The Afghan Paradox: Are The Terror War and The Drug War Merging?

December 10, 2004

by Jim Kouri

In September of 2003, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York announced the arrests of 9 individuals on charges of importing more than half a million dollars in heroin into the United States from Pakistan and Afghanistan, and distributing that heroin in the New York Area. To many in law enforcement, this may only be the tip of the iceberg. It's suspected that heroin imported from Afghanistan is flooding the streets of American cities.

U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan fear they are about to be launched into a bloody war on drugs amid mounting evidence that the country's booming opium trade is funding terrorists linked to Al-Qaeda. And as a result, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has raised the prospect of using some of the 17,000 combat troops based in there to take an active role against the drug trade.

Rumsfeld did not give specific details during a recent trip to Kabul, but it is widely believed that troops may be called on to assist Afghan security forces in a strategy modeled on controversial efforts to destroy Colombia's cocaine industry.

The drug business is widely believed to have corrupted officials up to cabinet level, and many Afghans fear that they may have exchanged Taliban fundamentalism for rule by narco-mafias in the future. So far, Britain has taken a so-called lead role in combating the drugs trade, but U.S. officials are thought to have become increasingly frustrated at the lack of success. No major figures have been apprehended and a UK plan for crop eradication proved a miserable failure.

We had a perfect opportunity to destroy the Afghan drug trade, but for political reasons decided not to. There's no doubt the drugs being cultivated in Afghanistan will be saturating the US marketplace which in turn helps to bolster terrorist financing, he says. The drugs being cultivated and processed in Afghanistan will soon be in the veins and up the nostrils of American kids.

The fact is, U.S. federal law enforcement significantly cut resources for drug interdiction and investigation when federal agents were diverted from drug enforcement to counterterrorism, counterintelligence and cyber-crime. This leaves drug enforcement as an almost exclusively a local police function.

There also is a lack of security at our borders which continues to invite drug-traffickers. It's not surprising that a poll of police chiefs and sheriffs indicates that only 17 percent of our nation's police commanders feel the war on drugs has been successful.

This is a problem that requires a strong response from the federal government and from local drug enforcement officials.

Jim Kouri

Jim Kouri, CPP is currently fifth vice-president of the National Association of Chiefs of Police. He's former chief at a New York City housing project in Washington Heights nicknamed "Crack City" by reporters covering the drug war in the 1980s. He's also served on the National Drug Task Force and trained police and security officers throughout the country. He writes for many police and crime magazines including Chief of Police, Police Times, The Narc Officer, Campus Law Enforcement Journal, and others. He's appeared as on-air commentator for over 100 TV and radio news and talk shows including Oprah, McLaughlin Report, CNN Headline News, MTV, Fox News, etc. His book Assume The Position is available at Amazon.Com, Booksamillion.com, and can be ordered at local bookstores.