KABUL — U.S. Marines and Afghan forces have found and destroyed hundreds of tons of poppy seeds, opium and heroin in southern Afghanistan this month in raids that a top American official said show that the new U.S. counternarcotics strategy in Afghanistan is working.
U.S. and NATO troops are attacking drug warehouses in Afghanistan for the first time this year, a new strategy to counter the country’s booming opium, poppy and heroin trade. NATO defense ministers approved the targeted drug raids late last year, saying the link between Taliban insurgents and drug barons was clear.
U.N. officials say Taliban fighters reap hundreds of millions of dollars from the drug trade each year.
“This administration set out to reverse the counternarcotics program by de-emphasizing crop eradication and emphasizing interdiction,” Richard Holbrooke, President Barack Obama’s envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, said Saturday. “. . . It’s a historic change if it’s successful, and the first indications were very, very promising.”
Marines in Helmand working alongside DEA-mentored Afghan police seized 297 tons of poppy seeds, 77 pounds of heroin and 300 pounds of opium in raids in mid-July. Some 1,200 pounds of hashish and 4,225 gallons of chemicals used to convert opium to heroin were also seized.
“This wasn’t an accident. This was planned interdiction,” Holbrooke said.
Bomb-making materials, rocket-propelled grenades and AK-47s were also seized, underscoring what the U.S. Embassy said was “the connection between drug trafficking and the insurgency.”
