the Al Qaeda network, as well as contributing to tribal warfare, the Nato commander said.
