Antidrug Efforts Stall In Face Of Record Afghan Poppy Crop

By MATTHEW LEE The Associated Press

Published: Aug 5, 2007

WASHINGTON - Afghanistan will produce another record poppy harvest this year that cements its status as the world's near-sole supplier of the heroin source, yet a furious debate over how to reverse the trend is stalling proposals to cut the crop, U.S. officials say.

As President Bush prepares for talks today and Monday with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, divisions within the U.S. administration and among NATO allies have delayed release of a $475 million counter-narcotics program for Afghanistan, where intelligence officials see growing links between drugs and the Taliban, the officials said.

U.N. figures to be released in September are expected to show that Afghanistan's poppy production has risen up to 15 percent since 2006 and that the country accounts for 95 percent of the world's crop, 3 percentage points more than last year, officials familiar with preliminary statistics said.

But counter-drug proposals by some U.S. officials - including boosting the amount of forcible poppy field destruction in provinces that grow the most - have met fierce resistance, officials said. The approach also would link millions of dollars in development aid to benchmarks on eradication; arrests and prosecutions of narcotraders and corrupt officials; and alternative crop production.

Those ideas represent what proponents call an "enhanced carrot-and-stick approach" to supplement existing antidrug efforts. They are the focus of the new $475 million program outlined in a 995-page report, the release of which has been postponed twice and may be again delayed because of disagreements, officials said.

Counter-narcotics agents at the State Department had wanted to release a 123-page summary of the strategy last month and again last week but were forced to hold off because of concerns it may not be feasible, the officials said.

Even as Bush meets with Karzai at the presidential retreat in Camp David, Md., Thursday's tentative release date, timed to follow the meetings, appears in jeopardy. Some in the administration, along with NATO allies Britain and Canada, seek revisions that could delay it until at least Aug. 13, the officials said.

The program represents a 13 percent increase from the $420 million in U.S. counter-narcotics aid to Afghanistan last year. It would adopt a bold new approach to "coercive eradication" and set criteria for local officials to receive development assistance based on their cooperation, the officials said.

Although the existing aid, supplemented mainly by Britain and Canada and supported by the NATO force in Afghanistan, has achieved some results - notably an expected rise in the number of "poppy-free" provinces from six to at least 12 and possibly 16, mainly in the north - production elsewhere has soared, they said.

"Afghanistan is providing close to 95 percent of the world's heroin," the State Department's top counter-narcotics official, Tom Schweich, said at a recent conference. "That makes it almost a sole-source supplier" and presents a situation "unique in world history."

Almost all the heroin from Afghanistan makes its way to Europe; most of the heroin in the United States comes from Latin America.

Afghanistan last year accounted for 92 percent of global opium production, compared with 70 percent in 2000 and 52 percent a decade earlier. The higher yields in Afghanistan brought world production to a record high of 7,286 tons in 2006, 43 percent more than in 2005.

A State Department inspector general's report released Friday noted that the counter-narcotics assistance is dwarfed by the estimated $38 billion "street value" of Afghanistan's poppy crop.