Com­ment: In light of the mas­sive vol­ume of broad­casts avail­able on this site about intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty involve­ment in drug traf­fick­ing, this should come as no sur­prise.

“NATO Rejects Russia’s Demand to Destroy Afghan Pop­py Fields”; New Europe; 3/26/2010.

NATO and Rus­sia clashed on 24 March over how to tack­le the drug prob­lem in Afghanistan, where West­ern nations have been fight­ing a Tal­iban-led insur­gency for eight years. The coun­try is the world’s largest pro­duc­er of pop­py seeds, a key ingre­di­ent in the man­u­fac­ture of hero­in. Rus­sia is keen to pur­sue an aggres­sive erad­i­ca­tion strat­e­gy, while West­ern allies fear that such an approach risks antag­o­niz­ing the local pop­u­la­tion, who rely on sell­ing pop­py crops to sur­vive, Deutsche Presse-Agen­tur (dpa) report­ed.
The dif­fer­ent points of view came to a head at a meet­ing of the NATO-Rus­sia Coun­cil attend­ed by the head of Russia’s Fed­er­al Drug Con­trol Agency (FSKN), Vic­tor Ivanov and NATO Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al Anders Fogh Ras­mussen. “Afghan opi­ates led to the death of 1 mil­lion peo­ple by over­dose in the last 10 years, and that is Unit­ed Nations data. Is that not a threat to world peace and secu­ri­ty?” Ivanov asked jour­nal­ists after the meet­ing.
In his speech to NATO diplo­mats, a copy of which was hand­ed to the press, Ivanov stressed that “NATO is ful­ly respon­si­ble for nor­mal­iz­ing the sit­u­a­tion in Afghanistan, includ­ing the elim­i­na­tion of drug pro­duc­tion.”
The Russ­ian offi­cial pre­sent­ed a sev­en-point plan that fore­sees, among oth­er things, an exten­sion of the UN man­date for NATO troops in Afghanistan that would oblige them to erad­i­cate pop­py fields, as well as tar­get­ing the Tal­iban-led insur­gency. Ivanov said at least 25 per cent of the opi­um crop should be destroyed as part of the pro­posed joint NATO-Rus­sia plan. He added that Mar­jah, the for­mer Tal­iban strong­hold that NATO troops cleared in recent weeks, offered a “unique oppor­tu­ni­ty” to start the effort. . . .