Drug Trade Complicates U.S. Task in Marjah

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John Moore / Getty

Members of the Afghan Eradication Force plow over opium poppies on April 3, 2006 in a field near Lashkar Gah in the Helmand province of southern Afghanistan.

The impetus for the U.S.-led assault on Marjah began one moonless night last May when a squad of American and Afghan anti-narcotics agents, backed by U.S. Marines, slipped through the town's empty streets and raided the Lachoya opium bazaar.

Crashing open shutters, they found shop after shop stacked to the ceiling with bundles of opium, heroin, hashish, guns and improvised explosive devices used in roadside bombings. "If anybody needed proof that there was a nexus between the Taliban and drug traffickers, this was it," says a Western counter-narcotics agent in Kabul.

Marjah was at the center of a dozen international drug networks reaching as far as Europe, Russia and the Far East. When the haul was later tallied — 18 tons of opium, 1 ton of hashish, and 46 kilos of pure, crystal heroin — it was probably the largest drug seizure on record, anywhere.

Not surprisingly, the raid displeased the town's drug lords and their Taliban protectors. They rushed to Lachoy bazaar and kept the U.S. and Afghan drug force pinned down under fire for four days, say counter-narcotics agents in Kabul.

Unlike that raid, NATO's 15,000-troop assault on the town last month was no secret. Alliance commanders had broadcast news of the planned attack to give civilians time to get out of the way. The drawback of the U.S. and its allies telegraphing their intentions was predictable: Three months ago, locals told TIME, every drug trafficker dismantled his labs, grabbed what remained of his stash, and slipped away. "We knew this was going to happen," griped one drug expert. "To catch these guys, you need the element of surprise."

Having captured the town, NATO and Afghan officials face a quandary that, if mishandled, could jeopardize the operation's goal of turning Marjah's people against the Taliban. Local farmers are just a month away from harvesting the area's primary crop, opium poppy. Playing by the rules, the crop should be destroyed, but such an action could swiftly turn the local population against the Western alliance, and the "government in a box" they brought to Marjah. Says one farmer, Mohammd Rahim Khan, "I spent lots of money on my field and so did my neighbors. If the government officials destroy the fields, nearly all the people will rise against them." That's why, according to highly placed Afghan officials, U.S. commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal opposes wiping out this particular poppy harvest.

McChrystal is expected to win the argument. Concedes one western drug expert in Kabul, "We just can't go in and burn down their fields."

But some Western counter-narcotics officials in Afghanistan would like to do precisely that, offering the Marjah farmers payment for the loss of their opium poppy crop. But as one drug expert complains, "You'd be rewarding criminality." He adds: "These people knew about the offensive and they planted the crop anyway. They wanted to make a profit."

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