....Afghanistan?
[size=4]Military opposes spraying poppies[/size=4]
By Bill Gertz, THE WASHINGTON TIMES
The U.S. military is opposing Bush administration plans to conduct crop eradication in Afghanistan, where poppy cultivation in the coming weeks will net millions of dollars for Taliban and al Qaeda drug runners, U.S. officials say.
The military officials, including representatives of the U.S. Central Command, have argued in interagency meetings that attacking Afghanistan's poppy fields is a nonmilitary function that should be left to others.
Proponents of the effort, in the White House and State Department, want the Pentagon to send special aircraft to drop herbicide on Afghanistan's poppy fields before the opium-producing plants are harvested in the next four to six weeks.
"This is asymmetrical warfare, and it would be a prudent force-protection measure," said a U.S. official close to the debate.
The money obtained from Afghanistan's poppy harvest will fuel the guerrilla war that is expected to escalate against U.S. and allied forces in the coming months.
The money from the poppies also will bolster anti-U.S. elements in the Pakistani ISI intelligence service, the officials said.
"If this opium is harvested and permitted to go to market, it will re-empower the negative elements in Pakistan's security service and lead to instability in Pakistan," the official said. "And it will fund a new round of international terrorism."
A National Security Council spokesman had no comment, noting that the subject is part of an ongoing internal debate.
Gen. Tommy Franks, commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, has rejected the idea of using U.S. military forces for poppy crop eradication, according to a Pentagon official.
"That's not our mission," an official quoted Gen. Franks as saying.
Drug Enforcement Administration chief Asa Hutchinson told Congress on March 12 that the DEA has obtained "multisource information" linking al Qaeda and its leader, Osama bin Laden, to heroin trafficking.
"The very sanctuary previously enjoyed by bin Laden was based on the existence of the Taliban's drug state, whose economy was exceptionally dependent on opium," Mr. Hutchinson said.
Afghanistan produced over 70 percent of the world supply of illicit opium in 2000, and U.S. officials said the current crop is expected to be large.
A DEA intelligence report in September said that Afghanistan produced 74 metric tons of opium from 4,162 acres of poppy fields last year.
The opium produced was significantly less than in 2000, when 3,656 metric tons of opium were produced from 64,510 hectares of land that year.
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