Tuesday, April 5, 2005
Counter-narcotics police expanded
Associated Press
Kabul, April 5, 2005
Afghanistan expanded its fledgling counter-narcotics police on Tuesday when a class of paramilitary officers completed a U.S.-run training course and joined a unit tasked with arresting top traffickers.
The 23 graduates, including four women, took to 100 the number of officers in Afghanistan's National Interdiction Unit, one of several new units set up in recent months to spearhead a crackdown on the world's largest illegal drug industry.
A handful of the newly trained officers, dressed in military fatigues, demonstrated their skills at a ceremony in the Afghan capital, executing a mock operation to disarm and arrest suspects _ ideally without firing a shot.
"This shows that we are going to be strong in the future for the fight against drugs," said Gen. Sayed Kamal Sadat, general director of the Counter Narcotics Police of Afghanistan. "We are starting from scratch and have to build things up."
Under pressure from the United States and Europe, President Hamid Karzai has vowed to eliminate the cultivation of opium poppies, which has boomed since the fall of the Taliban in 2001. The country produced an estimated 87 percent of the world's opium last year, prompting warnings that it is turning into a "narco-state."
The United States, Britain and France are training special forces to smash labs and arrest traffickers and refiners while also offering hundreds of millions of dollars to help farmers switch to legal crops. Another unit is tasked with destroying poppy crops across the country.
Officers of the National Interdiction unit must complete a six-week course organized by Blackwater, an American private security firm, on behalf of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency.
© HT Media Ltd. 2004.