27KG OF OPIUM IN A KITCHEN - JUST ANOTHER DAY IN THE AFGHAN WAR ON DRUGS

Poppy Production Increased By 25% Last Year

British Switch Focus From Farmers To Traffickers

A haul of drugs - mostly heroin - confiscated in Afghanistan by the
Kabul-based Criminal Justice Task Force. Photograph: Julian Borger

The two men ruefully scrutinising their shoes in the dock said they
were simple labourers, though they had allegedly been found with 27kg
of opium in their kitchen, worth a potential UKP250,000 in the west.

In almost any other country, that would count as a significant drugs
bust. In Afghanistan, the poppy-growing hub of the world, where drug
exports are worth more than UKP1.5bn a year and where seizures
sometimes exceed a tonne at a time, it was just another unremarkable
day in the drug war.

It is a war Britain has taken the leading role in, and is currently
losing. Afghan's poppy production grew by 25% last year and is set to
increase again this year, according to estimates by the UN Office on
Drugs and Crime (UNODC). The biggest crop, and the fastest growth, is
in Helmand province, the British area of operations. Poppy
cultivation there increased by more than 60% last year and is on
track for more double-digit growth in 2007.

The latest UNODC winter survey, published last month, found a
decrease in poppy acreage in seven provinces, mostly in the north.
But that will be outweighed by an increase in poppy acreage in 15,
mostly southern provinces, including Helmand, from where more than
half the country's drug exports originate. A chunk of that cash ends
up in the pockets of the Taliban, which tends not to run the business
but rather demand a tithe from the farmers and traffickers.

"In the south, the vicious circle of drugs funding terrorism and
terrorists supporting drug traffickers is stronger than ever," the
UNODC executive director, Antonio Maria Costa, said.

The focus of the counter-narcotics effort has hitherto been the
destruction of crops in the field, but that has proved a blunt
instrument, alienating villagers and diverting troops from the fight
against the Taliban. Earlier this month Britain asked its European
allies to take on the crop eradication effort and set about focusing
its efforts on more targeted policing aimed at the traffickers rather
than the farmers.

Meanwhile, a British-trained Afghan paramilitary unit, known as
Commando 333, has carried out raids on heroin laboratories in Helmand
over the past few days, in coordination with the Operation Achilles
offensive led by the Royal Marines against the Taliban and the
druglords. The counter-narcotics taskforce has seized a total of more
than 100kg of heroin and 300kg of opium, the Afghan interior ministry
declared on Sunday.

In the case of the two bearded defendants in the Kabul court, one in
a traditional pakol headwear and the other in a Nike woollen cap,
every detail of the proceedings served to illustrate how difficult
the counter-narcotics effort is.

Their defence lawyer - a woman, like the presiding judge, Mukarama
Akrami - had little difficulty in illustrating the holes in the
police case. In the provinces, the police are not well versed in the
collection of legally-admissible evidence. Her clients, she insisted,
were simply working on the house where the drugs were found - a claim
very difficult to prove in the absence of systematic ownership
records. In central Helmand province, one British official said,
there are 17 overlapping and often conflicting land registers.

The Afghan government prosecutor insisted the two defendants were
caught red-handed but even he was not claiming they could be
described as druglords.

Since it began operations in May 2005, the British-supported Criminal
Justice Task Force has made about 830 arrests, resulting in 351
convictions, but almost all have been couriers, far down the food
chain, whose imprisonment appears to have had negligible impact on
Afghanistan's biggest industry. That is now supposed to change.

"I wouldn't say we've got anyone big in court so far, but hope to do
that later this year," said one British official advising the
Afghans. The key will be to move beyond direct evidence, catching
suspects red-handed, and to start working up the druglord hierarchy
with the use of plea deals and testimony by lower-level defendants to
build conspiracy cases.

He said a witness protection scheme would start up in the next few
months, operated by the US Marshal Service, which already provides a
round-the-clock guard for some judges.

The month-old courtroom in Kabul, with its spotless tiled floor and
ornate wooden bench and dock, is the first step in the chain. With
its panel of three judges in crimson-lined black robes and its
defence lawyers (a rarity in Afghan courts) it is intended to convey
transparency and impartiality.

Until recently, drug suspects were tried in the provinces where they
were caught, and where bribery and threats routinely derailed
important cases involving well-connected defendants. Now all cases
involving over 10kg of opium, 2kg of heroin or 50kg of hashish are
automatically transferred to the task force based in Kabul, where the
presence of British mentors is intended to mitigate the pressure on
prosecutors and judges.

"Bribery will show itself when we release someone [who is guilty] and
we have never released anyone," said Bashir Ahmad Fazli, the chief
prosecutor in Kabul. "And yes, there have been threats, but I am very
old now, and even if they kill me, another will come in my place."

The counter-narcotics taskforce has 10 mobile teams setting up random
checkpoints along the main drugs routes, with three watching the
gates to Kabul. When they first started operating two years ago, they
sometimes stopped convoys of lorries full of heroin or opium but
since then the traffickers have adjusted tactics.

"Instead of finding a lorry with a tonne in the back, you're finding
a lorry with 100kg in the petrol tank," a drug enforcement offical said.

He pointed out that although the seizures are smaller, there are more
of them - 98 in January alone. Yet the growing acreage under poppy
suggests the flow of drugs to Europe - which buys 90% of its heroin
from Afghanistan - is as heavy as ever.

And the UNODC believes that even if every poppy field in the country
was destroyed tomorrow, the traffickers still have four years' worth
of exports hidden in the drug pipeline to the west.