Jeremy Renner Ready To ‘Kill The Messenger’ In Film About CIA-Smeared Journo Gary Webb

[777man]

69. Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction John Sopko

Last edited Wed Apr 2, 2014, 02:57 AM - Edit history (2)

CIA reportedly employed several operatives, warlords and militant leaders deeply involved in Afghan opium trade
http://wtfrly.com/2014/03/21/cia-reportedly-employed-several-operatives-warlords-and-militant-leaders-deeply-involved-in-afghan-opium-trade/


SOURCE:
US funding ghost workers across Afghanistan: Report

US funding ghost workers across Afghanistan: Report
(PHOTO) US marines patrol through a poppy field in Helmand province.

Wed Mar 19, 2014 7:36PM GMT


A senior western audit officer has raised fresh concerns that US funds meant to help pay Afghan police salaries may instead be going to "ghost workers".

"I am writing to express my concern that the US may be unwittingly helping to pay the salaries of non-existent members of the Afghan National Police," John Sopko, the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction wrote in recent letter to top US-led NATO generals.

The revelation comes as the US and Afghan officials have blamed each other for embezzlement and corruption.

Afghan officials accuse the US of channeling funds to the Taliban militant group.

Afghan lawmakers say American helicopters have recently delivered several shipments of small arms and heavy weapons to the militants in southern provinces.

Senior officials in Kabul have also demanded an explanation from Washington over its aid to the Taliban.

Senior Afghan officials say the US military aid to the Taliban and its covert talks with the militants have raised serious doubts regarding the Washington’s goals in the war-torn country.

In addition to that, the Afghan counter-narcotics officials say foreign troops are also earning money from drug production in Afghanistan.

Reports say US-led NATO forces are taxing the production of opium in the regions under their control.

Drug production in the war-ravaged country has increased dramatically since the US-led invasion more than twelve years ago.

CIA has reportedly employed several operatives, warlords and militant leaders who are deeply involved in the opium trade.

The opium trade is the major source of Taliban financing. Afghanistan is the world's biggest supplier of opium.

Latest developments come as senior US officials say Washington has no plan to withdraw all of its troops from Afghanistan even after the 2014 pullout deadline.

JR/AB


http://www.presstv.com/detail/2014/03/19/355369/us-funding-ghost-workers-in-afghanistan/


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Opium Poppy Growth Booming In Afghanistan
January 19, 2014 8:00 AM
The U.S. has sent billions of dollars to Afghanistan for drug eradication, but to little effect. NPR's Rachel Martin speaks with Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction John Sopko, who testified on the hill Wednesday about the future of counternarcotics efforts in Afghanistan.
JOHN SOPKO: They're growing more poppy now and introducing more opium than ever before
http://www.npr.org/2014/01/19/263921185/opium-poppy-growth-booming-in-afghanistan






Afghan opium production on the rise despite U.S. troops, inspector says
Wednesday Jan 15, 2014 12:11 PM (excerpt)

Citing the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime, Sopkp said the cultivation of poppy plants — used to make opium and its derivative drugs such as heroin — is greater today than in 2001 when the United States invaded Afghanistan.

Indeed, he said it’s the highest in modern history.

In 2012, Afghanistan produced 3,700 tons of opium, he said in his prepared remarks. In 2013, opium production was up almost 50 percent, with 5,500 tons produced.

Last year the amount of land used to cultivate opium poppies reached a record high of 209,000 hectares (about 516,000 acres) — up from 74,000 hectares (183,000 acres) in 2002, he said.

Sopko said the uptick in opium production and poppy cultivation are signs that the Afghan National Security Forces may be encouraging production.

http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2014/01/15/22316414-afghan-opium-production-on-the-rise-despite-us-troops-inspector-says


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March 20, 2014
Afghanistan Reconstruction

Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction John Sopko provided an update on the U.S. military’s withdrawal from Afghanistan and addressed future operations in the region and the upcoming elections. He focused on the problem of corruption and said that if corruption continued unabated in Afghanistan it would likely jeopardize all the gains made in the country in the past twelve years. He responded to questions from members of the audienc

http://www.c-span.org/video/?318383-1/ig-john-sopko-afghanistan-reconstruction
http://www.sigar.mil/pdf/alerts/SIGAR_14-4-SP.pdf

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Afghanistan's Opium Trade Tripled After US Spends $10 Billion
Image: Afghanistan's Opium Trade Tripled After US Spends $10 Billion
Thursday, 16 Jan 2014 11:27 AM
By Courtney Coren
http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/Afghanistan-drugs-US-10billion/2014/01/16/id/547454/

UN: Afghan Opium Production Hits Record High
Image: UN: Afghan Opium Production Hits Record High
Wednesday, 13 Nov 2013 03:30 AM
http://www.newsmaxworld.com/GlobalTalk/afghanistan-opium-record-high/2013/11/13/




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The Spoils of War: Afghanistan’s Multibillion Dollar Heroin Trade
Washington's Hidden Agenda: Restore the Drug Trade January, 2014
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-spoils-of-war-afghanistan-s-multibillion-dollar-heroin-trade/91


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Washington Supports the Multibillion Dollar Trade in Heroin? UN Report: Afghanistan Opium Production Up 49 Per Cent
By Global Research News
Global Research, February 23, 2014
United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime 13 November 2014
http://www.globalresearch.ca/washington-supports-the-multibillion-dollar-trade-in-heroin-un-report-afghanistan-opium-production-up-49-per-cent/5368846
http://www.unodc.org/documents/crop-monitoring/Afghanistan/Afghan_report_Summary_Findings_2013.pdf





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Israel and the Iran-Contra Scandal: How Neocons Messed Up the Mideast
By Robert Parry
Global Research, February 15, 2013
http://www.globalresearch.ca/israel-and-the-iran-contra-scandal-how-neocons-messed-up-the-mideast/5323076





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Afghan drug trade thrives with help, and neglect, of officials

By Tom Lasseter McClatchy NewspapersMay 10, 2009 '

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2009/05/10/67723/afghan-drug-trade-thrives-with.html



Karzai's brother threatened McClatchy writer reporting Afghan drug story

By Tom Lasseter McClatchy NewspapersMay 10, 2009
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2009/05/10/67823/karzais-brother-threatened-mcclatchy.html




Only small-time Afghan drug dealers serve time

By Tom Lasseter McClatchy NewspapersMay 10, 2009
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2009/05/10/67721/only-small-time-afghan-drug-dealers.html#storylink=relast





West looked the other way as Afghan drug trade exploded

By Tom Lasseter McClatchy Newspapers May 10, 2009

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2009/05/10/67722/west-looked-the-other-way-as-afghan.html#storylink=relast


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Thriving Afghan drug trade has friends in high places
By Tom Lasseter, Mcclatchy Newspapers – Sun May 10, 6:00 am ET
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — When it's harvest time in the poppy fields of Kandahar , dust-covered Taliban fighters pull up on their motorbikes to collect a 10 percent tax on the crop. Afghan police arrive in Ford Ranger pickups — bought with U.S. aid money — and demand their cut of the cash in exchange for promises to skip the farms during annual eradication.

Then, usually late one afternoon, a drug trafficker will roll up in his Toyota Land Cruiser with black-tinted windows and send a footman to pay the farmers in cash. The farmers never see the boss, but they suspect that he's a local powerbroker who has ties to the U.S.-backed Afghan government.

Everyone wants a piece of the action, said farmer Abdul Satar , a thin man with rough hands who tends about half an acre of poppy just south of Kandahar . "There is no one to complain to," he said, sitting in the shade of an orange tree. "Most of the government officials are involved."

Afghanistan produces more than 90 percent of the world's opium, which was worth some $3.4 billion to Afghan exporters last year. For a cut of that, Afghan officials open their highways to opium and heroin trafficking, allow public land to be used for growing opium poppies and protect drug dealers.

The drug trade funnels hundreds of millions of dollars each year to drug barons and the resurgent Taliban , the militant Islamist group that's killed an estimated 450 American troops in Afghanistan since 2001 and seeks to overthrow the fledgling democracy here.

What's more, Afghan officials' involvement in the drug trade suggests that American tax dollars are supporting the corrupt officials who protect the Taliban's efforts to raise money from the drug trade, money the militants use to buy weapons that kill U.S. soldiers.

Islam forbids the use of opium and heroin — the Taliban outlawed poppy growing in 2000 — but the militants now justify the drug production by saying it's not for domestic consumption but rather to sell abroad as part of a holy war against the West. Under the Taliban regime, the biggest Afghan opium crop was roughly 4,500 tons in 1999, far below the record 8,200 tons in 2007.

The booming drug trade threatens the stability of the Afghan government, and with it America's efforts to defeat the Taliban and al Qaida in Afghanistan . The threat has grown not only because of the cozy relationships among drug lords, militants and corrupt officials, but also because of apathy by Western powers.

From the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan after the 9-11 attacks until last year, the United States and other NATO countries did little to address the problem, according to a Western counter-narcotics official in Afghanistan .

"We all realized that it will take a long time to win this war, but we can lose it in a couple years if we don't take this (drug) problem by the horns," said the official, who asked for anonymity so that he could speak more freely.

To unravel the ties among militants, opium and the government, McClatchy interviewed more than two dozen current and past Afghan officials, poppy farmers and others familiar with the drug trade. Seven former Afghan governors and security commanders said they had firsthand knowledge of local or national officials who were transporting or selling drugs or protecting those who did.

Most of the sources feared retribution. One man was killed a week after he spoke to McClatchy . Another called back a week after the interview and said he hadn't left his home in days, fearful that McClatchy's calls to verify his story would bring trouble. A third met on the condition that a reporter promised not to tell anyone that he still lives in Kabul .

"In this country, if someone really tells the truth he will have no place to live," said Agha Saqeb, who served as the provincial police chief in Kandahar , in the heart of Afghanistan's opium belt, from 2007 to 2008. Naming Afghan officials who profit from drugs, he said, would get him killed: "They are still in power and they could harm me."

The embassies of the U.S., Britain and Canada — the countries principally behind counter-narcotics in Afghanistan — declined to comment. A State Department report issued earlier this year flatly noted that: "Many Afghan government officials are believed to profit from the drug trade."

It also said: "Regrettably, no major drug trafficker has been arrested or convicted in Afghanistan since 2006."

U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration officials in Kabul also refused to comment. Afghan and Western observers said the DEA had been hampered by inadequate staffing and by the difficulty of cracking down on drug trafficking in a country where local officials were implicated in it.

The corruption allegedly reaches the highest levels of Afghanistan's political elite. According to multiple Afghan former officials, Ahmed Wali Karzai , the brother of President Hamid Karzai and the head of the provincial council in Kandahar , routinely manipulates judicial and police officials to facilitate shipments of opium and heroin.

Ahmed Wali Karzai and his defenders retort that the U.S. government never has formally accused him of any wrongdoing.

In Kabul , President Karzai's office said no one could prove that his brother had anything to do with opium and heroin. The Afghan Attorney General's Office has received no complaints or evidence against Ahmed Wali Karzai , according to an official there who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the political sensitivity of the issue.

Neither the Bush nor the Obama administrations has officially charged him with involvement in drugs, and a former DEA chief of operations, Michael Braun , said the agency had "basically struck out" in trying to prove the allegations.

Ahmed Wali Karzai himself is defensive, saying that the accusations are part of a political conspiracy against his brother, the president. When he was asked recently about the allegations linking him to drugs and crime, he threatened to assault a visiting McClatchy reporter.

THE ALLEGATIONS AGAINST AHMED WALI KARZAI
The narcotics trade in Afghanistan would be impossible without government officials and the Taliban on the payroll, said the man in the brown turban. "The link between them is a natural one."

The man should know. He's a drug dealer in Kandahar who provides money to purchase opium culled from poppy on local farms and arranges for it to be shipped to markets near the city.

The owner of several shoe and electronics shops in Kandahar , he sat in a plastic chair in a small office tucked away on the second floor of a bare concrete building. As he described the inner workings of the opium trade, he spat tobacco from under the fold of his cheek into a silken floral print handkerchief.

"The drug smuggler tells a police commander to transport a certain amount of drugs, for example, from the city to Maiwand District " — on the northwest edge of Kandahar province — "and pays him 100,000 Pakistani rupees," about $1,200 , said the dealer, who asked that his name not be used for fear of running afoul of local warlords or officials. "And then from Maiwand, he pays the Taliban another 100,000 rupees to take it farther," to heroin labs in the southern province of Helmand and on to Pakistan or Iran .

The dealer offered introductions to the Taliban or to the provincial governor, but there was one man he didn't wish to discuss: Ahmed Wali Karzai .

According to several Afghan former officials in the region, however, the major drug traffickers in southern Afghanistan don't worry much about getting caught because they're working under the protection of Karzai and other powerful government officials.

For example, a former top Afghan intelligence official recounted an incident from about five years ago, when, he said, his men arrested a Taliban commander who was involved with drugs at a key narcotics-trafficking point between Helmand and the Pakistani border.

Late on the evening of the arrest, a local prosecutor dropped by and said that Ahmed Wali Karzai wanted the militant released, according to Dad Mohammed Khan, who was the national intelligence directorate chief of Helmand province for about three years before he became a member of the national parliament.

Khan said he released the Taliban commander, a man known as Haji Abdul Rahim, because he didn't want to tangle with the president's brother.

A week after his conversation with McClatchy , Khan — a large man with a bushy black beard who had a reputation for dealing with enemies ruthlessly — was killed by a roadside bomb that most attribute to the Taliban .

Khan, however, isn't the only one to accuse Ahmed Wali Karzai of ties to drug trafficking.

In 2004, an Afghan Defense Ministry brigade reportedly had a similar run-in with Karzai. The brigade pulled over a truck in Kandahar and found heroin hidden under sacks of concrete, according to the corps commander who oversaw the unit, Brig. Gen. Khan Mohammed.

Shortly afterward, the brigade leader, a man named Habibullah Jan , got a phone call from Ahmed Wali Karzai demanding that he release the truck, Mohammed said. That call was followed by one from a member of President Karzai's staff, Mohammed said.

Jan later became a parliament member and publicly accused Ahmed Wali Karzai of being a criminal. Jan was killed last year in a sophisticated ambush in Kandahar under circumstances that remain unclear. The Taliban haven't taken responsibility for the attack.

" Ahmed Wali Karzai has very close links with the drug smugglers," said Mohammed, who was sipping tea as he sat on a cushion at his home in Kabul . "The house that he's living in in Kandahar right now is owned by a very big drug smuggler."

People who accuse Ahmed Wali Karzai of ties to the drug trade often don't stay around very long. Many Afghans were shocked last year when a TV station that broadcasts to several cities around the country aired a roundtable discussion in which one of the guests said he knew that Karzai was involved with drugs.

Although he isn't a current government official — he had part ownership in an Internet technology institute — Abdullah Kandahari is from Karzai's Popalzai tribe and has known the president's family for years. He also was an intelligence official for two years during the regime of former President Burhanuddin Rabbani , a political opponent of the Karzais.

Speaking by phone from Pakistan , Kandahari said he was forced to move his family out of the country and sell his business interests in the aftermath of the show; Ahmed Wali Karzai sent gunmen looking for him four times in two locations, Kandahari said.

Another guest on the show, a parliament member from Kandahar named Shakiba Hashimi , said that Karzai called her husband the morning after it aired.

" Ahmed Wali said that after appearing on that program, I would not have the courage to return to Kandahar ," Hashimi said. It was a gloating sort of threat, and Hashimi took it seriously: She said she hadn't been back to the province since.

Asked for comment about Dad Mohammed Khan's allegation and others during an interview at his palatial Kandahar home, which is protected by guard shacks, perimeter walls and sand-filled roadblocks, Ahmed Wali Karzai said he had nothing to do with drugs.

A few minutes later, he yelled, "Get the (expletive) out before I kick your (expletive)" at a reporter.

Asked about Ahmed Wali Karzai , the president's spokesman said there was no proof that the president's brother was involved with the drug trade.

President Karzai has told the U.S. and British governments that "if they have any evidence against his brothers or close associates, they should come forward," said Humayun Hamidzada , the spokesman. To date, he said, there's been no response.

PRESIDENT HAMID KARZAI : A PASSIVE ROLE?
President Karzai hasn't been accused of any connection to drug trafficking, but he appears to be powerless to halt some of his own officials' ties to it. The issue allegedly extends far beyond his brother.

A man named Syed Jan traveled through Afghanistan in 2005 with documents saying that he worked for a drug task force in Helmand province. The deputy interior minister for counter-narcotics, Col. Gen. Mohammed Daoud , had signed the paperwork. When Jan's car was stopped at a checkpoint in eastern Afghanistan , it was carrying about 425 pounds of heroin. That amount was worth about $580,000 on the Afghan wholesale market in 2005 and more than $5.4 million wholesale in Britain — which gets most of its heroin from Afghanistan — during 2006, according to figures from the United Nations .

Daoud told McClatchy the documents were genuine, but that Jan "was introduced to my office by President Karzai's office."

Appearing before a special narcotics court in Kabul , Jan was sentenced to 16 years. An appeals court then declared him innocent and released him.

Sareer Ahmad Barmak, a spokesman for a central narcotics-prosecution task force in Kabul , said that Jan had confessed to being a drug trafficker. "I don't know what he did, how much money he offered to the judges to get acquitted," Barmak said.

At the urging of Afghanistan's attorney general, President Karzai directed the appeals court to reconsider. While the case was pending, however, the Justice Ministry ordered that Jan be transferred from Kabul to a jail in his home province of Helmand, a move that Barmak said was illegal.

On the drive from the Helmand airport to the jail, gunmen ambushed the police convoy and Jan escaped.

It was obvious from the details that Barmak gave that the gunmen knew about the transfer in advance. A Justice Ministry official told McClatchy that Jan had simply slipped out of custody. The last anyone heard, he was living in Dubai or Pakistan .

Asked for comment, Hamidzada, President Karzai's spokesman, said, "I'm not aware of these little details, of one particular person carrying letters, (of) these little people doing little things."

Several former security officers in southern Afghanistan said that the story of Syed Jan was nothing unusual.

Mohammed Hussein Andewal, a former police chief of Helmand province, said that in 2007 his men caught an opium dealer red-handed with a large stash of drugs on his way to the bordering province of Farah.

Andewal said he was called first by a regional Interior Ministry commander and then by a senior official from the ministry in Kabul telling him to let the man go.

"I know very high government officials who have heroin storerooms in their own houses," he said.

Andewal said that if he had a map in front of him, he could sketch the bases and the movements of a drug-dealing ring of Afghan leaders in five provinces who pushed heroin through Nimruz province into Iran .

"If anyone could guarantee my security, I could give the names and draw the map," he said with a grin and then a shrug. "But I would get killed."

A former senior Afghan official who's worked in high positions in southern Afghanistan and the national government said he could list the bases and movements of Ahmed Wali Karzai's drug network as well as the names, home districts and jobs of the dealers in Afghanistan and Pakistan . However, the former official said he wouldn't want those facts or his identity made public, because he had the same worries as Andewal: a bullet to the head or a bomb on the road.

http://www.afghanistannewscenter.com/news/2009/may/may102009.html#4
VID and TRANSCRIPT

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=3688










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Inside the Afghan drug trade

In a northern province, four law-enforcement officials describe life built around trafficking.

By Scott Baldauf, Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor / June 13, 2006 at 12:06 pm EDT
KABUL, AFGHANISTAN

The Afghan police chief doesn't realize his voice is being taped. So pardon him if he brags about his life as a drug trafficker.

In a friendly conversation recorded in his home last summer, he tells of his quarrels with another drug-dealing police commander in the country's northern Takhar Province; about driving through a rival's police checkpoint with 500 kilos of heroin in his car; and his adventures in rescuing three heroin-smuggling friends from the clutches of Tajik policemen. It's just another part of the job, he says.
http://www.csmonitor.com/layout/set/print/2006/0613/p01s04-wosc.html



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Afghan Officials In Drug Trade Cut Deals Across Enemy Lines

Afghan Officials In Drug Trade Cut Deals Across Enemy Lines March 21st, 2009

Toronto Globe and Mail
March 21, 2009
Corrupt politicians are safeguarding traffickers who then help the Taliban, Globe investigation finds
By Graeme Smith
KABUL — In the shadow of the craggy mountains overlooking the road between Kabul and the eastern city of Jalalabad, a specially trained unit of police conducted a nearly perfect ambush of a drug dealer.
Officers surrounded Sayyed Jan's vehicle so quickly that his two bodyguards never had a chance to fire their weapons, and he was caught moving at least 183 kilograms of pure heroin.
But the Counternarcotics Police of Afghanistan realized they had a problem when they discovered that Mr. Jan's powerful friends included their own boss. The drug dealer was carrying a signed letter of protection from General Mohammed Daud Daud, the deputy minister of interior responsible for counternarcotics, widely considered Afghanistan's most powerful anti-drug czar.
That along with other papers and interviews with well-placed sources, show that Gen. Daud has safeguarded shipments of illegal opiates even as he commands thousands of officers sworn to fight the trade. Some accuse the deputy minister of taking a major cut of dealers' profits, ranking him among the biggest players in Afghanistan's $3-billion (U.S.) drug industry.
Reached by telephone this week, Gen. Daud angrily denied involvement in drug corruption. "Your information is completely defective and deficient, and shameful for the prestige of journalism," he said.
The Globe and Mail's investigation of Gen. Daud highlights the wider implications of drug cartels operating inside the Kabul administration. It's a toxic triangle of alliances, as corrupt officials work with drug traffickers who, in turn, help the Taliban.
Some international officials still say the corruption is limited to isolated bureaucrats who supplement their meagre salaries with graft. But a growing number of informed observers now agree with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's recent description of Afghanistan as a "narco-state," saying they are concerned about networks of corrupt officials taking over parts of government — in effect, running branches of the state for illegal gain.
This is a problem for Canada and other North Atlantic Treaty Organization countries, not only because Afghanistan supplies most of the heroin on their own streets, officials say, and not only because such large-scale corruption wastes the money and lives spent in support of the Kabul government.
More importantly, the routes used to export heroin also bring guns and ammunition into the country, giving firepower to those killing Canadian soldiers. The drug barons inside the Afghan administration are believed to be cutting deals across enemy lines, supplying cash and weapons to the rising insurgency.
The wolf as shepherd
One of the most notorious departments in Kabul is the anti-drug section of the Ministry of Interior, the Counternarcotics Police of Afghanistan.
Gen. Daud has been responsible for the CNPA since his presidential appointment as deputy minister for Counternarcotics in 2004, and the force has grown to an estimated 3,000 drug officers across the country. But the and case studies gathered by The Globe and Mail paint a disturbing portrait of his role in the industry.
"You have chosen a wolf as your shepherd," said an Afghan police officer who worked with Gen. Daud.
The officer spoke on condition of anonymity, as did all other Western and Afghan officials who provided details about drug corruption.
Talking about narcotics can be dangerous in Kabul; in December, an outspoken judge who handled drug cases was dragged out of his house by masked men and executed with a gunshot to the head.
One of the few people who has discussed Gen. Daud's dealings on the record is Lieutenant Nyamatullah Nyamat, then serving as head of the counternarcotics police in Kunduz province. He gave an interview to the Los Angeles Times accusing Gen. Daud of running a drug business in northern Afghanistan and protecting other dealers; shortly after the article was published in 2005, Lt. Nyamat disappeared. Two sources familiar with the incident said British advisers to the CNPA scrambled to ensure the lieutenant's safety, holding a meeting in which Gen. Daud admitted ordering his arrest. (Gen. Daud now denies this.) The lieutenant was eventually released unharmed, and reassigned to a less active post in central Afghanistan.
The Kabul government has often emphasized the lack of firm evidence against its top members; Ms. Clinton's "narco-state" reference was angrily rejected by government officials earlier this year. Gen. Daud's boss, Interior Minister Mohammad Hanif Atmar, specifically defended the counternarcotics force during an interview last month at his elegant offices in Kabul. When asked whether he still has confidence in the CNPA, Mr. Atmar nodded vigorously.
"Absolutely, absolutely," he said. "That's not to say some people may not be honest in their jobs, but this is an ongoing battle in every country, every nation, with every police force. By and large they are actually doing the right job with honesty and integrity."
Mr. Atmar's appointment to the Interior Ministry last fall was greeted with optimism among foreign diplomats, who hoped the well-regarded administrator would clean up corruption among the police. The minister says he has attempted to purge the senior ranks, removing 10 police generals and charging some of them with drug corruption in the few months since he took office.
Powerful figures in the ministry such as Gen. Daud remain untouched, but the minister said he can only take action with proof of wrongdoing.
"One unfortunate thing is that much of this is based on speculation," Mr. Atmar said. "Give me the evidence, and hold me accountable for action on that evidence."
The drug runner
The strongest paper trail connecting Gen. Daud with drug dealing comes from the arrest of Sayyed Jan, the infamous trafficker, on June 19, 2005.
Officials disagree about how much heroin Mr. Jan was carrying: one source said 183 kilograms, another said 192, and Gen. Daud himself said it was 250.
Sources also disagree about whether the dealer was wearing a CNPA uniform when arrested, but either way it appears he was operating with Gen. Daud's blessings until he was undeniably caught smuggling. A letter from Gen. Daud to the governor of Helmand province, dated March 15, 2005, introduces Mr. Jan as a "respected Haji," meaning a Muslim who has made the pilgrimage to Mecca, and urges the provincial administration to assist Mr. Jan. The letter was signed with a flourish by Gen. Daud. The governor seems to have obeyed the counternarcotics chief, as investigators found two other letters written the same month, one from the governor telling the police chief to allow safe passage for Mr. Jan and another from the police chief repeating the instruction to his men.
A relative of Mr. Jan described him as a hard-working young trafficker from the southern province of Helmand who got started as a teenager during the Taliban regime, guarding small caches of opium in the desert. Mr. Jan founded his own drug business in 2001, his relative said, and the operation thrived under the new government as he bought protection for his refineries and transportation routes.
One of the dealer's biggest protectors was Gen. Daud, his relative said, describing a conversation in which Mr. Jan confided that he paid the deputy minister $50,000 (U.S.) for permission to run a single convoy through his zone of control. When speaking about the counternarcotics chief, the trafficker used a Pashto word that means "boss."
Another source confirmed that Gen. Daud received payments from Mr. Jan, but suggested they were based on 50 per cent commission on his drug profits.
That relationship seems to have broken down when a CNPA unit, apparently acting without Gen. Daud's knowledge, caught the trafficker with a vehicle full of heroin. Gen. Daud initially attempted to set Mr. Jan free from prison, but then reversed himself and declared his support for the prosecution.
In a complicated series of legal manoeuvrings, however, the young trafficker was transferred to a prison in Helmand where sources say a local official accepted a bribe of 1.8 million Pakistani rupees, worth about $28,000Ö Canadian dollars, to set him free. The dealer is now believed to be continuing his work outside of Afghanistan.
When confronted with this information, Gen. Daud said he cannot be held responsible for Mr. Jan escaping prosecution because it falls outside his jurisdiction. He denied taking money from Mr. Jan or any other dealer.
"Sayyed Jan fled from jail, but God willing we are chasing him to arrest him again and put him back in jail," the counternarcotics chief said.
Another arrest caught Gen. Daud by surprise in the summer of 2005. His own men, again apparently working without the direct supervision of the counternarcotics chief, captured a fuel tanker packed with an estimated 700 kilograms of raw opium on the outskirts of Kabul. The driver, Noor Mohammed, asked for permission to make a phone call; he dialled a number, and shortly afterward Gen. Daud's personal bodyguards rushed to the scene, brandishing their weapons and demanding the CNPA officers leave.
A tense standoff followed, then confusion as the CNPA bodyguards realized they were pointing their guns at fellow CNPA officers. Two Afghan officials who described the scene said they eventually settled the dispute by agreeing to take the tanker back to CNPA headquarters, and it's not known what eventually happened to the drugs. But those involved saw the incident as a clear example of Gen. Daud trying to protect some shipments.
"This is nonsense," Gen. Daud said, suggesting that drug dealers spread unfounded rumours to undermine his work.
Such anecdotes have spread widely, in fact, in Kabul's community of Western officials. But some take a sanguine view of reported corruption, especially when the reports concern a figure so prominent as Gen. Daud.
The former warlord
Born in 1969 to a family from the northern province of Takhar, Gen. Daud joined the anti-Soviet resistance as a teenager and became part of the famed militia of Ahmad Shah Massoud, the so-called Lion of the Panjshir.
After the assassination of Massoud no honorific needed in 2001, Gen. Daud worked with U.S. forces overthrowing the Taliban regime and was rewarded with control over a broad territory in the north.
As the country held its first presidential elections in 2004, however, Western officials became increasingly concerned that warlords such as Gen. Daud and their private armies would not fit into their plans for a heavily centralized government. Like other warlords, Gen. Daud was invited to accept a senior appointment in Kabul in hopes that he could be drawn away from his regional power base and integrated into the new regime.
This strategy worked, in some respects; officials say Gen. Daud no longer ranks among the country's biggest militia commanders, though he could still mobilize 4,000 to 6,000 armed men within 48 hours if necessary. He remains popular in his home province, where Western officials have been amused to hear villagers reciting poems in his honour.
Gen. Daud's supporters point out that many senior figures in the Kabul administration are implicated in drug corruption, and pushing them out of their jobs won't solve the problem. They emphasize that Gen. Daud appears to be reducing his involvement in the drug trade as he reaches middle age; his second wife is a U.S. citizen, and some speculate that he might try to clean up his business and eventually settle in the United States.
"Dealing with these characters is a slow process," a senior Western official said. "You can't judge them based on the past. You have to think about what they can do for this country in the future."
Others disagree, seeing the problem of corruption in more urgent terms.
"Fighting corruption and official involvement in drug trafficking in Afghanistan is as critical a challenge to rebuilding the country as defeating the Taliban," veteran ABC news correspondent Gretchen Peters writes in her forthcoming book Seeds of Terror, based on five years of field research along the Afghan-Pakistan border.
The need for such reform becomes clearer as drug investigators find traffickers involved with another kind of contraband: weapons.
Two Western officials closely monitoring the problem said about 50 to 70 per cent of weapons that supply the insurgency arrive in the country by road, facilitated by corrupt figures in the Afghan government — a statistic that shatters the image of Taliban hauling shipments of guns and ammunition through snowy mountain passes, as usually portrayed by NATO leaders; instead, many insurgents apparently find it more convenient to buy supplies from corrupt authorities.
The profits are huge: a Kalashnikov rifle purchased for $100 or $150 in Tajikistan can be smuggled to the battlefields of southern Afghanistan and sold for $400. The fact that the same rifle might be used to kill a Canadian soldier — or the corrupt Afghan official who sold it — has not diminished the trade.
"This government is not working for us," said the relative of Mr. Jan, the trafficker, expressing his disgust with the business. "We hate the drugs. But this government is addicted to money."



http://www.truth-out.org/archive/item/93291:the-afghan-war-spreading-democracy-and-heroin


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AFGHANISTAN: A HARVEST OF DESPAIR
The Lure of Opium Wealth Is a Potent Force in Afghanistan
Western officials warn of a nascent narco state as drug traffickers act with impunity, some allegedly with the support of top officials

By Paul Watson Times Staff Writer

May 29, 2005
Kunduz, Afghanistan

http://www.latimes.com/news/la-fg-drugs29may29,0,415054,full.story






Afghanistan: Halbbruder des Präsidenten ein Drogenbaron?
KABUL. Eine Woche vor der Präsidentenwahl verschärft ein Drogenskandal im Umfeld von Präsident Hamid Karzai die ohnehin komplizierte und gefährliche politische Situation Afghanistans.
http://www.nachrichten.at/nachrichten/politik/aussenpolitik/Afghanistan-Halbbruder-des-Praesidenten-ein-Drogenbaron;art391,240680