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American Morning

U.S. and Allies Have Not Been Able to Make Dent in Afghanistan's Opium Production

Aired April 03, 2002 - 07:40   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
JACK CAFFERTY, CNN ANCHOR: The U.S. and its allies have succeeded in ousting the Taliban from Afghanistan, but so far, they have not been able to make a dent in Afghanistan's opium production.

According to the Pentagon, U.S. troops have been unable to locate or destroy large caches of opium, which can be refined into heroin. And in fact, the opium that is grown and harvested in Afghanistan makes them the largest supplier worldwide of the drug, heroin. It's the largest cash crop in that economy, and even those who fought with the United States against the Taliban are not necessarily allies in the war on drugs.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ASA HUTCHINSON, DRUG ENFORCEMENT ADMIN.: We should not be blind that even the Northern Alliance that helped us in the war against terrorism certainly had to certain aspects a background in drug trafficking. They have been engaged in poppy cultivation and heroin trafficking. But we have to start fresh there.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAFFERTY: Well, the new government has banned the farming of poppy crops, but enforcing that could lead to further instability. It could allow terrorists to regain control in the region. Letting them go ahead and grow and harvest and sell the product could fund further terrorist activities on the part of al Qaeda and Taliban fighters.

Joining us from Washington to talk about what sounds like a very difficult situation is Robert Charles. He is the former staff director and counsel to Congress' National Security Subcommittee, and currently president of Direct Impact. That's a consulting firm that deals with law enforcement and drug issues. Welcome to AMERICAN MORNING, Robert -- nice to have you with us.

ROBERT CHARLES, PRESIDENT, DIRECT IMPACT: Thank you, Jack.

CAFFERTY: So let me see if I get this right. If you go in and prevent the cultivation and harvesting and processing of opium into heroin and the subsequent sales, you risk further instability to an already shaky government that's in place in Afghanistan and destruction to the economy. If you let them go ahead and grow it and sell it, they are the largest producer of heroin in the world, that money finds its way into the hands of people like al Qaeda and the Taliban.

So you've got the war on terror and the war on drugs, and I just wonder how you sort all of this out. What are we supposed to be doing over there?

CHARLES: I think you raise a very important -- very timely incidentally to your story earlier this morning about the funding for terrorism in the Middle East -- and that is that you cannot view the war against terrorism and isolation. The funds, which drive that to terrorists, whether it's the PKK, the KLA, al Qaeda or Fortharkin (ph), Columbia, really do come out to a very large extent out of the drug out of the drug money that they generate.

And so what -- if you, for example, had -- if your viewers took a sheet of paper and drew a circle on it, and in that circle were all of the terrorist organization in the world, and you also drew a circle that represented all of the drug traffickers in the world or their organizations, you would find substantial overlap between the two.

What that implies for us is that as a general matter, we need to seize this moment. We need to say to the interim government in Afghanistan two or three things very clearly. First, we believe that it is imperative that they do tackle the heroin crop, and just so people don't think of this as an eclectic problem, in fact Afghanistan in the year 2000 funded about 75 percent of the heroin created, 75 percent and trafficked out...

CAFFERTY: Let me ask you this...

CHARLES: ... 75 percent of the heroin worldwide.

CAFFERTY: Let me ask you this, Robert. I don't mean to interrupt.

CHARLES: Sure.

CAFFERTY: But if that's a priority for this government, why don't we just do it ourselves? I mean, certainly we possess the capacity to go in and destroy the opium poppy fields that exist in Afghanistan, whether anybody likes it or not, if in fact this government decides that that's part of prosecuting the war on terrorism. Why not just go in and remove the ability to grow and sell this stuff?

CHARLES: I think there are people within the government that would make the argument that not only should we destroy the crops through eradication, but we should actually go after the stockpiles, which are substantial right now.

CAFFERTY: Right.

CHARLES: The answer to that is that we respect the sovereignty, obviously, of the new government. And so what we need to do is really three or four very specific things. The first thing is to reinforce what they did on January 17. The interim government made it clear that they will outlaw, they have banned both the -- at least on paper -- both the growing and the trafficking of the crops. And then, we need to make that real, and we make it real by helping build institutions in that government, in particular an army and a law enforcement arm and a criminal justice system that will allow them to bring to justice those who, in fact, do these things.

The third thing that we need to do, and it is true in Afghanistan the way it has been in Bolivia and Peru, where it has been very successfully, is that we need to put crop substitution in place. And in order to do that, we really need to encourage the Afghan government to see all aid as conditional upon voluntary eradication in tandem with the planting of things like wheat that we know grow in the same exact locations.

CAFFERTY: Right.

CHARLES: And the final thing we need to do is I think as a united voice here in the United States, whether it's the State Department or the Pentagon or anywhere else, including Congress, we need to speak clearly about the fact that this matters to us. Most of the drug funding the world over gets poured off, or let me put it differently, most of the terrorist funds the world over come out of this kind of trade. And I think that we need to tackle it full force, head on and recognize that there is a difference between gaining short-term or marginal advantage and instability now...

CAFFERTY: Right.

CHARLES: ... vs. the long-term, which essentially puts us back in a situation pre-9/11, where we have very heavy funding for terrorist organizations growing out of both heroin and cocaine.

CAFFERTY: Right.

CHARLES: And there are very significant implications of not doing something more aggressive.

CAFFERTY: All right, Robert, we're going to have to -- we're going to have to leave it there. I appreciate your joining us this morning.

CHARLES: OK. Thank you for having me.

CAFFERTY: Interesting ideas of difficult situations to say the least. Robert Charles is the president of an organization called Direct Impact, which is a consulting organization that advises on drug issues and other matters.

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