PENTAGON RESISTS PLEAS FOR HELP IN AFGHAN OPIUM FIGHT

The DEA Wants the Military to Take a Larger Role in Stopping the Drug
Trade, Which Experts Say Finances the Insurgency.

WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon, engaged in a difficult fight to defeat a
resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan, has resisted entreaties from U.S.
anti-narcotics officials to play an aggressive role in the faltering
campaign to curb the country's opium trade.

Military units in Afghanistan largely overlook drug bazaars, rebuff
some requests to take U.S. drug agents on raids and do little to
counter the organized crime syndicates shipping the drug to Europe,
Asia and, increasingly, the United States, according to officials and
documents.

While the Pentagon and the Drug Enforcement Administration, or the
DEA, have been at odds, poppy cultivation has exploded, increasing by
more than half this year. Afghanistan supplies about 92% of the
world's opium, and traffickers reap an estimated $2.3 billion in
annual profits.

"It is surprising to me that we have allowed things to get to the
point that they have," said Robert B. Charles, a former top State
Department counter-narcotics official. "It we do not act aggressively
against the narcotics threat now, all gains made to date will be
washed out to sea."

The bumper crop of opium poppies, much of it from Taliban strongholds
in southern Afghanistan, finances the insurgency the U.S. is trying
to dismantle.

The DEA's advocates in Congress argue that the Pentagon could
undermine the insurgency by combating the drugs that help finance it.
Military officials say they can spare no resources from the task of
fighting the Taliban and its allies.

Outgoing Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has said that
Afghanistan's flourishing opium trade is a law enforcement problem,
not a military one. It would be "mission creep" if the 21,000 U.S.
troops in Afghanistan were to turn their attention to opium, and it
would also set a precedent for future combat operations, military
officials say.

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said Afghanistan's police forces and
British troops in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization peacekeeping
operation have the primary responsibility for fighting the Afghan drug problem.

Military officials also fear that cracking down on opium traffickers
could alienate the Afghan people and warlords who profit from the
trade. An estimated one-eighth of the population is involved in poppy
cultivation, and the opium trade is one-third of the country's economy.

The Pentagon has cooperated some with the DEA, but its resistance to
doing more has drawn criticism from prominent congressmen, including
Rep. Henry J. Hyde (R-Ill.), chairman of the International Relations Committee.

Hyde and other lawmakers say the Bush administration is making a
crucial mistake in not directing U.S. forces to collaborate with the
DEA to take down those supplying the Taliban with cash, high-tech
weapons and trucks.

"If we don't change the policy soon, and fight both drugs and
terrorism simultaneously, Afghanistan may well fall into a failed
narcotics state status," Hyde said in a statement.

Hyde has urged the White House and the Pentagon to look to Colombia
as a model. Anti-narcotics agents there work closely with the
military to target terrorism and drug trafficking.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai and other officials have asked for more
help from the Pentagon, especially stronger support for the DEA.

"We are disappointed that there isn't more and closer cooperation
between these two," said M. Ashraf Haidari, Afghanistan's Washington
liaison to U.S. military and law enforcement agencies. "We have been
saying this since 2003."

Haidari said the DEA and Afghan authorities needed "maximum military
support both from ground and air." He complained that there was
little coordination between the U.S. and international anti-drug
efforts in Afghanistan.

The DEA has about 10 agents in Kabul, the Afghan capital, and rotates
small teams of agents and intelligence analysts into the country, two
at a time. The teams train and work with Afghan narcotics police, but
also do their own investigations.

But DEA agents can't move about the mountainous terrain without
helicopters and, in many cases, can't infiltrate well-protected drug
operations without backup from troops.

Several dozen kingpins have emerged in the Afghan drug trade who are
allied with the Taliban and Al Qaeda, current and former U.S. and
Afghan officials said. In the last year, the drug bosses have become
more brazen, richer and powerful.

U.S. and Afghan officials say the major traffickers and their
hundreds of criminal associates prey on poor Afghan poppy farmers,
openly run huge opium bazaars and labs that turn opium into heroin,
and truck vast quantities of drugs into neighboring countries. They
often return with night-vision goggles, land mines, sniper rifles and
other high-tech weapons to use against U.S. and NATO forces.

Antonio Maria Costa, head of the United Nations Office on Drugs and
Crime, said in a recent interview that the location of major drug
operations were "well-known to us and to the authorities." He said he
recently watched a video of a heavily armed drug convoy of about 20
vehicles crossing into Iran.

"When you see narcotics trafficking that has the connotation of
military operations, I am afraid we can only cope with them with
military muscle," he said.

U.S. efforts have largely focused on small drug arrests and the State
Department's program to eradicate poppy fields.

Publicly, DEA officials praise the Pentagon for its help and say
coordination has improved. But two senior congressional aides said
DEA Administrator Karen P. Tandy had been quietly campaigning for
more Pentagon assistance.

"Behind closed doors she has been very adamant about how we need this
stuff over there," a DEA official said, speaking on condition of
anonymity. "Without the helicopters, we can't move. We're sure not
going to go out in caravans with a couple of pistols."

Tandy testified in June that although DEA agents had developed leads
in Afghanistan, the agency had "no operational infrastructure, assets
or support to conduct operations" in Helmand province, where as much
as half of Afghan heroin is grown and processed.

The Pentagon has promised as many as eight MI-17 helicopters for
Afghan authorities to use in collaboration with U.S. military and law
enforcement officials. But only two have arrived and are being used
solely for training, DEA spokesman Steve Robertson said. DEA
officials cannot say when helicopters will be available for drug
operations, he said.

Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Todd Vician said that in the last two
years U.S. troops had worked to support DEA efforts to combat the
drug trade in Afghanistan "in the form of intelligence, planning,
transportation of interdiction forces, medical evacuation and close
air support if needed."

He also said Rumsfeld had authorized federal authorities, including
DEA agents, to go on military operations in areas of known or
suspected drug activity.

But in many cases the Pentagon has balked at drug interdiction
efforts even when it had the resources, said a former senior U.S.
anti-drug official, who declined to give details of what he said were
classified operations.

"There were [drug] convoys where military people looked the other
way, and situations where DEA sought [Pentagon] intelligence and it
wasn't given to them," the former official said.

"DEA would identify a lab to go hit or a storage facility and [the
Pentagon] would find a reason to ground the helicopters," the former
official added. "They would say we don't want you to create a
disturbance in an area where we're trying to chase down terrorists
and the Taliban."

A recent congressional report said the DEA asked the Pentagon for
airlifts on 26 occasions in 2005, and the requests were denied in all
but three cases. The Pentagon said it had done better in 2006,
approving 12 of 14 DEA requests for air support.

Several current and former DEA officials said the Pentagon efforts
were mostly administrative and not related to raids and other
enforcement efforts.

Hyde and Rep. Mark Steven Kirk (R-Ill.), a former naval intelligence
officer, told Rumsfeld in an Oct. 12 letter that they wanted the
Pentagon to allow DEA agents to ride along on more military missions
in Afghanistan and to call them in when soldiers found a large drug
stash or operation.

Eight days later, Rumsfeld wrote that he had asked one of his
undersecretaries, Eric S. Edelman, "to look into this matter."

"We will get back to you as soon as possible," Rumsfeld wrote.

Hyde's aides say the congressman hasn't heard back.