NATO defense ministers agreed yesterday to allow forces operating in Afghanistan to attack drug lords and their networks supporting the insurgency in the country.
The agreement came under strong pressure from the United States, which has identified opium trafficking in Afghanistan -- the source of more than 90 percent of the world's heroin -- as a primary target in the stepped-up battle against the Taliban insurgency that American commanders have begun mapping out in recent weeks.
But the accord also accommodates objections from some of the 26 NATO nations that contribute forces to the 50,000-man NATO force. Attacks on drug "facilities and facilitators supporting the insurgency" will occur only if the NATO and Afghan forces involved have the authorization of their own governments, a provision that will allow dissenting nations to opt out of counternarcotics strikes.
The compromise appeared to satisfy the two U.S. officials who pushed the case for the new policy at a meeting here, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Gen. John Craddock, the supreme NATO commander. Afterward, Gates said that the accord would allow "some to do things that others did not want to do," and added, "It's better than nothing."
On the drug policy, the United States once again ran into a problem that has beset the Afghan war effort: the widely differing levels of commitment by its NATO partners, some of whom have committed troops to the effort but insist that they remain in areas of Afghanistan where insurgent threats are low. Reluctance to widening the NATO mandate to include attacks on drug networks has come from Germany, Italy, Poland and Spain, among other nations.
Their fear has been that attacks on drug lords, laboratories and supply networks will further alienate ordinary Afghans who have grown wary or hostile toward NATO forces, undercutting efforts to curb the insurgency and increasing threats to NATO forces.
The drug trade is estimated to account for about half of Afghanistan's meager economy, and some of the nation's poorest people, including farmers who toil in the poppy fields, are dependent on incomes that flow directly or indirectly from narcotics. The U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, in a recent survey on the 2008 opium yield in Afghanistan, estimated that the average income for the 500,000 families involved in the opium harvest amounted to nearly $2,000.
There have also been concerns that attacks on drug networks will depend heavily on intelligence supplied by Afghans, which has often proved unreliable, contributing to the deaths of innocent civilians in attacks.
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