In Afghanistan, Opium Finances All

Thomas Schweich, U.S. Coordinator for Counternarcotics, points the finger at corruption within the Karzai government. And at NATO’s paralysis.

WASHINGTON – The drug trade in Afghanistan finances not just the guerilla effort but also the government of President Hamid Karzai. The former American envoy appointed to coordinate the effort against the drug trade in Afghanistan does not use uncertain terms. The accusations are directed more so at President Karzai’s government – which protects the opium trade – than at the coalition forces, which up until now have shown no willingness to reassess the strategy in place to combat the phenomenon.

In an article published Thursday on the New York Times website, Thomas Schweich, who recently left his post as the State Department’s coordinator for counternarcotics and justice reform in Afghanistan, claimed to have discovered in the last two years the extent to which the Afghan government can be implicated in the protection of opium commerce, and which American-supported politicians are involved. “If it can be said that the Taliban enemies of Karzai are financed by the drug trade, it is also true of many of his supporters,” Schweich argued in the article that will appear Sunday in the New York Times Magazine.

The former U.S. envoy also accuses NATO and the Pentagon of having resisted the anti-opium offensive. The U.S. Department of Defense seems, “to consider the struggle against drug trafficking as ‘none of its business’ and predicts that it will be brought under control only when the fighting in Afghanistan has finished,” wrote Schweich. The State Department admitted Thursday that corruption ensnares efforts to combat the drug trade, but also claimed that this fact does not make a reassessment of its strategy in Afghanistan necessary.