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★阿修羅♪
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(回答先: アフガン ケシの栽培面積 昨年の２倍(旧タリバン政権末期の36倍) 【米ホワイトハウス国家麻薬管理政策局の集計】 投稿者 ひろ 日時 2003 年 11 月 30 日 02:37:39)
ロイターじゃないけど、それより前のScotsmanの11月24日の記事。
Scotsman
http://www.news.scotsman.com/
http://www.news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=1294902003
US wages war on Afghan opium crop
JAMES ASTILL IN KABUL
THE United States is scrambling for allies in a major international campaign to destroy Afghanistan’s coming opium crop - predicted to be the country’s biggest ever - having concluded that Afghan drugs now represent al-Qaeda’s principal source of income.
The US initiative, revealed to The Scotsman by a senior official in Kabul, deals a crushing blow to existing British efforts to curb Afghanistan’s opium output, which have failed to prevent an explosion in poppy production since the fall of the Taleban two years ago.
According to separate reports by the United Nations and the CIA, around 3,600 tonnes of opium resin were grown this year in an unprecedented 28 out of Afghanistan’s 32 provinces. The crop earned Afghanistan’s poppy farmers and traffickers around £2 billion - more than 50 per cent of Afghanistan’s GDP.
This year’s harvest was up on last year’s bumper poppy crop - the first since the Taleban’s fall - despite two devastating crop diseases, a government eradication campaign and British-led efforts to train local police and provide poppy farmers with alternative livelihoods - at an estimated cost of £65 million.
"The Brits will stay in the lead but we’re facing the fact that their efforts have had absolutely no impact on opium tonnage whatsoever," the US official said. "Meanwhile, we’re seeing that this issue affects our counter-terrorism interests. It has become more and more clear that the principal source of financing for al-Qaeda and the Taleban is Afghan drugs."
According to the plan, the US would persuade a moderate Muslim ally, either Turkey or a Balkan state, to deploy around 400 soldiers to Afghanistan, to provide security for a similar number of Afghan counter-narcotics police.
Sweeping Afghanistan from south to north, the eradication team would arrive in each province during the two-week window in the opium poppy’s growth cycle when it can be ploughed up without regenerating.
US intelligence sources believe this would serve the dual purpose of destroying at least 25 per cent of Afghanistan’s poppy crop, and flushing many Taleban and al-Qaeda operatives from cover.
"This is going to be the biggest pheasant drive you’ve ever seen," the US official said.
A British diplomat in Kabul yesterday confirmed the plan, but questioned whether a foreign force could be deployed in time for the next opium harvest.
"To start eradicating in the south, you’d have to be ready by February, which looks unlikely," the diplomat said. "If we know anything about this country it’s that everything takes time."
The US’s sudden attention to Afghanistan’s drug production represents a major shift in its conduct of the war on terror. Previously, it left counter-narcotics to its European allies, chiefly Britain, 95 per cent of whose heroin derives from Afghan opium, according to Tony Blair.
British and Afghan officials in Kabul privately complain that their efforts have been badly compromised by the US’s ongoing military campaign against the Taleban and al-Qaeda.
The US employs local warlords to prosecute its war, including many allegedly involved in opium production. US special forces in southern Hilmand province last week told The Scotsman that they routinely patrol through opium fields, but had no orders to interfere.
The US’s change of tack is less a response to Britain’s failed counter-narcotics effort, than its own failure to quell the Taleban and its allies, analysts in Kabul say.
During the past year, the Taleban has reorganised and returned from its rear-bases in Pakistan, and now loosely controls pockets of south-eastern Afghanistan. Its influence extends across much of Afghanistan’s prime poppy-growing land, in Hilmand, Kandahar and Nangarhar provinces, including the fiefs of many of America’s supposed local allies.
Northern Afghanistan’s poppy-growing areas are proving a similar draw for America’s enemies. According to western intelligence sources, opium production in northern Badhakshan province is now heavily controlled by Hizb-e-Islami, a fundamentalist group allied to al-Qaeda and the Taleban, and linked to Chechen rebels.
Badhakshan’s opium production rocketed by 55 per cent this year, making it Afghanistan’s third most productive poppy-growing province.
"America’s efforts to defeat the Taleban through local proxies has failed on the back of some very compromised intelligence," said Vikram Parekh of the International Crisis Group, a think tank. "The Taleban will be defeated by good governance and law enforcement, and that includes counter-narcotics."
Failing drastic measures of the kind the US is planning, most analysts expect Afghanistan’s next opium crop to top the record haul of 4,500 tonnes, set in 1999. "There’s no doubt we’re about to see a record-breaking crop," said Abdul Ghaus, the beleaguered chief government counter-narcotics officer in Jallalabad, capital of Afghanistan’s most productive poppy-province, Nangarhar. "The British are doing nothing to prevent it."
Few analysts dispute that Afghanistan needs more forthright measures to counter its opium explosion. Yet a blanket eradication scheme would risk beggaring thousands of farmers, to America’s cost.
"The Taleban are operating in the south-east because they have support there," said Mr Parekh. "By destroying opium crops without offering any economic support, America could end up turning virtually the entire population against it."
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