Friday, August 10, 2007


Aug. 10, 2007 (M2 Communications Ltd. delivered by Newstex) --

Director of National Drug Control Policy John P. Walters and Coordinator for Counter-narcotics and Justice Reform in Afghanistan and Acting Assistant Secretary of State for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Ambassador Thomas Schweich

Report: U.S. Counternarcotics Strategy for Afghanistan

Mr Gallegos: Good morning. I appreciate your attendance. Today we have the Director of National Drug Control Policy, John P. Walters, and our Coordinator for Counternarcotics and Justice Reform in Afghanistan, who is also Acting Assistant Secretary of State for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement, Ambassador Thomas Schweich. They'll be speaking and making remarks on the release of the U.S. Government implementation plan to control narcotics in Afghanistan. They'll make some brief remarks, they'll take questions. And in addition to these officials, we have some senior technical experts who will also be in attendance to respond. They will identify themselves and their organization, if they're needed. So, appreciate your attendance.

Mr Walters: Thank you, again. Good morning. We're pleased to release the new strategy and plans for counternarcotics efforts in Afghanistan. I'd like to begin by thanking the people who actually helped to make this possible. Obviously, first and foremost, President Karzai and our colleagues in Afghanistan.

This is a plan that is designed to reinforce their efforts.

I'd also like to thank our -- particularly not only the international partners as a group, the many countries who are working on security, development and institution building in Afghanistan, but in this particular area of counternarcotics, a special thanks, again, has to go to the UK. The British have been partners on this effort as no one else has in the international community. They have spent not only a good deal of effort and time, but they have people who are-- and continue to be-- at risk with us and with the Afghan people to make these programs work. And we are grateful. I know I speak for all of my colleagues.

I'd like to also thank, particularly, some of the representatives here from the agencies of the U.S. Government that have come together in an unprecedented way to expand and extend these efforts: Mark Ward from the State Department; Michael Braun from DEA; Dan Moore from the Department of Agriculture; Scott Schless from the Office of the Secretary of Defense; and Michael Geffroy from the Department of Justice.

They represent the many people who have helped to build on what has been started, and prepare us to move forward in a way that we hope will have profound effects in Afghanistan.

We know that opium, maybe second only to terror, is a huge threat to the future of Afghanistan. The efforts by the Afghan people to build institutions of justice and rule of law are threatened not only by the terror, but the drug forces that are both economic, addictive, and, of course, support, in some cases, of terror, not only through money, but through influence and moving people away from the structures of government toward the structures of drug mafias and violence.

I think it's important to remember that when we think about this, sometimes there are, I think, confusing notions about how this works and who's involved and what their motivations are, that need to be sorted out clearly. And we need your help in helping to, obviously, explain this to the American people and to others, because the support for these programs are critical. And that support is sometimes, as you know, difficult.

The poor people of Afghanistan are not getting rich off of opium. They haven't in the last decade, even though there's a great deal of opium. Ninety percent-plus of the world's opium today exists in Afghanistan. That's obviously the big problem we face. It's also the big opportunity we face: to change, perhaps as never before in history, the enormous destructive effect of opium and heroin on the people of the world. Most of this opium is consumed in Central Asia, other parts of Asia, Russia, Europe; goes to Australia; it comes in small amounts to this hemisphere. But it not only poisons the production places but, obviously, the places where it is consumed.

As I said, the people of Afghanistan at the level of cultivation and production know that this is not a future that offers them wealth, that offers their family security, that offers the opportunity to develop schools and healthcare and security. It's drug mafias. It supports warlordism. It supports terror. Those are the common threads that we have to deal with. And what we have to recognize is those who drive this are those who are the landowners who force sharecroppers to grow poppy rather than licit agricultural products. In some cases, they're corrupt officials. In some cases, they're tribesmen who have been taxing and running this. In some cases, they're the Taliban and the terrorists who hold a gun to people's head or threaten to kill their families if they don't plant poppy and if they participate in voluntary eradication.

So, to be successful here, we have to get at the people who are making the decisions. And that requires us to now to give alternatives and development to those who are the poor, the rural -- not entirely always subsistence farmers but those at the village and province level -- but also to remove the bad actors and to suppress their ability to continue this trade.

This plan is designed to strengthen the Afghan nation's counternarcotics effort. It has rested, in the parts that we have participated in, in five components: public information to explain what's going on to reinforce the rightness of suppressing poppy and its consequences. Secondly, alternative livelihoods and rural development; and a big part of this plan is expanded -- substantially expanded work on rural development and alternative livelihoods in these areas.

Eradication to-- where areas are not voluntarily controlled; the local officials first have the capacity to reduce poppy cultivation, and where that's not possible, that the central government have that power. Interdiction is the fourth part of taking away the movement of opium-processed heroin chemicals and other infrastructure for the drug business that is such an acid in the institutions of Afghanistan and elsewhere. And lastly and fifthly, justice reform: allowing the current legal structure that has been established after the Government of Afghanistan has been stood up to become more robust and present in many places. We'll have some discussion of that -- no doubt -- later.

Again, we are helping the Afghan nation implement its strategy here. The major additions at this efforts we're announcing today includes -- are -- increasing development assistance, as I said, on a much wider scale, and to reinforce gains that have been made. Afghanistan, today, is not a place of uniformly exploding opium. As you will hear, many parts of Afghanistan are not only declining, but significant numbers are becoming poppy-free. But in the areas, particularly where there is less secure control, the poppy cultivation has grown dramatically as it's become a part of the instability and support for terror. It is the economic development program of the terrorists and the criminals, and that is an important key in breaking the back of this effort.

We are also more fully integrating the counternarcotics efforts into the counter-Taliban effort. We are -- recognize that the security situation, as you see, that overlaps significantly with the counternarcotics situation, requires better integration and capacities; and that is part of what this plan calls for.

And we're also working to expand the capacities of Afghan institutions on a wider scale, as I say, to support the -- not only the growth but, in some cases, the ability to bring people to justice who have not been touched by the pressures that need to be touching them to stop the participation in the opium trade.

We are hoping to, this

year, to double from six to 12 the number of poppy-free provinces of the 34 provinces of Afghanistan. We are hoping, in addition, to continue to strengthen the capacity of, beginning with the district and provincial leaders, all the levels of institutions in Afghanistan in more places. Some of those are going to be at a more primitive area circumstance.

Obviously, Afghanistan's a difficult place to work in, given the poverty, the destruction of institutions by war, and the extent to which the opium economy -- first made legal by the Taliban Government -- have penetrated some parts of the country. Nonetheless, I think it is very clear for those of you that have visited the country, I think the people of Afghanistan understand that the opium economy, just like terror, does not bring a future for their children, for their institutions, for their lives, that they want; and that what they're looking for is an environment where someone won't force them -- by their poverty, by landownership -- that they have to be sharecroppers on by putting a gun to their head or threatening to put a gun to their head or their family's head to continue to participate in this economy. Again, it's not an overnight change, but you can already see that parts of the north of Afghanistan have already voted with the rest of the nation for a future that has less poppy and gives an opportunity for institutions of government, based on democracy and rule of law, to grow.

Again, it's my honor to be here with many people in this room who have worked in Afghanistan and brought us to this point, and to mention our thanks again to the Afghan people, many of whom, to get here, have risked their lives in places, allowing alternatives development sites to operate in areas where they were marked for death because of their efforts to move their country ahead. Those are the people who are on the front line and those are the people we're proud to support. Now, let me introduce Ambassador Tom Schweich.

Ambassador Schweich: Thank you, Mr. Director, and thank you for all of your work in this. In fact, we wouldn't be here today had it not been for the efforts of Director Walters. In January of this year, we received information that it was likely that the poppy crop in Afghanistan, for this coming harvest season that just occurred, will be higher than last year, which was disappointing news. And as a result of that, Director Walters and John Negroponte, the Deputy Secretary of State, asked that there be an interagency group convened to work side by side to evaluate all aspects of the counternarcotics strategy that was outlined by Director Walters to determine how we could significantly improve it in two ways. And National Security Advisor Hadley also was very interested in this activity.

And we looked for two things: how can we adjust our strategy to ensure long-term success; but we also were looking for ideas on how we could achieve short-term success as well. We were looking for ways that we could try to turn this increase around as quickly as possible and then make sure it was sustainable.

As a result, we convened for the first time ever a high-level interagency group, most of whom are here today representing the Department of Defense, the Department of Justice, Mark Ward from the U.S. Agency for International Development. USDA was part of it. Obviously, the Drug Enforcement Administration, which has been on the ground in Afghanistan since shortly after 9/11, and all other relevant players who would be part of this were at meetings. We had very long and detailed meetings for many weeks. We got very -- it was really an interesting spirit of cooperation, submissions from all agencies in a very thorough and timely manner. We integrated those.

We had another series of meetings to make sure that every person's concern had been addressed, and we came up with what we feel is a very comprehensive approach to trying to improve our delivery of counternarcotics services. And as Director Walters said, we also coordinated with the Government of Afghanistan and very closely with our UK partners, who are having a press rollout right now at the same time we are in England on their efforts to refine their strategy as well.

It's happening as we speak here today.

What I thought I would do is go over and summarize what you have in front of you, the paper that you have in front of you, and talk to you in each of the critical areas -- public information, alternative development, eradication, interdiction/law enforcement and justice reform -- what refinements we are going to be working with our international partners, particularly the United Kingdom and, of course, the Government of Afghanistan, to implement.

The first thing we did though as we tried to develop a refinement and improvement in the strategy was to look very carefully at the developing trends in Afghanistan that Director Walters briefly alluded to. We do not have a uniform situation in Afghanistan and therefore our strategy

has to recognize the regional differences in poppy cultivation, trafficking, interdiction and the development of the judicial system across the country.

The major difference, as Director Walters mentioned, is this developing north-south divide where we are seeing significantpoppy reduction in northern provinces, including some that are traditional poppy-growing provinces like Balkh and Badakshan where we expect when the UN makes its announcement in September that we will see sharp, sharp reductions in those traditional areas as well as an increase in the poppy-free provinces from -- as Director Walters said, from 6 to 10, 12 or even 14 provinces.

Unfortunately, the overall number, which is what a lot of people look at, will go up because the gains in the north have been more than offset by the losses in the south, particularly Helmand Province, to some extent Uruzgan and Kandahar and also Nangarhar in the east, where there's been some insecurity recently has shown somewhat of a resurgence.

So the strategy we've developed is designed to do two things: one, consolidate the gains in the north, increase the reach of the poppy-free geographic area in Afghanistan, ensure that there's no resurgence of poppy in those areas so it's sustained reductions; and then sort of tighten the noose around the southern provinces where we're seeing an increase and try to see a quick reduction or turnaround in those areas that will lead to sustainable reductions in those provinces as well.

And if I could summarize the paper you have in front of you briefly, what we're trying to do here is dramatically increase the incentives for being poppy-free or reducing poppy production. And what you'll read in front of you is a significant increase in the amount of development assistance that will be directly given to those parts of Afghanistan that are able to become poppy-free or move in a poppy-free direction.

At the same time, we try to consolidate those gains with great new incentives, we also are looking for substantially harsher disincentives for those areas and those parts of the country where we see poppy production increasing. We want to make sure that there are greater rewards for success and greater consequences for failure, and I think that would summarize a significant part of the document that you have in front of you.

In order though, also, to ensure that we are able to achieve success in those volatile and difficult southern provinces, as the Director said, we will have to have much closer coordination between the military effort and the counternarcotics effort. There is no way you can deliver some of the services in the south without having some sort of coordination and understanding where the security is, where the insecurity is, and how we can deliver counternarcotics activity and services in coordination with the military authorities.

So with that introduction, I will go over, pillar by pillar, piece by piece, a summary of what we've concluded and how we intend to improve the delivery of the counternarcotics effort in Afghanistan.

First of all, I think sometimes we underestimate the importance of public information. We all know that the Taliban is very good at public information. They're much better at public information than they are at military operations or any other sort of activity in Afghanistan. And in order to be successful in reducing poppy, we have to have a public information campaign that is more effective than the narcotraffickers and the Taliban have.

In the past, public information focused pretty generally on radio, television, posters, those types of activities -- traditional media type activities. We experimented in the north, where there was more security, last spring with much more word of mouth type activity, sending out the poppy elimination teams, which are groups of international advisors and Afghans, into the tribes, into the villages, meeting with the shuras and discussing with them the benefits of reducing poppy, both within the country of Afghanistan by reducing addiction rates, by being consistent with religious beliefs, and also improving relations with neighbors and allies, and making sure they had alternatives and listening to their concerns.

And we saw a pretty significant success in the north with that activity. For that reason, it was unanimously agreed that when you expand that program, that we need to expand the poppy elimination teams into other areas of the country, into other regions, give them more resources and make sure that the message gets out more clearly to the people in Afghanistan that the international community is with them and that there will be great rewards for becoming poppy-free in terms of their country and their own daily lives. And I think you will see a greater amount of word-of-mouth activity around the country trying to expand on that success we enjoyed in a limit way in the north over the past year. So the grassroots word-of-mouth initiatives are a

critical part.

In the south, however, there needs to be more coordination of the counter-Taliban and the counternarcotics message. People need to understand that if they are growing poppy, they are contributing to insecurity, as this poster on page four of the charts you have shows. They need to understand that there is a direct relationship between the insecurity and the success or failure of the insurgency and the opium trade. There is increasing and more and more alarming intelligence about more integrated relationships between narcotraffickers and insurgents and Taliban. And for that reason, we need to make it clear that if you are supporting the poppy trade in the south of Afghanistan, you are supporting insecurity and you are supporting the Taliban.

And we have been working very closely with the Department of Defense and with ISAF and with our UK partners to ensure a very consistent and tough message about the impact of poppy on the overall situation in the south of the country. And we have specific suggestions in the paper, which I won't go into right here, about how that can be accomplished. And we've received a great deal of support from the military authorities in Afghanistan and we're very confident there will be a strong and integrated public information campaign in the south of the country, relative to poppy.

The second piece and a very, very important piece, is alternative development. There is no way you can ask a poor farmer to stop growing poppy unless that poor farmer has an alternative, unless that poor farmer knows there is something else that he or she can grow; that the family can grow to make a living.

That said, we also know that there is no miracle crop. There's a section in the report about that. There's nothing that really will equal the income you can get from poppy, so people have to understand that they will not be able to get that kind of return as they would from poppy. And they need to understand the other benefits they would get from switching to alternatives, mainly: security, not having to deal with corrupt and violent organizations as they grow their crop; less labor, most other crops are less labor intensive than poppy; and they need to see the other benefits.

One of the biggest initiatives that is in the paper and that we've worked very closely with the UK and the Government of Afghanistan on is to strengthen the Good Performers' Initiative. It was a small program geared mostly toward the poppy-free provinces in the east this past year, and we are going to expand that dramatically. I will leave it to the Government of Afghanistan over the next few days to announce exactly what the modalities will be, but we have identified in the United States another $20 million for this year, up to $30 or $40 million we've requested for coming years.

The UK will put in several million dollars and we expect some of our international partners to contribute, as well, so that provinces that remain poppy-free see substantial, specific benefits to those localities and villages that contributed to that effort; immediate returns. And provinces that reduce poppy substantially will also see significant additional development assistance as a reward for the reduction of poppy.

There'll be large amounts of money put into this program and it will be tied specifically to benchmarks based on UN numbers of poppy reduction. So that if a village says, okay, we're going poppy-free, the next year immediately they will see a result. If they wanted a school, a road, something like that, they will see that going into place immediately as a result of their activity.

We feel it is very important to tell those people that have gone poppy-free, you don't have to wait five or ten or fifteen years to see your development go up. You'll see that, too, with a larger development effort which is not impacted at all by this plan, but you will see immediate, short-term gains as a result of your activity, and that's a major new initiative.

I expect a rollout of that by the Government of Afghanistan within the next few days, giving you the specifics. But we are very excited about that and think it will have a major positive impact on the poppy situation in Afghanistan.

We have Mark Ward from USAID here. He can talk to you, if you have any questions about the specific issues that are raised about improving the delivery of alternative development; more emphasis on foods and livestock and higher-yield activity.

Now, they have a really interesting plan for doing that. The engagement of land grant universities to have extension services so that when the large programs are pulled out, there's resources available afterwards for people to talk to and make sure they continue their development of new and alternative crops and private sector involvement.

We did look at subsidies as a possibility. The problem is that in a country that is as unregulated as Afghanistan, you can't keep track of subsidy money very easily at this point, so that was rejected. But the idea of subsidizing private enterprises that have packing facilities, that get crops to market, that involve agents that sell food abroad so you can increase your realization on your crop is very, very much encouraged in this report. And we expect to see AID working very closely with small, private companies in Afghanistan that are able to get crops to market and sell those crops for a higher value in the coming years. And we think that was a major significant new addition by AID to the activity going on in Afghanistan.

But I will also say that while we are increasing dramatically incentives and capability of getting products to market, as I said earlier, there still really is nothing that will equal the income of poppy. We're going to get closer and we're going to make it more lucrative for the farmers, but there is nothing. So there has to be -- and I think everybody in the room, when we had these meetings agreed -- some sort of downside to growing poppy.

An interesting fact is that we expect, when the United Nations releases its information about poppy production

in a few weeks, we expect that Helmand Province alone will account for at least half of all the opium in Afghanistan. Helmand Province also happens to be the wealthiest province in Afghanistan, and the areas that grow poppy in Helmand are the wealthiest parts of Helmand -- not Ali and other central districts. They have an infrastructure that was put in by the United States 50 years ago. They have access to markets.

They've got roads, they've got irrigation. And if it were a country, Helmand Province would be the fifth-largest recipient of U.S. aid of any country in the world. So there have been tremendous strides made in Helmand Province in terms of development. Yet, we still have a very significant poppy problem there.

This is not an issue of poor farmers. This is not an issue of people not having alternative in that particular area of the country. This is a situation where wealthy landowners, corrupt officials, opportunists, people who see a security vacuum have decided, I can't make a whole lot more money if I grow poppy.

If I grow poison, poison that kills people all over the world, I can make a lot more money. In this case, is where an eradication program is very appropriate. This is the type of situation when an alternative is available and it's not adopted; where we want to increase the risk to those who decide to continue to grow.

Keep in mind that 75 percent of the poppy growth in Helmand Province is new in the last two years. That means these are not poor farmers that have been doing this for generations; they weren't even doing it two years ago. So, these are the people we need to deal with toughly; not the poor farmers in certain other areas of the country, but there. And in that case, we need to improve our eradication performance.

So I'll move to a discussion in the paper about how we're going to do that. If you look at Thailand or Pakistan or other countries across the world that have been able to significantly reduce poppy production over the years, there has always been this coercive element, and we intend to continue to do that in Afghanistan. But the way eradication has been done over the past couple of years has not been effective, and we acknowledge that. One, we haven't achieved the amount of eradication that's required to deter farmers. I work very closely with the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, and their position is you need to eradication between 20 and 30 percent of a crop in a given area in order to impact a planting decision the next year. If a farmer feels that he or she, or a local landowner or corrupt official, has a 20 to 30 percent chance of getting eradicated, they probably won't plant the next year. So that's our goal: is to increase the amount of eradication that we're able to do.

But that's not enough. You can't just get numbers, and we've learned that. Even in areas where we've been able to get that number, eradication has been mostly done in the past by negotiation. The central eradication force, the Afghan Eradication Force, which is a very dedicated, strong group of 500 Afghan police, and the government of that eradication efforts, don't have enough force protection to go into an area they want to go into. What they tend to do is go into an area, and they're stopped by people who do not have our best interests at heart; they're negotiating where the eradicationcan occur, and as a result, it's not equitable. It tends to be the people who are least powerful that can get eradicated, not the people who are most powerful. We need to stop that.

We need to make it clear that if you are a powerful poppy grower, you are the highest value-target for us in eradication. And in that regard, we discuss in the paper the need to develop a force protection component for eradication, both in the short term and in the long term. And there was unanimity among the agencies and our partners that we need to develop that capability, and we expect to be doing that in the near future.

So we will be doing more forced eradication. We're trying to get more hectares eradicated, but we're not looking only at the numbers. We want to ensure that the quality of eradication is better. But we're not veered off toward the less powerful, if the eradication occurs, against the more powerful. And that's very critical part of the strategy.

The next piece is interdiction. And DEA, as I said, has been on the ground from day one, but they've been hindered by a lot of issues; one, mobility. All of you have been -- most of you, I'm sure, have been to Afghanistan. It's mountainous, it's desert. It's very, very difficult to get around. It's easy to hide opium and it's difficult to get opium traffickers. And for that reason, we need a force protection component to also protect DEA and Afghan counternarcotics police operations.

There's a very close relationship between DEA and the various police operations in Afghanistan and we want to make sure that force protection capability also extends to

take down activity and the ability to extricate high-value targets from their locations at any place, at any time, without any negotiation.

And we're going to look for force protection capability there.

Air mobility is critical. DEA is going to get more air mobility to Afghans who are training their pilots and their people so they'll be able to do these operations themselves with support from our own law enforcement and British law enforcement activities; higher mobility and the capacity to gather evidence. We frequently hear that while we all know who the traffickers are, why don't you arrest them? This is a democracy in Afghanistan. There is a constitution. There is judicial process. You can't arrest somebody because you think they're a narcotrafficker. You can only arrest them when you have evidence that will stand up in a court of law. And the Afghan police and our support of them has been hindered by the capacity to gather substantive evidence; the ability to use technical abilities to gather evidence. And part of our strategy is to dramatically improve that capability, as well.

We want to increase the number of high-value targets that are taken out of Afghanistan soon. And that's what this strategy endeavors to do for the short term and the long term. Everyone in the whole chain of supply and demand has to know that they are vulnerable under this plan. And we think that as we implement this plan, they will all be vulnerable. This will require cooperation from military authorities, which they have offered, and it will require an intensive increased training effort of Afghan police, which will occur.

Finally, the justice sector; it is -- there is a counternarcotics tribunal in Afghanistan now that has exclusive jurisdiction of all cases with three kilograms or more. That is in its early stages. It does have several hundred cases pending and recently convicted some mid-level traffickers, which was very, very encouraging. This is Afghan prosecutors, Afghan police, Afghan investigators, Afghan judges trained under a program run by the U.S. Department of Justice with the support of the Norwegians and others, which is proving remarkably effective but is very, very early -- in its very early stages.

So what we are going to do is put more resources, more people more money into that central criminal tribunal for narcotics, and we expect to see the capacity to prosecute and incarcerate higher level of traffickers to increase. In the meantime, though, we also think an extradition policy needs to be developed for the very high-level traffickers that Afghanistan may not yet be able to prosecute. And so we're looking to extradite more people to the countries where the Afghan opium flows.

The rest of the paper deals with more general issues about how we're going to get more cooperation and integration of the military and the counter-narcotics effort; how we're going to work more closely with our European allies and the UK to ensure unity of effort and activity across the board; and also, how we are going to reject silver bullet theories, such as buying out the crop, which I've addressed many of the people in this room about, which we know would not work; the miracle crop theory, which we sometimes hear -- that one crop will solve all the problems, which it won't -- and other areas, which we simply cannot buy into the idea that there's a simplistic solution to this.

We need to have a comprehensive plan that needs to cover all areas, all regions. There needs to be allied unity both in terms of our friends in other countries and the military effort. And it needs to be sustained and we need to recognize it's going to be a long haul. We need to be in it for the long term and we need to keep the pressure on for the foreseeable future.

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