"There is a tendency to characterise all of the violence in Afghanistan as the resurgence of the Taliban," said US General James Jones, the alliance's supreme allied commander Europe. "This is inaccurate. It doesn't capture the nature of the problem." He said the violence had other causes, including "the strong presence of the drug cartels which have their own infrastructure, their own export system, their own security system "
Afghanistan won't spray poppy plants By JASON STRAZIUSO, Associated Press Writer
Thu Jan 25, 4:20 PM ET
KABUL, Afghanistan - Rebuffing months of U.S. pressure, Afghan President Hamid Karzai decided against a Colombia-style program to spray this country's heroin-producing poppies after the Cabinet worried herbicide would hurt legitimate crops, animals and humans, officials said Thursday.
The decision, reportedly made Sunday, dashes U.S. hopes for mounting a campaign using ground sprayers to poison poppy plants to help combat Afghanistan's opium trade after a record crop in 2006.
Karzai instead "made a very strong commitment" to lead other eradication efforts this year and said if that didn't cut production he would allow spraying in 2008, a Western official said on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.
The spokesman for Afghanistan's Ministry of Counternarcotics, Said Mohammad Azam, said this year's effort will rely on "traditional techniques" _ sending laborers into fields to trample or plow under opium poppies before they can be harvested. A similar campaign during 2006 failed.
Fueled by the Taliban, a powerful drug mafia and poor farmers' need for a profitable crop that can overcome drought, opium production from poppies in Afghanistan last year rose 49 percent to 6,700 tons _ enough to make about 670 tons of heroin. That is more than 90 percent of the world's supply and more than the world's addicts consume in a year.
The booming drug economy, and the involvement of government officials and police in the illicit trade, compounds the many problems facing Afghanistan's fledgling democracy as its struggles with stepped-up attacks by insurgents loyal to the former Taliban regime.
Top Cabinet members _ including the agriculture, defense and rural redevelopment ministers _ pressured Karzai to reject the spraying plan, saying herbicide would contaminate water, hurt humans, farm animals and legitimate produce, officials said.
The ministers also feared a violent backlash from rural Afghans, the Western official said.
Afghan farmers have sometimes turned to violence to protect poppy plants, which are harvested in the spring and whose profits are believed to flow partly to Taliban militants. Police said two eradication workers were wounded by gunmen Wednesday in western Herat province.
"We're happy with Karzai's decision. Spraying affects the animals and vegetables, even humans," said Asadullah Wafa, the governor of the top drug-producing province, Helmand.
"There is another way to eradicate, like launching operations through all the districts, and I hope the international community will give us tractors and provide more troops to destroy poppies."
U.S. officials have said the herbicide in question _ glyphosate, sold as Roundup in the United States _ is safe. It would have been applied by ground spraying rather than planes to allay Afghan fears of chemicals falling from the sky.
U.S. Ambassador Ronald Neumann said this week that Afghanistan has eradicated 1,483 acres of poppies so far this year _ compared to none by the same time last year.
Still, that's only a fraction of the 407,000 acres of poppies that were cultivated in 2006, including 173,000 acres in Helmand province alone, according to U.N. figures.
There were indications the U.S. was ready to implement spraying if Karzai had approved the project.
"We're prepared to do spraying if the Afghans want us to do it," said Gregory Lagana, a spokesman for Virginia-based DynCorp International Inc., which runs the U.S.-backed aerial eradication campaign in Colombia and is also present in Afghanistan.
U.S. and Afghan officials agree eradication must be matched with a crackdown on traffickers as well as programs to help farmers switch to legal crops and get their produce to market. Few Afghan crops can be transported far without spoiling or damage because of insecurity and poor roads. By comparison, poppy resin, the main ingredient in heroin, can keep for years.
Karzai's decision capped months of behind-the-scenes pressure to allow spraying like that already used in countries such as Colombia, where coca plants supply much of world's cocaine.
Just last month, John Walters, top U.S. anti-drug official, said Afghan poppies would be sprayed, although he did not say when. Walters, on a visit to Kabul, warned that Afghanistan could turn into a narco-state unless "giant steps" were made toward eliminating poppies.
However, no top Afghan officials had said publicly the government would carry out spraying.
Joe Mellott, spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan, said the U.S. still "stands ready to assist the Afghans if they want to use herbicide."
"We always said that the ground-based spraying is a decision for the Afghans to make," he said. "We understand they are going to focus on a robust manual and mechanical program to eradicate poppies this year."
Radio Netherlands Press Review Service
Tuesday 30 January 2007
Afghan opium
Trouw reports that the Netherlands doesn't want opium poppy fields destroyed in Uruzgan, the Afghan region where its troops are operating. The initiative to destroy newly sown opium fields follows pressure from the US.
However, Dutch Development Co-operation Minister Agnes van Ardenne says: "We've only just managed to gain the trust of small-scale local farmers. We shouldn't hit them hard right now".
The Dutch believe that a policy to tackle the opium trade, which the US says finances terrorism, should not just target farmers. The people who orchestrate the drugs trade must also be dealt with.
On an inside page, Trouw prints a photo of a Dutch soldier entertaining Afghan children with his bicycling tricks. It poses the question whether the Dutch mission in Afghanistan, due to end in 2008, should be extended.
Several more good reasons to end the idiotic war on drugs. Thanks guys.
Taliban town seizure throws Afghan policy into disarray
Musa Qala's fall jeopardised the entire UK strategy. Now a fight is on to take it back. Jason Burke reports from Kandahar
Sunday February 4, 2007
The Observer
Nato and Afghan national forces were preparing yesterday to launch a potentially bloody assault on a crucial southern town recaptured last week by the Taliban.
Musa Qala, in the mountains of northern Helmand province, had been a stronghold of Taliban insurgents and a scene of fierce battles with British troops before a controversial truce came into force three months ago. The truce, negotiated by local authorities and the village elders, was widely criticised as a concession to the insurgents, though British commanders defended the agreement as 'pioneering'.
General David Richards, the commander of Nato forces in Afghanistan, had been a staunch supporter of the Musa Qala truce. Yesterday he said he had discussed the loss of the town with the Afghan President, Hamid Karzai. 'What is important is that we look after the brave people who had the courage to stand up to the pretty vicious hoods that are now intimidating them,' Richards said. 'We will put the tribal elders back in control of Musa Qala and we will kick out the Taliban and defeat them.'
General Zahir Azimai, of the Afghan National Army, said that there was a plan to retake the town which would 'be launched soon'.
The insurgents had attacked late on Thursday afternoon, between two and three hundred strong, some moving through the fields, others in pick-up trucks and on motorbikes on the dusty tracks. Within an hour they had taken over the town, disarmed the local police, imprisoned the elders and destroyed the police station and district governor's office with tractors. The recently-hoisted national flag of Afghanistan no longer flew over the small compound of government offices. The Taliban was back, and though its fighters had dispersed yesterday to avoid Nato air strikes, they were still very much in control. It was not exactly the change of flags that coalition commanders had expected.
Today General Richards hands over command of the 31,000 Nato troops in Afghanistan to his successor, the American General Dan McNeill. For Richards and his British headquarters team, the several months of peace at Musa Qala that followed the controversial truce, concluded last October, were the vindication of a daring and clever policy. With minimal resources Richards has succeeded in at least containing what was a fast-growing insurgency. But with the Taliban back in the town, Richards's departure has been badly tarnished.
Though Musa Qala itself is far from strategically sited, on a small plateau on the southern rim of Afghanistan's central mountainous core, the reasons for its notoriety are many. It was here that the newly arrived Parachute Regiment soldiers got bogged down in fortified bunkers last summer. Scenes of beleaguered British soldiers - six were killed - holding off Taliban attacks night after night made claims by Des Browne, the Defence Secretary, that the new deployment into the violent and unstable Helmand province might be done without a shot being fired look risible.
In order to extricate the British troops, end the fighting and, hopefully, allow the reconstruction and development work that is seen as so crucial in 'winning the consent' of the local people, General Richards assented to withdraw his men five kilometres (three miles) from Musa Qala as his part of an agreement negotiated by the recently appointed provincial governor and local elders. Approved by President Karzai, the deal meant that the elders would allow government officers into the town, allow the Afghan national flag to be flown and keep out the local Taliban groups, led by a cleric called Mullah Ghaffour.
Richards, his commanders, Downing Street and the United Nations see the reconstitution of a strong local administration, police and army as essential to the successful development of Afghanistan - and to the exit of British forces. So even last week senior British officers were speaking positively of a second Musa Qala-style agreement in another northern Helmand town of Nawzad.
But opposition to the Musa Qala agreement did not just come from the Taliban forced to leave the town. American officials have poured scorn on the deal, saying that it was a truce with the insurgents, and briefing heavily against it in Washington. The competence and even the fighting will of the British was questioned.
General McNeill, nicknamed 'Bomber' because of his taste for air power, is known to be 'far from a fan'. American diplomats said drily last week that they did not see the deal as 'a model in any way'. British officers last week described American and UK relations as 'at an all-time low'.
The truth is that the Musa Qala agreement went right to the heart of doctrinal differences among Nato allies. The Americans favour a 'kinetic approach' that is, in the words of one British senior soldier, 'a lot less carrot, a lot more stick and considerably more projectiles'.
The Musa Qala agreement began to unravel, after three months of relative peace, last week. Encouraged by the new provincial governor indicating that he was planning to be harder on the Taliban than before, local elders in Musa Qala, possibly armed by the Afghan government, disarmed Mullah Ghaffour, the key local Taliban commander, and forced him to leave the town. Then came a Nato bombing raid by an American B-1B stealth jet just outside the five-kilometre exclusion zone around the town which narrowly missed Ghaffour but killed his brother and 20 followers. Incensed, suspecting that the elders had given away his hiding place, the militant set about gathering his forces. On an individual level, in local Pashtun society, a man's honour depends on exacting revenge. And Ghaffour had allies.
The fatal flaw in the Musa Qala agreement was the tribal factor. Afghan society is still heavily tribal, especially in the south and east where the Pashtun ethnic group is dominant. Main Pashtun tribes are split again and again into sub-tribes and clans. As they have done for centuries, all squabble incessantly over scarce resources but, if a just distribution of money, drugs, guns, access to education, water, business opportunities (legal or illegal), political and administrative power is reached, then a fragile stability can emerge. In Helmand it is the Alozai tribe who are dominant. But the Alozai is split into a dozen smaller groupings and it was one of these splinter factions that, in the chaos of the fall of the Taliban in 2001, grabbed a lion's share of power.
When negotiation, lobbying and even participation in Afghanistan's recent elections failed, violence became the other clans' best option. And with northern Helmand packed with drug traffickers, poverty-stricken labourers and farmers, as well as a handful of radical religious militants such as Mullah Ghaffour already armed and ready, a tribal war party was not difficult to raise.
It was this very Afghan, very combustible mixture of tribe, religion and hard cash that undermined the carefully stacked house of cards that was the Musa Qala agreement - and with it a key part of the credibility of the British strategy in Afghanistan.
So what happens now? Nato planners predict that, following defeats in conventional pitched battles last year, the Taliban will shift to 'asymmetric tactics', such as suicide bombings. But the rough coalition of religious fanatics, disaffected tribes, drug-dealers and the poor and the resentful are more likely to return to what brought them success in 2004 and 2005: lightning raids on isolated government outposts, night ambushes on road traffic, and intimidation of officials, teachers, and NGOs.
General Richards has banned the words 'Taliban spring offensive' as defeatist, speaking of a Nato spring campaign instead. Whatever the name, the next months will be busy.
US 'not to repeat Afghan errors'
The US will not repeat its error of neglecting Afghanistan and allowing extremists to take over, Defence Secretary Robert Gates says.
He was speaking after talks in neighbouring Pakistan with President Pervez Musharraf.
Nato and Afghan forces are preparing for a Taleban offensive this spring.
On Sunday the governor of Afghanistan's southern Helmand province said up to 700 insurgents had crossed from Pakistan to fight British forces.
Afghanistan and Pakistan share a 1,400-mile (2,250km) mountainous border.
Taleban and al-Qaeda fighters are thought to be operating on both sides of the border which is extremely difficult to patrol.
'Long haul'
Mr Gates was on his first trip to Pakistan since becoming US Defence Secretary.
"My first visits to Pakistan were over 20 years ago and were in connection with our mutual effort to help the Afghans drive the Soviet troops from their territory," he told journalists.
"After the Soviets left, the United States made a mistake. We neglected Afghanistan and extremism took control of that country.
"We won't make that mistake again. We are here for the long haul."
Mr Gates said that in his talks with the Pakistan government he had discussed ways that Pakistan could work with US commanders in Afghanistan to pressure insurgents on both sides of the border.
He said the allies had a chance to deal a strategic setback to the Taleban and described Pakistan as a very strong ally.
The BBC's Barbara Plett in Islamabad says that Mr Gates did not repeat criticism expressed by other US and Nato officials that Islamabad is not going after Taleban fighters who take refuge on its soil.
President Musharraf has admitted there are weak points in policing the border and that the Taleban do get support from within Pakistan.
But he has strongly denied any official backing for the Taleban.
He has also refused to take sole responsibility for the border, saying that border security must be a joint effort with forces on the Afghan side.
Our correspondent says that Western officials acknowledge President Musharraf's difficulties, but they are afraid that the Taleban are using Pakistan to prepare for a spring offensive. More high-level visits here are expected to Pakistan shortly.
Gen Musharraf's government has also come under fire for pacts with tribal militants in the North and South Waziristan areas. Critics say the deals give Taleban fighters based there freedom to go where they please.
The new Nato commander in Afghanistan, Gen Dan McNeill, says that 2,000 extra troops are needed to patrol the border with Pakistan.
There are currently around 33,000 troops from 37 nations in Afghanistan.
Afghan warlords in amnesty rally
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Supporters say future peace depends on the amnesty
Around 25,000 people have rallied in the Afghan capital Kabul, calling for a proposed war crimes amnesty for former military commanders to be made law.
The protesters, who gathered in a stadium, included ex-mujahideen and several top government officials.
The upper house of parliament has passed the controversial bill but it has yet to be signed by the president.
Tens of thousands of people were killed and tortured during decades of war and unrest in the country.
If the bill were to become law, those who led fighting first as leaders of the anti-Soviet resistance during the 1980s and then during the 1992-1996 civil war would be immune to prosecution for war crimes.
International rights groups and the UN have voiced opposition to the proposal, saying justice must be done.
The protesters, waving placards with pictures of political leaders, gathered in the city's Ghazi football stadium, where people were executed and tortured during the Taleban era.
"Whoever is against mujahideen is against Islam and they are the enemies of this country," former fighter Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, now an influential lawmaker, told the crowd of demonstrators.
The use of force did not serve the British imperial army, and it is not going to serve anyone else. The solution lies in negotiations
Maulvi Nek Zaman, member of parliament for the North Waziristan tribal district
United against Nato and the west
By M Ilyas Khan
BBC News, North Waziristan
The Waziristan area contains many groups with different aims
Taleban and al-Qaeda insurgents in Pakistan's tribal region bordering Afghanistan have shown themselves to be a monolithic force capable of highly co-ordinated action.
But a closer look at the militants reveals an array of widely divergent groups with just one thing in common - the determination to force Western troops out of Afghanistan.
This one-point agenda is used by the tribal clerics affiliated with the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam party to provide these groups with a veneer of ideological unity.
The whole arrangement stands in sharp contrast to the inability or unwillingness of the Pakistani government to exploit differences between these groups.
