U.S. looks to uncover Taliban opium stockpiles in Afghanistan

By KEN GUGGENHEIM
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON – The Drug Enforcement Administration is providing the CIA with field drug test kits to track down what are believed to be huge opium stockpiles in Afghanistan.

The DEA also is passing information to the CIA and U.S. military about possible locations of the stockpiles, once considered an important source of finances for the Taliban militia, said Steven Casteel, the DEA's assistant administrator for intelligence.

Casteel said Tuesday that drug seizures so far have been in the range of 40 pounds to 100 pounds, "none of the monstrous stockpiles we expected." He spoke with The Associated Press after participating in a DEA-sponsored seminar on drugs and terrorism.

Afghanistan, under Taliban rule, was the world's leading producer of opium in 2000, controlling more than two-thirds of the market. Most of that opium and the heroin derived from it were sold in Europe and Asia. The United States gets most of its heroin from Latin America, mainly Colombia.

Afghan opium production was virtually wiped out after the Taliban, citing Islamic religious principals, banned production in July 2000.

Despite the ban, U.S. officials say the Taliban continued to profit from the opium trade. They say the Taliban stockpiled enough opium to meet market demand for two years, and they contend the ban was merely an attempt to raise prices and boost the Taliban's international prestige.

Now that the Taliban have been driven from power by a U.S.-backed insurgency, anti-drug officials hope to find the stockpiles and discourage new opium production. The northern alliance, which now controls much of Afghanistan, has done little in the past to fight opium production and trade.

Casteel planned to meet with British officials in London this week to discuss drug-fighting strategies.

The DEA hopes some of opium stockpiles will be discovered when top leaders of the Taliban and al-Qaida terrorist group are captured, Casteel said.

"However, they are not dumb," Casteel said. "This is their savings account, and for that reason obviously a lot of them have made every effort to move that savings account to a safe haven outside the country."

Casteel said some heroin shortages have been reported in Russia and eastern Europe. That could mean stockpiles are being depleted, opium could have been destroyed by U.S. bombs, or traffickers are reluctant to move drugs during fighting, he said.

He admitted that that much of the DEA information about stockpiles is outdated. DEA intelligence gathering has been hampered since its office closed in Afghanistan in 1980.

At the seminar, Casteel, DEA Administrator Asa Hutchinson and other speakers stressed the link between drug trafficking and international terrorism. In Colombia, for example, drug trafficking is considered an important source of revenue for the two guerrilla groups and one paramilitary organization on the State Department's list of terrorist organizations.

U.S officials believe Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network, blamed in the Sept. 11 terror attacks, also receives money from drug trafficking but don't know if it is a major money source.

"I think the intelligence is still being developed," Hutchinson said at a news conference after the seminar. "I think we'll learn more as time goes along."

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On the Net: DEA: www.usdoj.gov/dea

AP-WS-12-04-01 1736EST