Nato won’t join in Afghanistan’s poppy eradication
KABUL: The Nato military force in Afghanistan said on Wednesday it would not take part in eradication of opium poppy fields, despite calls by UN and the Afghan government for its troops to get involved.
The International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said however it was supporting the US-backed government in its war on drugs by providing training to Afghan security forces, and sharing information and logistics.
“The Nato/ISAF mission does not allow for ISAF to be directly involved in poppy eradication,” spokesman Major Charles Anthony told reporters in the capital Kabul.
Afghanistan produces about 93 per cent of the world’s production illegal opium, the raw ingredient for heroin.
The crop jumped by a third this year despite international efforts costing millions of dollars. Most of the production is in areas where the Taliban-led insurgency is at its fiercest.
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime appealed for ISAF to get involved when it released a survey last month showing that opium production had risen to a record high.
The Afghan government has made a similar call, saying it had asked the international forces based here to clear insurgents from opium-growing areas so its own forces can move in to destroy the illegal crop.
Experts say the multi-billion-dollar drugs trade finances the Taliban insurgency, which has in the past two years grown to its highest level.
In an interview published on Wednesday, the senior UN envoy to Afghanistan, Tom Koenigs, criticised the 3,000 German troops here for not playing a role in fighting drugs.
“I think the German army stationed there should support the police in the fight against drugs and drug laboratories and not say: ‘That has got nothing to do with us,’” Koenigs, a German, told the Berliner Zeitung newspaper.
Nato Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said last week that the Afghan government and international aid agencies needed to do more against the country’s burgeoning illicit heroin exports.—AFP
