DRUG TRADE 'REACHES TO AFGHAN CABINET'

Some cabinet ministers in Afghanistan are deeply implicated in the
drugs trade and could be diverting foreign aid into trafficking, the
country's anti-narcotics minister said yesterday.

The admission will dismay Western governments, which last week
pledged $10.5 billion (UKP6 billion) in aid, including UKP505 million
from Britain, to help to fight poverty, improve security and crack
down on the drugs trade.

It raises the prospect that money being donated by the West could be
used indirectly to kill British soldiers, 3,300 of whom will be
stationed in anarchic Helmand province, where corrupt officials,
insurgents and drug lords overlap.

"I don't deny that," said Habibullah Qaderi in an interview with the
Sunday Telegraph, when asked whether corruption linked to the UKP2.7
billion-a-year drugs trade went right up to the cabinet.

Such high-level criminality, he said, would help account for why "a
lot of trafficking through different parts of the country" was being
conducted with apparent impunity.

But he declined to name names and said Afghanistan's weak justice
system, itself bedevilled by corruption, meant that it was difficult
to convert allegations and rumours into fact. "The question is how to
find evidence against these people [politicians]."

In Kabul, the houses of several senior politicians resemble small
palaces with marble corridors, painstakingly manicured lawns and
dozens of armed guards.

Even in provincial town such as Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand,
ostentatious homes stand in stark contrast to the poverty around them
and are known locally as the houses of "smugglers" - a euphemism for
drug traffickers.

Western aid officials and several European diplomats named the same
high-ranking politicians and officials, including one with close
links to Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan's President, as drug lords.

"The Afghans complain that 75 per cent of aid is spent directly
rather than being filtered through their government but the reason
for that is because otherwise a significant proportion is skimmed off
into the pockets of drug lords," said one American aid worker.
"Post-Taliban Afghanistan is going to emerge as a low-level
narco-state at best."

But a veteran European diplomat in Kabul said: "The problem, as ever,
is the smoking gun. We all know it is happening. We all know the
names. But I have never seen any direct evidence and I don't know
anyone who has."

Ali Ahmad Jalali, who resigned as Afghanistan's interior minister
last year, said: "Sometimes government officials allow their own cars
to be used for a fee. Sometimes they give protection to traffickers.

"In Afghanistan, corruption is a low-risk enterprise in a high-risk
environment. Because of the lack of investigative capacity it is very
difficult to get evidence. You always end up arresting foot soldiers."

But he accused Western governments of exaggerating the problem to
justify limiting their long-term commitment to rebuilding
Afghanistan. The "drug problem in Afghanistan is demand-driven" from
the West, he said, with 90 per cent of profits being made outside the
country. Nato policies, moreover, had helped to consolidate the drugs
lords because they had focused solely on fighting Taliban and
insurgent forces rather than attacking the trade.

Mr Jalali urged British troops in Helmand not to ignore narcotics, 90
per cent of which end up in Europe. "I understand Nato's argument
that if they eradicate poppy fields then that antagonizes the
population. But there are legitimate targets - mobile labs and
stockpiles - which only drugs lords, rather than ordinary poppy
growers, are involved with."

A British official said that a number of Afghan MPs were linked to
the drugs trade and that some officials had to be circumvented
because they were corrupted by drugs. "There are plenty of people in
the national assembly who are very dodgy. Corruption is endemic so I
have to be careful with some figures in the Afghan set-up who might
not be 100 per cent committed to eradicating drugs."

Last week, the World Bank castigated Western governments for failing
to channel money through the Afghan government, leading to vast
amounts of cash being spent on exorbitant salaries, security guards
and fortified accommodation for aid workers.

But the Kabul Weekly, an Afghan newspaper, summed up the dilemma: "If
aid is given to NGOs, huge amounts go into their own expenditures. If
it's given to the Afghan government, the poor bureaucracy and
corruption waste it."