thedrifter
10-07-08, 07:35 AM
UN Intercepts Taliban's Heroin Chemical in Rare Afghan Victory
By Celestine Bohlen
Oct. 7 (Bloomberg) -- The international community is scoring some rare victories in its war against the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan, and they aren't on the battlefield.
A campaign led by the United Nations has intercepted shipments totaling several hundred tons of a chemical that helps turn poppy-based opium into heroin. The Taliban gets as much as 60 percent of its income from the drug trade, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization estimates, using the profits to purchase weapons for the seven-year-long conflict.
The intensified effort to block the Taliban's access to acetic anhydride comes as the Afghan war turns deadlier, with a record 236 U.S. and allied troops killed so far this year, according to icasualties.org, a Web site that tracks coalition fatalities. U.S. Army General John Craddock, supreme allied commander for Europe, is pushing to increase military involvement in countering the narcotics trade.
Squeezing this trade would ``cut the legs out from under'' the Taliban, ``because they won't have the money to pay the bomb makers and buy materials to attack us,'' Craddock says. ``The soldiers, airmen, sailors and marines of NATO are being killed because of the money being generated from this industry.''
The UN campaign includes countries from Slovenia and Turkey to Russia and South Korea and has created an unusual level of cooperation among nations otherwise at odds, including the U.S. and Iran. Since the effort began about a year ago, the UN and national police have increased the amount of acetic anhydride intercepted from 24.5 tons in 2006, according to the Vienna- based UN Office on Drugs and Crime.
Epicenter of War
Afghanistan accounts for more than 90 percent of the world's heroin supply, the UNODC says. Almost all of its opium comes from seven southern provinces controlled by the Taliban and local drug lords in the epicenter of the war, which has caused the deaths of more than 980 U.S. and allied troops since it began in 2001.
``The geographical and logistical overlap of opium and the insurgency is well-established,'' says Antonio Maria Costa, the UNODC's executive director. ``Since drugs are funding insurgency and insurgency enables drug cultivation, insurgency and narcotics must be fought together.''
Acetic anhydride is used in dyes and perfumes, for metal buffing and by the pharmaceutical industry for such products as aspirin and the pain reliever paracetamol. It is produced in 21 nations and has long been under international controls.
Illegal Diversions
The UN's goal is to stop shipments from being illegally diverted from distribution routes in importing countries. Since there aren't any authorized uses for acetic anhydride in Afghanistan, any shipment headed there is suspect, says Jean Luc Lemahieu, chief of the UNODC's Europe and Asia section.
``If we find it there, we know there is something wrong,'' he says. ``There is no legal excuse for it.''
The chemical allows Afghanistan's drug lords to dramatically increase revenue by producing heroin in their own laboratories instead of shipping out raw opium to be processed elsewhere. According to Craddock, a kilo of opium fetches about $100, compared with $3,500 for heroin.
``If we keep control on the chemical precursors, we reduce the income available to the insurgents,'' Costa says.
The amounts of the chemical intercepted so far are only a fraction of what is used in the labs, which now need 1,300 tons to process about 5,000 tons of opium -- 60 percent of the country's production -- into 670 tons of morphine or heroin, according to the UNODC.
Smuggling Networks
Still, the operations appear to have slowed the flow of acetic anhydride into Afghanistan, says Rossen Popov, chief of precursors control at the Vienna-based International Narcotics Control Board, which is affiliated with the UN. As evidence, he cites attempts by smuggling networks to purchase substitute chemicals. Another indication of the success is a spike in sales of opium rather than heroin from the country, Costa says.
Poppy cultivation in Afghanistan fell 19 percent this year to 157,000 hectares (387,955 acres), after rising more than 20- fold to a record 193,000 in 2007 from 8,000 in 2001, when U.S. troops first arrived after the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. According to a UNODC report, the drop stemmed from drought, along with help the Afghan government has given farmers to switch to other crops.
President Nicolas Sarkozy, who boosted the number of French soldiers in Afghanistan to 2,600 this year, helped shepherd a resolution through the UN Security Council in June that called for closer monitoring of the manufacture, export and illicit trade of chemicals the Taliban uses to produce heroin. The measure passed unanimously.
Shipments Confiscated
In late 2007, 10 tons of acetic anhydride were seized in the Russian city of Nizhni Novgorod. A 14-ton shipment was intercepted in March in Karachi, Pakistan, and in April, another 5 tons were confiscated at the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas. Smaller shipments were stopped in several Central Asian countries, according to Lemahieu.
The biggest haul came in Slovenia in June, when police seized 98 tons of the chemical in a shipment labeled ``fabric softener'' headed for Turkey, says Drago Menegalija, representative of the Slovene Police criminal division.
The yearlong investigation involved nine nations, including Serbia, Ukraine and Turkey, and focused on a criminal group that had bought 366 tons of acetic anhydride from a Czech company between 2004 and 2008, enough to produce 147 tons of pure heroin, Menegalija says.
``All these countries are against drug trafficking because their populations suffer from drug use,'' says Pierre Lafrance, a former French diplomat and president of MADERA, a Paris-based organization that assists rural development in Afghanistan. ``It is an international scourge, so something must be done.''
The next step ``is to identify and prosecute those responsible and to follow the money,'' says Mark Colhoun, a regional coordinator for UNODC, based in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. ``It is definitely a cat-and-mouse game.''
To contact the reporter on this story: Celestine Bohlen in Paris at cbohlen1@bloomberg.net
Ellie
By Celestine Bohlen
Oct. 7 (Bloomberg) -- The international community is scoring some rare victories in its war against the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan, and they aren't on the battlefield.
A campaign led by the United Nations has intercepted shipments totaling several hundred tons of a chemical that helps turn poppy-based opium into heroin. The Taliban gets as much as 60 percent of its income from the drug trade, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization estimates, using the profits to purchase weapons for the seven-year-long conflict.
The intensified effort to block the Taliban's access to acetic anhydride comes as the Afghan war turns deadlier, with a record 236 U.S. and allied troops killed so far this year, according to icasualties.org, a Web site that tracks coalition fatalities. U.S. Army General John Craddock, supreme allied commander for Europe, is pushing to increase military involvement in countering the narcotics trade.
Squeezing this trade would ``cut the legs out from under'' the Taliban, ``because they won't have the money to pay the bomb makers and buy materials to attack us,'' Craddock says. ``The soldiers, airmen, sailors and marines of NATO are being killed because of the money being generated from this industry.''
The UN campaign includes countries from Slovenia and Turkey to Russia and South Korea and has created an unusual level of cooperation among nations otherwise at odds, including the U.S. and Iran. Since the effort began about a year ago, the UN and national police have increased the amount of acetic anhydride intercepted from 24.5 tons in 2006, according to the Vienna- based UN Office on Drugs and Crime.
Epicenter of War
Afghanistan accounts for more than 90 percent of the world's heroin supply, the UNODC says. Almost all of its opium comes from seven southern provinces controlled by the Taliban and local drug lords in the epicenter of the war, which has caused the deaths of more than 980 U.S. and allied troops since it began in 2001.
``The geographical and logistical overlap of opium and the insurgency is well-established,'' says Antonio Maria Costa, the UNODC's executive director. ``Since drugs are funding insurgency and insurgency enables drug cultivation, insurgency and narcotics must be fought together.''
Acetic anhydride is used in dyes and perfumes, for metal buffing and by the pharmaceutical industry for such products as aspirin and the pain reliever paracetamol. It is produced in 21 nations and has long been under international controls.
Illegal Diversions
The UN's goal is to stop shipments from being illegally diverted from distribution routes in importing countries. Since there aren't any authorized uses for acetic anhydride in Afghanistan, any shipment headed there is suspect, says Jean Luc Lemahieu, chief of the UNODC's Europe and Asia section.
``If we find it there, we know there is something wrong,'' he says. ``There is no legal excuse for it.''
The chemical allows Afghanistan's drug lords to dramatically increase revenue by producing heroin in their own laboratories instead of shipping out raw opium to be processed elsewhere. According to Craddock, a kilo of opium fetches about $100, compared with $3,500 for heroin.
``If we keep control on the chemical precursors, we reduce the income available to the insurgents,'' Costa says.
The amounts of the chemical intercepted so far are only a fraction of what is used in the labs, which now need 1,300 tons to process about 5,000 tons of opium -- 60 percent of the country's production -- into 670 tons of morphine or heroin, according to the UNODC.
Smuggling Networks
Still, the operations appear to have slowed the flow of acetic anhydride into Afghanistan, says Rossen Popov, chief of precursors control at the Vienna-based International Narcotics Control Board, which is affiliated with the UN. As evidence, he cites attempts by smuggling networks to purchase substitute chemicals. Another indication of the success is a spike in sales of opium rather than heroin from the country, Costa says.
Poppy cultivation in Afghanistan fell 19 percent this year to 157,000 hectares (387,955 acres), after rising more than 20- fold to a record 193,000 in 2007 from 8,000 in 2001, when U.S. troops first arrived after the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. According to a UNODC report, the drop stemmed from drought, along with help the Afghan government has given farmers to switch to other crops.
President Nicolas Sarkozy, who boosted the number of French soldiers in Afghanistan to 2,600 this year, helped shepherd a resolution through the UN Security Council in June that called for closer monitoring of the manufacture, export and illicit trade of chemicals the Taliban uses to produce heroin. The measure passed unanimously.
Shipments Confiscated
In late 2007, 10 tons of acetic anhydride were seized in the Russian city of Nizhni Novgorod. A 14-ton shipment was intercepted in March in Karachi, Pakistan, and in April, another 5 tons were confiscated at the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas. Smaller shipments were stopped in several Central Asian countries, according to Lemahieu.
The biggest haul came in Slovenia in June, when police seized 98 tons of the chemical in a shipment labeled ``fabric softener'' headed for Turkey, says Drago Menegalija, representative of the Slovene Police criminal division.
The yearlong investigation involved nine nations, including Serbia, Ukraine and Turkey, and focused on a criminal group that had bought 366 tons of acetic anhydride from a Czech company between 2004 and 2008, enough to produce 147 tons of pure heroin, Menegalija says.
``All these countries are against drug trafficking because their populations suffer from drug use,'' says Pierre Lafrance, a former French diplomat and president of MADERA, a Paris-based organization that assists rural development in Afghanistan. ``It is an international scourge, so something must be done.''
The next step ``is to identify and prosecute those responsible and to follow the money,'' says Mark Colhoun, a regional coordinator for UNODC, based in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. ``It is definitely a cat-and-mouse game.''
To contact the reporter on this story: Celestine Bohlen in Paris at cbohlen1@bloomberg.net
Ellie