20 June 2008

Afghan Justice, Agriculture Sectors Grow, Confront Opium Trade

Baz Mohammad case illustrates U.S.-Afghan cooperation

Judges pray with Afghan President Karzai in 2001.

By Julie Hyman and Michael Buchanan
Staff Writers

WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and its Afghan partners shut down the powerful drug trafficking organization of Haji Baz Mohammad, a Taliban-linked narco-terrorist, in 2005, after a four-year battle that demonstrated a strengthening collaboration between the United States and the newly democratic Afghanistan.

Baz Mohammad's arrest and conviction illustrate the significant relationship that has emerged between the United States and the Afghan government since the Taliban regime was toppled in late 2001.  Under the Taliban, Afghanistan had become a safe haven for the transnational terrorist organization al-Qaida, and the Taliban regime claimed about 40 percent of Afghan drug profits.  The majority of the drugs produced ended up in Europe and the United States.

One of the significant issues still facing the Afghan people is illicit opium cultivation and production. Programs are under way to change age-old farming patterns, say U.S. officials.  Although crucial, improving the judicial system may not be enough to stop drug trafficking in Afghanistan, where 80 percent of citizens earn their living through agriculture.

“Afghanistan is an opium-producing country.  The United States, in coordination with Afghan officials, has not been working for long in trying to find alternate livelihoods and training [for] the Afghan farmers in ... ways to support their families as well as their judicial system.  We are still at the ground level and still working hard, so progress has been made, but everyone understands that it is going to take time,” DEA Special Agent Patrick Hamlette said at a June 19 briefing in Washington.

U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) programs have reduced pressure to cultivate opium poppies by encouraging the return of legal commercial farming with training, seeds and fertilizer; repairing war-damaged roads and irrigation systems; and helping develop new food-processing plants and markets for legal fruit, vegetable and orchard crops.  Many Afghans raise livestock, so animal health training will be provided to boost poultry and livestock production.

Afghanistan is looking to confront the narcotics trade and continue to strengthen its economy and institutions to ensure long-term stability.

After the Taliban were removed from power, the United States helped the newly democratic government to bring Baz Mohammad to justice.  This case was a new undertaking for the emerging Afghan judicial system as it struggled to deal with a new constitution, corruption inside the government and pressure from outside factions.

“I think it’s really the ability, the desire of the [administration of President Hamid Karzai] in Afghanistan to promote the rule of law that carried the day,” said Hamlette, who led the Baz Mohammad investigation.  The collaboration between the countries continues to improve the Afghan justice system, he said.

The drug kingpin, responsible for exporting $25 million of heroin from Afghanistan and Pakistan since the early 1990s, helped finance the Taliban in exchange for protection of his opium crops, heroin labs and drug routes.  His organization arranged for the heroin to be imported into the United States and other countries and sold for tens of millions of dollars, according to federal authorities.

Baz Mohammad called his operations “a jihad, because they took the Americans’ money and at the same time, the heroin they sold was killing them,” said prosecutor Michael Garcia, the U.S. attorney for the New York district that handled the case.

In October 2007 Baz Mohammad was sentenced in a New York federal court to nearly 16 years in prison.

In the new Afghanistan National Development Strategy presented at the International Conference in Support of Afghanistan in Paris recently, the Afghan government identified justice reform as a top priority.  The United States has continued its support and pledged $15 million for Afghanistan’s justice sector.

According to David T. Johnson, assistant secretary of state for international narcotics and law enforcement affairs, American federal prosecutors are training and mentoring Afghan prosecutors and investigators to counter the drug trafficking industry.  Since May 2005, nearly 1,600 defendants have been convicted in more than 1,400 cases and 55 metric tons of opium have been seized, he said.