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NATO General Says Opium Trade Funds Taliban NewsMax.com Wires WASHINGTON -- NATO must do more to prevent Taliban militants from using the growing opium trade to fund their insurgency in Afghanistan, the alliance's top military commander said Thursday. U.S. Gen. James Jones said the military forces can take on a larger role in ferreting out information about the drug connection and locating opium production areas, but U.S. and NATO troops will not be used to eradicate crops. The opium problem "certainly cries out for more international focus," said Jones. "The international community understands that we have to have more success in the narcotics field, and we have to do that in the fairly near future." Speaking to Pentagon reporters, Jones said that NATO forces can now have "at least a supporting role in helping the authorities with intelligence and using our technologies to show them where the production, the increase, is to make sure that the roads are in fact used for peaceful purposes as opposed to transporting illicit goods." But he said the military is only a small part of what must be a holistic solution. The greater challenges, he said, are to reform the police, improve the training and equipping of the Afghan forces, and encourage economic and political reforms that would give Afghans ways other than the drug trade to stabilize their economy. Jones acknowledged that the record increase in opium cultivation this year in Afghanistan could fuel the insurgency. Recent projections show a 40 percent increase in the opium poppy crop over last year's totals. Officials estimate that about 370,650 acres of poppy were cultivated this season. A lot of the profits from the drug sales, Jones said, are obviously being "funneled back into the criminal element, the resurgence of the Taliban, perhaps even al-Qaida, perhaps tribe-on-tribe warfare." Story Continues Below
The latest crop figures suggest that attempts to eradicate poppy cultivation are failing, and that corruption among the provincial officials and police is still a major problem. A NATO-led force of about 8,000, made up mostly of British, Canadian and Dutch troops, recently took control of security from the American-run coalition in the volatile southern provinces. The increased violence there, coupled with continuing al-Qaida operations along the Pakistan border have made this the deadliest time since the Taliban regime was toppled in late 2001. NATO already has troops in the more stable regions of Kabul and northern and western Afghanistan. The U.S.-led coalition will continue to work in the unstable eastern portion of Afghanistan, where al-Qaida and Taliban fighters are also active. Currently there are about 20,000 NATO forces and about 22,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
© 2006 Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Editor's note: Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
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