US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld made an unannounced visit to Afghanistan yesterday to review preparations for the October presidential election and go over reconstruction and counternarcotics programs.
During a daylong visit, he planned consultations with Afghan and UN officials, as well as meetings with senior US military officials.
PHOTO: AP
Before flying to the Afghan capital, he said US-led coalition forces are preparing a coordinated effort to attack the narcotics trade in the country, recognizing that drug income could be used to fund insurgents and terrorists in the country.
He offered few specifics, but noted the British government previously has taken the lead in working with President Hamid Karzai's administration to address the drug trade in Afghanistan.
"There are plans being finished now," Rumsfeld said Tuesday, in Oman for the first of several visits to US allies in the region. "I don't want to get into whose troops will do what."
The cultivation of opium poppies has resumed and flourished since 2001 in Afghanistan. It was largely eliminated under the Taliban's religious policing, but farmers have resumed cultivating and harvesting the profitable crop in the chaos since the fall of the Taliban.
American military commanders in Afghanistan have said previously they don't have enough troops to go after the poppy trade and still hunt Taliban and al-Qaeda holdouts.
Rumsfeld seemed resigned that the poppy trade would continue to some degree, saying demand for the drug will always lead someone to create a supply. Heroin made from Afghan poppies generally reaches markets in Europe and Russia.
"All crops have been good the last two years," he said of Afghanistan's poppy cultivation. "It is a terrible thing. It produces great wealth for people who use it to harm society."
The criminal elements are naturally opposed to a strong, democratic government in Afghanistan, he said. He also suggested drug money had ties to Taliban or al-Qaeda, but provided no concrete information to back that up.
UN surveys estimate Afghanistan accounted for three quarters of the world's opium last year, and the trade brought in US$2.3 billion, more than half of the nation's GDP.
New surveys suggest even more has been planted this year, with Robert Charles, the US State Department's top counternarcotics official, saying Afghanistan may be on pace for a world record opium poppy crop this year.
Rumsfeld pointed to the drug war in Colombia as a partial model for efforts in Afghanistan. There, US-trained military forces attack narcotics smuggling routes while the Colombian government tries to eradicate coca growth in the farmlands through aerial spraying.
The costly Colombian campaign, a US$3.3 billion, five-year military aid package known as Plan Colombia, has provided Colombian forces with training, equipment and intelligence. It has led to a huge increase in drug seizures, and closer judicial cooperation between the countries has led to the extradition of 120 alleged drug traffickers to the US for trial in two years.
Despite the progress, cocaine prices on US streets remain unchanged, a sign that there is no shortage of the drug. And the program to fly crop dusters over Colombian coca fields and spray them with herbicides has drawn sharp criticism from environmental and other groups.
Meanwhile, Rumsfeld hailed Afghanistan's efforts to prepare for presidential elections in October, citing figures saying more than 9 million Afghans have registered to vote, including 3.5 million women.
"If those numbers prove out, that's an enormously successful registration process," he said.
Karzai is clearly the American favorite, but Rumsfeld and other officials have avoided endorsing him, saying the US government will work with whomever the Afghan voters choose.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS