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NATO Troops To Attack Drug Lords

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The New York Times

Published: October 11, 2008

BUDAPEST, Hungary - NATO defense ministers agreed Friday to allow troops operating in Afghanistan to attack drug lords and their networks that support the escalating insurgency in the country.

The agreement came under strong pressure from the United States, which has identified opium trafficking in Afghanistan - the source of more than 90 percent of the world's supply - as a primary target in the battle against the Taliban insurgency that U.S. commanders have been mapping out in recent weeks.

The accord accommodates objections from some of the 26 NATO nations contributing troops to the 50,000-man NATO force.

Attacks on drug "facilities and facilitators supporting the insurgency" will occur only if NATO and Afghan troops have the authorization of their governments, a provision allows dissenting nations to opt out of counternarcotics strikes.

The compromise appeared to satisfy the two U.S. officials who pushed the new policy at a meeting here, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Gen. John Craddock, supreme NATO commander.

Afterward, Gates said that the accord would allow "some to do things that others did not want to do," and added, "It's better than nothing".

On the drug policy, the United States again ran into a problem that has beset the Afghan war effort: widely-differing levels of commitment by its NATO partners, some of whom have committed troops to the effort but insisted they remain in areas of Afghanistan where insurgent threats are low.

Reluctance to widening the NATO mandate to include attacks on drug networks has come from Germany, Italy, Poland and Spain, among other nations.

Their fear has been that attacks on drug lords, laboratories and supply networks will further alienate ordinary Afghans who have grown wary or hostile towards NATO troops. That, in turn, has undercut efforts to curb the insurgency and increasing threats to NATO troops.

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