It’s tricky going after the home grown crop that not only supports the Taliban efforts, but also supports the every day farmers. Not everyone in Afghanistan is cheering over the arrival of more DEA agents.
By Josh Meyer
Los Angeles Times
WASHINGTON – – The U.S. government is dramatically expanding a long-neglected second front in the war in Afghanistan, dispatching Drug Enforcement Administration agents in an effort to decapitate the Taliban-linked drug trafficking networks that are fueling the insurgency and corrupting the Afghan government, current and former counternarcotics officials say.
The move is seen as a recognition that the war in Afghanistan cannot be won with military force alone. Until near the end of its eight years in office, the Bush administration failed to link the drug traffickers in Afghanistan with the rising insurgency, basing its anti-drug campaign primarily on an effort to destroy the vast fields of poppy that produce more than 90 percent of the world’s heroin.
But that campaign has proved politically unpopular with Afghans and some NATO-led U.S. allies operating in the country. It is considered by the new administration to have been an expensive failure that backfired and drove farmers and influential tribesmen into supporting the insurgency.
