UK TRAINS AFGHANS IN ANTI-DRUGS DRIVE

British special forces are secretly training an elite team of Afghan
commandos, whose mission is to destroy big heroin laboratories and
confiscate drug caches and shipments, Afghan and western officials in Kabul
told the Financial Times.

The covert programme, called Operation Headstrong, gives a hard nose to UK
anti-narcotics efforts in Afghanistan, which is the world's largest
producer of opium and accounts for about 90 per cent of the heroin consumed
in the UK.

It constitutes the most aggressive component of anti-drug strategy in the
country, where the government and its international allies have struggled
to formulate a coherent policy for tackling the problem.

The officials, who have close knowledge of anti-narcotics policy, said a US
air strike on a heroin lab in the northern province of Badakhshan on
January 2 was part of a raid by the elite force, operating with the
guidance of British agents. It was the first significant deployment of the
force, which numbers around 100, they said.

A team of Afghan commandos raided the lab about 10 miles north of the
provincial capital of Faisabad, and arrested several people working there.
An A-10 aircraft that was providing air support for the operation then
destroyed the lab.

A senior British official in Kabul said the UK had "a number of projects in
interdiction" and was "keen to increase the risks of heroin production and
processing", but refused to be drawn on whether British agents were
involved either in training a covert interdiction force or in what he said
was "an Afghan military operation" on January 2.

Lt Col Matthew Beevers, a coalition spokesman, said 1.5 tons of opium were
seized and several people arrested. He said the raid was carried out by
Afghan and coalition special operations forces but declined to comment on
whether British agents were involved.

The UK government is divided over how to curb production and stop
trafficking in a country whose rural economy is in tatters and whose local
law enforcement capacity is negligible. The UK has a UKP70m, three-year
strategy to beef up Afghan law enforcement and judicial capacity and
develop economic alternatives for poppy farmers.

Officials in Kabul familiary with UK drug policy say Downing Street is keen
to pursue eradication and interdiction, but the international development
agency, DFID, is wary of eradicating poppy fields without first making sure
farmers have an alternative source of income - a policy some Afghan and
other western officials consider unrealistic.

A DFID memo to the Afghan government in December laid out a long and
complicated list of criteria on which eradicators should establish a
farmer's ability to support himself.

Afghan and foreign anti-narcotics officials were meeting this weekend to
try and thrash out a concerted eradication strategy, said Mirwais Yasini,
head of the government's counter-narcotics directorate.

With poppy planting underway in the south, the government will probably opt
for using local eradication teams advised by UK and US officials, Mr Yasini
said. It hopes a plan for a more robust, mobile teams protected by a
military force from a third, Muslim, country, may fall into place in time
to tackle eradication in the north, where spring arrives later.

In a sign of growing readiness to tackle the drugs problem, the Bush
administration has earmarked $175m for Afghan law enforcement over the next
two years, compared with $24.6m in 2003, plus an extra $50m next year for
counter-narcotics, according to a US anti-drug official. The Pentagon plans
to spend $59m in the year starting October 2003, compared with nothing last
year.

But Afghan and western officials involved in drug policy say the coalition
does not want to get involved in a messy anti-drug war or cause short-term
instability by upsetting provincial warlords and powerful government
officials who benefit from the industry.

"Primarily because of our capacity, given the mission we have right now
which is to kill and capture terrorists and improve security, our ability
to be actively involved is limited," General David Barno, head of the
US-led coalition, said in an interview last month.

Some western organisations are disdainful of the argument used by some
high-level American and British officials that the drug industry at least
generates money in a destitute economy.

"Too damned bad if it's going to have a negative economic impact," said
Adam Bouloukos of UNODC in Kabul. "Long term, this country cannot survive
on an illegal economy."