US ready to pursue senior Afghan officials on drugs

The US government anti-drugs agency is prepared to act on any intelligence linking high-level Afghan officials to the country`s illicit drugs industry, its acting head said on Thursday.

Kabul: The US government anti-drugs agency is
prepared to act on any intelligence linking high-level Afghan
officials to the country`s illicit drugs industry, its acting
head said on Thursday.

Afghanistan`s drugs industry is worth up to three billion
dollars a year, controlled by militants and gangs who use
cross-border routes to smuggle drugs to Pakistan and Iran, and
bring arms and fighters back in.
"We go where the evidence takes us," US Drug Enforcement
Administration acting administrator Michelle Leonhart told
reporters in Kabul.

"If there is evidence that there are high-level officials
within the government, I am very confident that, with our
partnership with the counter narcotics police, our partnership
with the minister of interior and others, that we will pursue
that," she added.

Leonhart was responding to a question about high-ranking
Afghan officials said to be involved in drugs trafficking,
including brother of President Hamid Karzai, Ahmed Wali
Karzai, who heads the provincial council in Kandahar.

"I will not address individual traffickers," she added.

Western officials have condemned claims that senior
officials in the Afghan government or provincial authorities
are involved in drugs trafficking.
"We will be setting our sights on looking at that
corruption angle and we know it`s important to do it for the
Afghan people," said Leonhart.

During her visit to Afghanistan, she toured Marjah, a
community in southern Afghanistan synonymous with poppy
cultivation and where US Marines are leading around 15,000
troops in a bid to flush out the Taliban.

The current US administration has largely avoided crop
eradication in favour of seeking to convince Afghan farmers to
abandon poppy cultivation in favour of other agriculture.

The strategy allows police to target traffickers over
producers of narcotics.

Last October, The New York Times reported that Ahmed Wali
Karzai, who is said to have ties to Afghanistan`s lucrative
illegal opium trade, has been on the CIA payroll for most of
the past eight years for a variety of services.

The DEA conducted 82 joint operations in the last year
with NATO and Afghan police and 54 "significant violators"
were brought to court, Leonhart said.

PTI

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