Afghanistan: German army should receive a mandate on fight against drugs

The German army should fight against the drug plantations and the drug trade. This is the demand of the Society for Threatened Peoples (GfbV) in the light of the special session of the Federal Parliament on the Afghanistan mission of German soldiers planned for Wednesday. "Under the protection of western soldiers Afghanistan has since the fall of the Taliban developed into a drug country” criticised the GfbV Asia expert Ulrich Delius on Tuesday. Precisely in those regions in which western soldiers are stationed drug production and trade have according to research by the United Nations increased markedly – against the trend for the country as a whole.

It is in the interest of neither Germany nor Afghanistan if the German army by looking the other way indirectly strengthens the power of the warlords, who make the largest profit from the drug trade, said Delius. For this reason the mandate of the German army must at last be widened. It is not the Taliban, but the arbitrary rule of the drug barons which presents the greatest problem for human rights and democracy in Afghanistan. With their involuntary involvement on the side of the warlords the German army is strengthening the hand of those who have no interest in building up a functioning constitutional state and state authority and only want to cement their power as local potentates. The mission of the German army should according to the will of the Federal government encourage the building up of a stable country.

We have on the one hand the statement of the Director of the UN Office for Drugs and Criminality, Antonio Maria Costa, that the cultivation area for opium in the whole of Afghanistan has been reduced in the year 2004 from 131,000 to 104,000 hectares. Yet on the other hand the opium production in the north of the country has risen by106 percent – which is where the reconstruction teams of German, British and Netherlands soldiers are stationed. The illegal drug trade is developing with an annual profit of 2.8 million US dollars into the most profitable branch of the Afghan economy. This is now the source of 87 percent of opium production in the world.

The province of Kundus, in which a Regional Reconstruction Team (PRT) of the German army is stationed, is one of the loading centres for the drug trade to Russia and Europe. One third of all drug exports are dealt with from here. The province of Badakhshan, in which another German army team is concerned with reconstruction work in Faizabad, belongs to the fouor Afghan provinces with the highest opium production. Some 18 percent of the Afghan opium comes from there. Opium is produced in all 32 provinces of Afghanistan.