Drug Mafioso Heads Afghan Anti-Narcotics Ministry

Afghan President Hamid Karzai nominated, and the Afghan Parliament overwhelmingly approved, the appointment of Zarar Ahmad Moqbel as Minister of Counter Narcotics this past January.  Moqbel is "associated with the drug mafia," according to U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry in a secret cable to Washington released Dec. 2 by Wikileaks.org, the whistleblower website.  Eikenberry wrote about Moqbel:

He is perhaps the worst of the candidates. Former Deputy Interior Minister and MP Helaludin Helal claimed to us January 11 that Moqbel was supported by the drug mafia, to include Karzai’s younger half-brother Ahmed Wali Karzai and Arif Khan Noorzai.

Moqbel received the highest number of votes of any of the cabinet nominees.  The 249 members of the Afghan Parliament, known as the Wolesi Jirga, saw the vote as an opportunity to solicit "donations" -- typically, in the form of envelopes containing cash -- to their upcoming re-election campaigns.  Druglord Moqbel, according to Eikenberry's sources, set a record for such donations, paying Jirga members from about $8,000 to $15,000 (in U.S. dollars) each.  Source.

Moqbel replaced  General Khodaidad, whom Eikenberry described in an earlier cable as "a very good partner for U.S. counternarcotics efforts."  Source.

Moqbel had previously headed the Afghan Interior Ministry, a "byword for corruption and incompetence," according to a British security official quoted in the London paper, The Guardian.  Source.  The Interior Ministry's "culture of corruption and incompetence" aroused an international uproar two years ago, forcing President Karzai to sack Moqbel.  Now Moqbel is back, heading the counter-narcotics effort in a country where opium and its derivative, heroin, is the No. 1 export, accounting for more than half of the country's GNP, according to United Nations figures.  Source.  Afghanistan is the source of about 90 per cent of the world's heroin supply.

Two weeks after Moqbel's appointment to the Counter Narcotics post, deputy-level U.S. diplomatic and military officials in Kabul met to consider "possible courses of action" that they may use "against criminal and corrupt Afghan officials in an effort to change their behavior."  The group, titled the "Nexus-Corruption Leadership Board," adopted a set of recommendations including:

(1) no public meetings with the official (and no photos), and no high-profile public visits from CODELs and other dignitaries; (2) no giving or receiving of gifts; and (3) restrictions on opportunities for corrupt officials to participate in U.S.-funded training, travel, and speaking engagements. 

These recommendations, according to Ambassador Eikenberry in a confidential cable released by Wikileaks, are aimed to "end tacit American support for corrupt Afghan officials" and to attempt to change their behavior.  Source.  Among the highly placed Afghan officials "believed to be corrupt," the cable names Colonel Abdul Razziz, who controls a major border  crossing with Pakistan, President Karzai's half-brother Ahmed Wali Karzai, and Asadulla Sherzad, the chief of police.  Eikenberry adds that more direct measures, such as firing the corrupt officials or putting them in jail,  are not on the agenda "due to lack of capacity and lack of political will."

The Afghan Major Crimes Task Force, which has jurisdiction over corruption cases, has only four vetted prosecutors and only a small number of investigators, Eikenberry complained in another cable published by Wikileaks.  Source.  Its limited capacity is a "major challenge to successful prosecution."  It has no influence in the provinces.  Source.  Aside from the narcotics traffic, Afghan officials are busy "embezzling public funds, stealing humanitarian assistance, and misappropriating government property," forming "a graphic picture of criminal enterprise masquerading as public administration."  Source.

Responsibility for protecting the opium traffic lies at the top, with President Karzai, according to General Dan McNeill, then commander of the international force supporting the Afghan government.  McNeill told visiting director of the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy John Walters in March 2007 that

the missing ingredient in the counter-narcotics effort was Karzai. Despite some public statements, he had failed to take a real stand. Karzai needed to keep his support base happy, and as a result, he placated many of those involved in the drug business, especially in the west and south of the country. However, by not taking the issue on, Karzai was tacitly signaling his OK for poppy production.

Source.  McNeill added that prosecution of high-level officials in the drug trade was useless under the circumstances.

To Walters’ question on going after high value targets, McNeill said it was necessary to prosecute a few to keep faith with the general public. But he was skeptical it would have any real effect on the trafficking networks, as those arrested would simply be replaced by others.

Source.  Efforts to eradicate poppy cultivation frequently became only another opportunity for corruption.  Asadullah Khalid, the governor of Kandahar province, used members of the police force to do the eradication work, allowing him to pocket the funds allocated to hire local labor for the job.  And, according to Major General Ton Van Loon, the Dutch commander in the province, Asadullah "has been careful to eradicate only those fields not controlled by powerful people in the Province." Source.

The total acreage devoted to poppy growing in 2010 remained unchanged from 2009, according to a September 2010 United Nations report.  Source.  Eradication in 2010  was at the lowest level since recording began in 2005.  But the amount harvested dropped by 48 per cent, due to a late-season fungal blight.  The drop in quantity led to a spike in prices, and observers predicted that the high opium price, combined with a drop in the price of wheat, an alternative crop, would attract many more farmers to grow opium in this coming year.

Alcohol: The Most Anti-Social Drug

This week's Lancet, the British medical journal, drives a silver spike into the heart of the undead myth that alcohol is the lubricant of sociability and good fellowship.  A systematic comparative ranking of 20 different addictive drugs found that alcohol is the most harmful drug, more harmful than heroin, crack cocaine, and methamphetamines.

The study, by an industry-independent panel of scientific experts, ranked drugs in terms of their harm to the user and their harm to others.

Heroin, crack, and methamphetamine scored higher than alcohol in harm to the user.  But alcohol's score on the scale of harm to others was double that of heroin and crack, the next leading chemicals, so that when the scores of harm to others and harm to self were combined, alcohol led the sordid parade of harmful consequences by nearly twenty points.

A key point in alcohol marketing is social bonding.  Alcohol is said to promote romantic linkups, male bonding, business networking, and general friendly togetherness.  It's sold as the antidote to the isolation, alienation, and competitiveness that make so many people feel lonely even in crowds.   The industry spends billions every year trying to persuade us that if we'd all drink together, we'd all be happy together.

Not so, found the panel of medical experts.  The group evaluated the harm each drug caused to others in terms of physical and psychological injury, crime, environmental damage, family adversities, international damage, economic cost, and damage to community.  The panel also ranked social harms such as the loss of tangibles and loss of relationships.

Alcohol led all other drugs in measure of injury to others, family adversities, economic cost, and harm to the community. In other words, the person under the influence of alcohol caused the most bloodshed, broken families, and other mayhem to economic and social life.

The Lancet study corroborates other, similar studies conducted by other scientists independent of the alcoholic beverage industry, and cited in the Lancet article.  This relatively recent group of studies moves beyond older research which looked at drug consequences more narrowly, in terms of a single factor, such as drug-related deaths.

The finding that alcohol is a more harmful drug in society than heroin and crack cocaine upsets some deep seated stereotypes.  We've been taught to identify the "drug problem" with hard drug users, and we've been led to believe that most of these are black and socially marginal.

This research says that society's drug problem is really first and foremost an alcohol problem, and that you'll find the most dangerous drug addicts among outwardly respectable middle class whites.

That isn't really news to those who have attended most any addiction recovery support group meeting.  How many stories of hospital visits, court dates, divorces, abandoned children, lost jobs, and other chaos do you need to hear before you realize that the slick TV ads for alcoholic beverages are lies?

Even in parts of the recovery subculture, the alcoholics have tended to turn up their noses at the heroin and crack addicts. This elitist bias underlies the segregation of the legacy support groups into separate alcohol and "narcotics" branches.  (Modern groups such as LifeRing include both alcohol and other drug users.)  Now science is turning this conceit upside down.

True, the heroin and crack users have nothing to be proud of.  But the drug that really tears apart the bonds of society doesn't come in a syringe or a pipe, it comes in a bottle.

[First published in hellowellness.in on Nov. 7 2010]

Afghan farmers see through "drug war"

Recent U.S. initiatives to eradicate poppy fields in selected areas of Afghanistan, on the Colombian model, have met with growing resistance by Afghan farmers, according to a briefing paper by the Afghanistan Research and Evaluation Unit (link):

"The view that the government is willing to deepen the poverty of some of its rural population for the sake of a ban on opium poppy cultivation further alienates the rural population. The belief of many farmers that those enforcing the ban and eradicating their crop are themselves actively involved in the opium trade makes matters worse; so does the perception of widespread bribery and the sense that eradication targets the vulnerable and ignores the crops of those in positions of power and influence."

Afghan farmers are seeing that the eradication efforts are aimed mainly at growers or dealers who are competitors to the growers and dealers connected with the Afghan government and its sponsors. A secondary aim of eradication may be to reduce the over-all supply in order to maintain prices. The Afghan farmers are seeing firsthand what the "war on drugs" is all about and they're not buying into it. The study's authors caution that Afghan farmers will continue to grow the poppy until they're presented with a reasonable alternative -- and none is in sight.

CIA up to its old tricks?

A tantalizing hint that the CIA is up to its old tricks (flying drugs from conflict zones) surfaced in the crash landing of a Gulfstream II business jet in Mexico Sept. 24.

The Florida-based craft carried somewhere between three and six tons of powder cocaine, and either no heroin or up to one ton of heroin, depending on which estimates one believes.

The flight originated in Colombia and was destined for Florida with a stopover in Cancun.

Blogger FrostFireZoo.com reports that the serial number of the craft matches those of a plane used by the CIA on at least three occasions in the rendition of terrorism suspects from Guantanamo to other countries to be tortured.

A Mexican journal accused Mexican and U.S. political authorities of hypocrisy for waging a so-called "war on drugs" on the one hand, and being heavily invested in the lucrative drug trade, on the other.

Foxfire.com observes that the amount of drugs said to be on the plane diminished with every official Mexican press release on the incident, and speculates that the subtracted amounts disappeared back into the market.

The photos of the crash scene, above, originated with Mexican press sources. For a video with commentary on EVTV, click.

P.S. Aug. 26 '08: Someone has removed the photos of the crash scene from this blog, and from the original source website as well. However, a video containing the same or similar still photos is still available online here: http://www.evtv1.com/player.aspx?itemnum=10106 -- See them before they're gone.

UK: "Restricted" report urges Rx heroin

The government should consider providing free heroin to hard-core addicts through the National Health Service as a way to reduce crime, says a top-level report by the UK Home Office.

Marked "restricted" because of its controversial recommendations, the document was leaked to The Independent.

There is mounting evidence that trying to restrict the supply of drugs is impossible, says the document. Even if partially successful, supply restriction merely drives up the price of drugs and drives addicts to commit more crimes.

The report comes in a setting where cheap and potent Afghan heroin in unprecedented volume has been flooding into the UK from all ports of entry.

"There is a strong argument that prohibition has caused or created many of the problems associated with the use or misuse of drugs. One option for the future would be to regulate drugs differently, through either over-the-counter sales, licensed sales or doctor's prescription." Source.

For a historical review of similar policy recommendations, see the Transform Drug Policy web site.

Methadone abuse a growing killer

When given in small, controlled doses, methadone is a well-documented treatment for heroin addiction. But taken in larger doses, without adequate medical supervision, and in combination with other drugs, methadone can be a drug of abuse, addiction, and death.

A federal government study found that nationwide methadone-related deaths climbed to more than 3,800 in 2004 from about 780 in 1999. Among all narcotic-related deaths in 2004, only cocaine killed more people in the United States than methadone. More from the Baltimore Sun.

Nicotine, cocaine, heroin lead to similar brain damage

A study of the brain tissue of deceased former smokers has found chemical alterations similar to the brain damage that cocaine and opiates cause in laboratory rats, according to researchers at the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). Abstract. Discussion.

Take alcoholic parents' kids away, Scot says

ALCOHOLIC parents should have their kids taken from them in the same way as heroin addicts, one of Scotland's top addiction experts has claimed.

Professor Neil McKeganey, a former government adviser, has accused social services of double standards when dealing with heroin and alcohol addiction.

The respected academic has said children of parents who refuse to give up drink are suffering neglect as serious as those of drug addicts.

McKeganey, director of the Centre for Drug Misuse Research at Glasgow University, has warned the Scottish moralistic attitude to drugs means well-meaning social workers are failing thousands of Scots youngsters.

Social workers are often reluctant to remove children from the homes of alcoholics while the use of illegal drugs such as heroin is seen as far more serious. More.

Afghan war and suburban heroin deaths: Putting it all together

At least one blogger has begun to put the pieces together: Young suburban white kids in the Midwest dying of powder heroin overdoses and suburban Midwest Republican politicians -- more or less the parents of these same kids -- rabidly supporting the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq:

It seems almost scary, but is it possible that the wealthy in this country have in effect sold their children to the Afghanistan drug lords through their greed, blind patriotism and hatred?

See more reflections along this line in Crawford's Take.

Afghanistan: Whole villages addicted

Elizabeth Bayer, formerly of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in Afghanistan, reports:

"There are villages in the north of Afghanistan where the entire population is addicted to opium. Mothers in carpet weaving districts take opium to ease muscle aches earned from spending long days at the loom, and give it to their children to keep them quiet."

Says Bayer: "There is no education, no awareness of the harm that opium causes. People here have been traumatized. If they can find something to relieve the pain, they will take it." From Time magazine 2/14/07.

NET for heroin gets boost in Scotland

Jack McConnell, Scotland's First Minister, has called for a radical shake-up in Scotland's drug rehabilitation policy after witnessing a controversial new heroin addiction treatment in action.

He said that Scotland must seek to abandon the methadone programme and look instead for new, drug-free methods of kicking heroin.

His comments came after he visited a trial of neuro-electric therapy (Net, promo photo from website), a drug-free addiction treatment, invented by a Scottish neurosurgeon, Dr Meg Patterson.

At the trial, Mr McConnell met six female heroin users who are undergoing a seven-day course of Net. The treatment involves a weak electric current being applied to the brain.

Laura, 28, a mother of two, has been a heroin user for seven years, but has failed to quit using methadone. She told the First Minister she had been "amazed" by how quickly her cravings for heroin had disappeared while undergoing Net.

Afterwards the First Minister spoke of his desire to see Net given a full clinical trial, with a view to making it available on the NHS.

He said, "I'm very keen that we find a way of progressing to a proper research proposal so that Net can be tested in the conditions that will meet the standards of the National Health Service.

"If this is successful, then this treatment could operate on a scale that can make a huge difference to people's lives." Source.

People underestimate power of addictive cravings

People systematically underestimate the power of cravings for addictive drugs, says a new study sponsored by the Carnegie-Mellon Institute. The study measured what people addicted to heroin would give for a dose of the medication buprenorphine, a heroin blocker, when their cravings were highest v. when they had just received the drug and their cravings were at their lowest.

People play around with addictive drugs because they don't believe that they will become hooked, says Professor George Loewenstein, lead author of the study. Similarly, people without personal experience of addiction have no clue to the compelling force of the addict's craving, once addiction is established. Source.

Afghanistan: "The poppy will eradicate us"

From a World Politics Watch article by freelancer Jason Motlagh:

As the Taliban makes headway in the south and east, the largest-ever opinion survey shows one-fifth fewer Afghans believe the country is moving in the right direction compared to the eve of 2004 elections. Contempt mounts each day against President Hamid Karzai for failing to hold members of his government accountable. According to Crisis Group, his Anti-Corruption and Bribery Office has a staff of some 140 and has been operating for over two years but has yet to obtain a conviction. U.S. Defense Department and European officials say at least half of all Western aid does not reach those who need it. Drug-related corruption is most problematic at the local-regional level, though a number of state employees told me the trail leads all the way back to Kabul, where suspiciously lavish homes interrupt otherwise drab neighborhoods. Perhaps no one has defined the situation better than the embattled president himself: "If we fail to eradicate poppy, the poppy will eradicate us."

Read the full article.

Forced naltrexone implant for opiate addicts?

A proposal to implant persons arrested on opiate abuse charges with a timed-release naltrexone device has raised a medical ethics debate. A critical comment by R.G. Newman MD, MPH, appears in this blog.

From one narco-state to another

President Bush has nominated William Wood, the current U.S. ambassador to Colombia, to the same post in Afghanistan. Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the press that the President's intent was to transfer the Colombian model to Afghanistan.

Among the numerous voices questioning the wisdom of this judgment was the New York Times, which editorialized on Feb. 6:

The limited gains Colombia has achieved in recent years have been offset by an overly generous amnesty program for right-wing paramilitary leaders and drug traffickers, which has seriously compromised the rule of law. And American aid has been disproportionately directed into military and police programs, leaving far too little to promote alternative livelihoods for Colombia’s farmers. Despite all the money spent, the amount of land planted with coca crops has risen and the net harvest has been reduced only slightly. Afghanistan’s problems will not be solved by copying these mistakes.

Source. It sounds like, apart from the language barrier, Wood will feel right at home in Colombistan.

A long, insightful piece on the Colombia/Afghanistan parallel by Simon Jenkins in the Sunday Times (London) makes a similar point. In Afghanistan, he says:

Here, too, the West is intervening in a narco-economy that is destabilising a pro-western government. Here, too, quantities of aid have been dedicated to security yet have fed corruption. Here, too, intervention has boosted drug production and stacked the cards against law and order. This year’s Afghan poppy crop is predicted to be the largest on record. European demand has boosted the price paid for Afghan poppies to nine times that of wheat. At this differential a policy of crop substitution is absurd. ...
Some 40,000 Nato troops from more than 30 different countries are gathered in Kabul. Since many of them refuse to fight, the city has become a holiday camp for the world’s military elite. Outside the capital, military occupation acts as a recruiting sergeant for insurgency, leaving Nato bases constantly on the defensive. ...

Jenkins' piece, titled "America is doped up in Colombia for a bad trip in Afghanistan," observes that in Helmand province, a major poppy area, "drug lords are the only counterweight to the Taliban." Source.

All quiet on the Walters front

John P. Walters, head of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), told the press last December 9 that Afghanistan would become a "narco-state" unless a major campaign of spraying the poppy fields with herbicide were initiated. Walters, in fact, announced that such a campaign had been decided on. Source.

Six weeks later, the Karzai regime in Kabul announced that spraying the poppy fields would not happen, either from the air or from the ground. See earlier blog item here. Instead of expressing dismay, the White House pledged additional funds and troops, and Pres. Bush sent personal well-wishes to Karzai.

The effect was to hang Walters out to dry. The "giant steps" toward poppy eradication that he said were needed to prevent Afghanistan from becoming a narco-state are not going to happen. The "scourge of corruption" that troubles Afghanistan's institutions, according to his Dec. 9 statement, is unchecked and reinforced, with the blessings of the Bush administration.

If Walters had any backbone, he'd resign.

View from Pakistan: Afghanistan is narco-state

Afghanistan has become a narco-state, says Rasul Bakhsh Rais, a professor of Political Science at the Lahore University of Management Sciences, in a commentary in the Pakistan Daily Times.

The twin strategy of war and reconstruction in Afghanistan has failed to achieve any remarkable success. The country is sliding fast into chaos and disorder, particularly on its southern and eastern periphery. If other areas are calm, it is not because the state has extended its writ to them, but because it has surrendered its authority to the local warlords. There is general despondency and frustration among the population.

Their grief and anger is widely shared by the international community and by friends of Afghanistan throughout the world. After three bouts of deadly war, the Afghans thought they would have a better, peaceful future and economic opportunities to reconstruct their individual and collective lives.

The Taliban have re-emerged as a formidable force, against the hope that international intervention and political reconstruction would end the war. The warlords continue to stay put and strong, forcing President Hamid Karzai to make compromises. The Pashtun regions remain unstable and out of the government’s control.

Local farmers and international drug-traffickers have found the absence of the Afghan state and weak political and security arrangements auspicious for reviving poppy cultivation on a scale never known before in the history of the country. Afghanistan unfortunately has become a narcotics state — a development that has taken place in the presence of NATO, ISAF and US forces.

The U.S. under the Bush administration has allied itself with the warlords, the worst and least popular elements of Afghan society:

The warlords humiliated, coerced and murdered tens of thousands of Afghans, and most of them had a narrow support base in their immediate ethnic or tribal communities. The United States, by co-opting them as allies against the Taliban, rehabilitated them, empowered them with money and weapons and gave them a dignified space in the new political structure.

Most of them have committed untellable atrocities against their political and ethnic rivals and could be put before an international criminal tribunal for their crimes against humanity. All of them have been spared for the ‘good’ work they have done for the US and ISAF forces.

Read the full commentary.

Boston: Politicos dragging feet on heroin problem

"Our public officials and elected representatives continue to drag their feet on increased funding for, and accessibility to, aggressive rehabilitation and educational programs" to meet the heroin problem, says a letter to the Boston Globe by Jody Price of Brockton.

Ms. Price is one of the parents in the suburban Boston area whose family has been hit by heroin addiction.

She says of the local politicos: "Their inaction abandons families to be destroyed by the gut-wrenching fear and life-changing grief they suffer, struggling to save their children, then losing them to overdose. " More.

Vietnam: Eight more face death for heroin trade

Hanoi (dpa) - In one of northern Vietnam's largest drug cases in years, a court on Tuesday sentenced to death eight people convicted of running a heroin ring, a drug enforcement official said.

The People's Court of Son La province, which borders Laos, found 31 people guilty of either transporting opium or producing heroin, said Le Minh Loan, head of the province's anti-narcotics' force.

In addition to the death sentences, 13 defendants were given life sentences. Nine others received lengthy prison terms, and one was sentenced to time served.

The ring was accused of producing 44 kilograms of heroin and trafficking 216 kilograms of heroin and 199 kilograms of opium in the period between 2000 and 2004.

Under Vietnamese law, trading more than 600 grams of heroin is punishable by death.

According to the Ministry of Public Security, Vietnam now has 160,226 drug addicts, more than 70% of which are between 18 and 35 years old.

Afghanistan: No programs to replace poppy crop

Dutch Minister of Development Agnes van Ardenne told a television audience last week that Dutch soldiers serving in the NATO force in Afghanistan will not take part in any efforts to destroy the poppy crop because no comprehensive plan exists to help farmers grow and market other crops.

Afghanistan currently produces enough poppies to make 90 per cent of the world's heroin. Source.