U.S. helps snare top Afghan drug lords

EXCLUSIVE:

U.S.-Afghan operations have led to the arrests of seven of Afghanistan’s most wanted drug lords and revealed the growing involvement of the Taliban in turning opium into heroin and morphine, Pentagon and Drug Enforcement Administration officials said.

U.S. and Afghan counternarcotics teams last month demolished a poppy bazaar in the southern Helmand province — an open market where traffickers sold seeds to grow top-quality opium and chemicals to turn raw opium into heroin.

The raid killed more than 40 Taliban militants in an eight-hour firefight, in which authorities recovered hundreds of suicide vests, rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons — including Russian-made PKM anti-aircraft weapons, said a senior U.S. official with knowledge of the operation. He asked not to be identified because of the nature of his work.

The successful raid, which has not previously been disclosed, and the arrests provide a bit of good news in a complicated struggle against drug trafficking — the key source of funding for the Taliban as it gears up to fight a surge of U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

Moreover, the Helmand battle demonstrated the importance of Afghan military and civilian police teams working with U.S. Special Forces and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to combat narcoterrorism, the U.S. official said.

Michael Braun, who was the DEA operations chief until late last year, said he could not comment specifically on last month’s operation in Helmand, which is considered the opium capital of Afghanistan.

But Mr. Braun said experiences in Afghanistan and Colombia “clearly point to the effectiveness of teaming the DEA and host-nation law enforcement with our military.”

“This is how you fight 21st-century warfare in places like Afghanistan and win,” he said.

The raid involved Counter Narcotics Police of Afghanistan, DEA’s foreign-deployed advisory and support teams and their trainer, the U.S. Army Special Forces.

The list, provided by U.S. officials, of Afghan drug kingpins arrested since 2005 includes Bashir Noorzai, described by the State Department as one of five founders of the Taliban governing council, or shura, in Afghanistan.

Noorzai, who is scheduled for sentencing on drug charges on April 30, was arrested in 2005 in New York. He was lured there in hopes of a deal and is thought to have offered information to U.S. prosecutors about Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Taliban leader who has been in hiding since the Sept. 11 attacks.

Other traffickers arrested include Baz Mohammed, another founder of the Taliban shura, who was extradited by Afghan President Hamid Karzai. He was convicted in 2006 of drug conspiracy charges in the Southern District of New York and sentenced to 15 years in 2007.

While Afghanistan remains the world’s largest source of opium and heroin, the arrests have provided crucial information about the operations of complex South Asian drug syndicates and the links they have with extremists.

Narcotics profits have built a foundation for the Taliban to expand operations into extortion, kidnapping, natural resource smuggling and misappropriation of aid in Afghanistan, U.S. officials say.

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