Transnational mafia pushes drugs production
by Lalit K. Jha
Pajhwok Afghan News
04.18.2007
A top official of the Afghan embassy in Washington has said that transnational drug mafia is mostly responsible for pushing Afghanistan towards increased narcotics production.
Addressing the students of the Georgetown University Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Ashraf Haidari, political counselor at the embassy, said the global demand, particularly in the western countries, and the transnational mafia, which provides drugs to consumers, was responsible for this.
As such, he suggested that along with targeting its production in Afghanistan, focus should also be made on destroying the network of this mafia.
"We know from economics that as long as there is demand for anything, there is always supply, which, in case of narcotics, is often found in war-torn countries where states lack resources for rural development and law enforcement capacity to fight and eradicate drugs," Haidari added.
He discussed Afghanistan's comprehensive eight-pillar Drug Control Strategy, and pointed out that international aid for counter-narcotics had neither been enough nor coordinated properly over the past five years.
"We know from international experience that unless we balance 'carrots and sticks' to fight narcotics at the supply end, unless we address the problem at the demand end, unless we regionally and internationally cooperate against transnational drug mafia, and unless we commit long-term rural development assistance to revitalize Afghanistan's legal agriculture, we would continue swimming against the tides of drugs in Afghanistan," Haidari said.
In his lecture on "Afghanistan's Drug Control Policy: The Nexus between Drugs and Insecurity", Haidari informed the students about the background against which Afghanistan has become a prime victim of transnational drug traffickers that have found a natural ally in the Taliban terrorists and those that undermine governance and the rule of law in Afghanistan.
"Any involvement in the illicit opium poppy cultivation and drug trafficking is strictly forbidden by Islam, by our Constitution, and by our culture. Afghans observe each of these principles against drug production and trafficking, but the past thirty years of war have forced some ten per cent of our rural population to rely on poppy cultivation for mere survival," he said.
