Afghan corruption sustains drug business

NY Times:

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The government of President Hamid Karzai has shielded the cultivation of poppies from American eradication efforts, which the Pentagon and its international partners have not pursued aggressively, according to the author, Thomas Schweich, who was the senior counternarcotics official in the United States Embassy in Kabul for two years.

The combined failure has turned Afghanistan into a virtual narco-state, he writes in the article, posted online on Wednesday night.

Opium production skyrocketed in Afghanistan in 2006 and ’07, making the country the supplier of 90 percent of the world’s heroin.

Coming from an insider, the accusations are especially embarrassing to all concerned, but in particular to Mr. Karzai, whom Mr. Schweich accuses of protecting corrupt senior officials.

Mr. Schweich, now a visiting professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis, says there is a lack of will within the Afghan government to prosecute corrupt officials who are benefiting from the drug trade for fear of losing their political support.

Narcotics corruption reaches right to the top of the government, and drug traffickers buy off hundreds of police chiefs, judges and other officials around the country, he says.

Abdul Jabbar Sabit, the attorney general who was recently removed from his post, had a list of 20 senior Afghan officials who were deeply corrupt, some of them tied to the narcotics trade, Mr. Schweich writes. But Mr. Sabit had been warned by Mr. Karzai to leave them alone, Mr. Schweich says.

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The US and particularly the UK have been too timid in dealing with this problem. So far we have resisted the most direct route around the corruption which would be to eradicate the poppy production. In places like Bolivia the poppy crops are being replaced with rice because it is more lucrative for the farmers. The same would be true in Afghanistan and the farmers would have no need for the Taliban to market their crops.

There have been some efforts to bringing farmers to teach the Afghans modern agriculture techniques. More are needed.

We also need more actions like those by the Marines in the Garmser area which deny the Taliban access to the crops.