[House Hearing, 108 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
AFGHANISTAN: LAW ENFORCEMENT INTERDICTION EFFORTS IN TRANSSHIPMENT
COUNTRIES TO STEM THE FLOW OF HEROIN
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON CRIMINAL JUSTICE,
DRUG POLICY AND HUMAN RESOURCES
of the
COMMITTEE ON
GOVERNMENT REFORM
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
FEBRUARY 26, 2004
__________
Serial No. 108-215
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpo.gov/congress/house
http://www.house.gov/reform
______
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
96-524 WASHINGTON : 2004
____________________________________________________________________________
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COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM
TOM DAVIS, Virginia, Chairman
DAN BURTON, Indiana HENRY A. WAXMAN, California
CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut TOM LANTOS, California
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida MAJOR R. OWENS, New York
JOHN M. McHUGH, New York EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York
JOHN L. MICA, Florida PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania
MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York
STEVEN C. LaTOURETTE, Ohio ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland
DOUG OSE, California DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio
RON LEWIS, Kentucky DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois
JO ANN DAVIS, Virginia JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts
TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri
CHRIS CANNON, Utah DIANE E. WATSON, California
ADAM H. PUTNAM, Florida STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts
EDWARD L. SCHROCK, Virginia CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland
JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California
NATHAN DEAL, Georgia C.A. ``DUTCH'' RUPPERSBERGER,
CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan Maryland
TIM MURPHY, Pennsylvania ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of
MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio Columbia
JOHN R. CARTER, Texas JIM COOPER, Tennessee
MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee ------ ------
------ ------ ------
------ ------ BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont
(Independent)
Melissa Wojciak, Staff Director
David Marin, Deputy Staff Director/Communications Director
Rob Borden, Parliamentarian
Teresa Austin, Chief Clerk
Phil Barnett, Minority Chief of Staff/Chief Counsel
Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources
MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana, Chairman
NATHAN DEAL, Georgia ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland
JOHN M. McHUGH, New York DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois
JOHN L. MICA, Florida WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri
DOUG OSE, California LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California
JO ANN DAVIS, Virginia C.A. ``DUTCH'' RUPPERSBERGER,
EDWARD L. SCHROCK, Virginia Maryland
JOHN R. CARTER, Texas ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of
MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee Columbia
------ ------
Ex Officio
TOM DAVIS, Virginia HENRY A. WAXMAN, California
J. Marc Wheat, Staff Director
Nicole Garrett, Clerk
Tony Haywood, Minority Counsel
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Hearing held on February 26, 2004................................ 1
Statement of:
Charles, Robert, Assistant Secretary, Department of State,
International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs........ 15
Tandy, Karen P., Administrator, Drug Enforcement
Administration............................................. 22
Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:
Charles, Robert, Assistant Secretary, Department of State,
International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs,
prepared statement of...................................... 18
Cummings, Hon. Elijah E., a Representative in Congress from
the State of Maryland, prepared statement of............... 10
Davis, Hon. Tom, a Representative in Congress from the State
of Virginia, prepared statement of......................... 61
Souder, Hon. Mark E., a Representative in Congress from the
State of Indiana, prepared statement of.................... 4
Tandy, Karen P., Administrator, Drug Enforcement
Administration, prepared statement of...................... 24
AFGHANISTAN: LAW ENFORCEMENT INTERDICTION EFFORTS IN TRANSSHIPMENT
COUNTRIES TO STEM THE FLOW OF HEROIN
----------
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 2004
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and
Human Resources,
Committee on Government Reform,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:10 p.m., in
room 2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Mark E. Souder
(chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Present: Representatives Souder, Carter, Cummings,
Ruppersberger, and Norton.
Staff present: J. Marc Wheat, staff director and chief
counsel; John Stanton, congressional fellow; Nicole Garrett,
clerk; Tony Haywood, minority counsel; and Jean Gosa, minority
assistant clerk.
Mr. Souder. The subcommittee will come to order.
Good afternoon. I thank you all for coming. Today our
subcommittee will address the problem of transshipment of the
various stages of production, from poppy to opium and finally
to heroin, from Afghanistan to neighboring countries and
elsewhere to market.
We will learn that the estimates of hectares under
cultivation are now approaching the highest level of past
production. The cultivation of poppy and the production of
opium under the Taliban rule reached an individual high of
4,600 metric tons in 1999.
If you glance at the United Nations Office on Drug Control
and Crime chart on the easel to my left, on the far right side
of that chart you can see the production estimates in the
postwar on terrorism period. On the second easel you can see a
4-year comparison from 2000 to 2003, the last full year of
Taliban production. Then the Taliban crackdown. And then the
explosive growth during the U.S.-led war on terrorism. Needless
to say, this is a very troubling trend.
A significant problem is the judicial system in
Afghanistan. It does not exist, for all practical purposes.
Afghanistan does not have the facilities to incarcerate
convicted citizens notwithstanding any possibility of due
process. The Taliban ordered farmers to stop raising poppy in
2001 and stockpiled what product there was. They enforced the
ban with lethal force, not with judicial process. The farmers
complied. The farmers also survived by growing other crops in
the interim. Some have said that the Taliban's motive was not
to rid the world of heroin but to reduce the supply of
nonTaliban narcotics and significantly drive up the value of
their supplies. The Karzai government and the U.S.-led
coalition has not resorted to such measures to enforce a
reduction or outright ban on poppy growth; therefore, there is
no real penalty for growing an illegal cash crop like opium
poppy.
So the question of disrupting this particular market must
be focused on the regions surrounding Afghanistan and the
efforts to stop the various stages of heroin production from
reaching any consumer market. We will learn which routes are
commonly taken, through which neighboring countries, and what
is being done to interdict these shipments.
The graphic on the third easel shows what the U.N. thinks
of the transshipment routes and the major trafficking hubs.
This problem is worldwide, affecting entire continents. The
magnitude of the transshipment problem is reflected in the
destination markets. The United Nations research on drug abuse
revealed that the opiate abuse ranked first in 30 Asian
countries, first in 34 Europeans countries, first in the
Australian continent, and second in North America among drug
users in treatment. Only Africa and South America had a
minority percentage of drug users addicted and seeking
treatment for opiate abuse.
I am concerned about this problem because over 20,000
Americans die every year from drugs, and 7 to 10 percent of
heroin sold in the United States comes from the Afghan region.
The next issue to examine is the matter of working
relationships with international and Federal law enforcement
officials and agencies. Any effective interdiction efforts rely
heavily on trust and shared information. The Department of
State develops relationships with host nation law enforcement
officials where we have embassies. The International Narcotics
and Law Enforcement Affairs Bureau is establishing training
relationships that seek and disburse assistance funding.
Similarly, the Drug Enforcement Administration has agents
assigned to many foreign countries to advise and assist host
nation law enforcement officials with investigation, law
enforcement technology, and training vetted units. With the
consolidation of many other Federal law enforcement agencies in
the new Department of Homeland Security, who passes information
about a load in transit to DHS so that an interdiction can take
place at sea, at ports of entry, or the areas between the ports
of entry; and how is the information passed? What is the
working relationship with respect to counternarcotics with the
Department of Defense in Afghanistan and the surrounding
region?
I have recently returned from overseas, having visited
Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. I have seen some of the
challenges our witnesses will discuss firsthand. I am very
interested in what the solutions are, however. What assistance
does the United States provide to each of the countries in the
region to help detect and interdict the opium product, the
precursor chemicals, and the money? I hope the witnesses will
address the possibility of eradication programs within
Afghanistan, the interdiction strategies by country in the
region, the foreign assistance and alternative economic
development plans, and specific information on resource
allocation and needs to properly address this crucial and grave
problem.
This hearing will address all these difficult issues as
well as other legislative and other potential solutions.
We are pleased to be joined by Mr. Robert Charles of the
Department of State, former staff director of this subcommittee
in kind of less glorious days before he went off to the big
powerful State Department, and Mrs. Karen Tandy of the Drug
Enforcement Administration, who has been a wonderful new
director there and has also hired the next staff director at
this subcommittee to work with her. And they will both share
their insights and concerns and solutions to how to address
these problems. Both witnesses have been to Afghanistan and the
region recently, so I expect we will engage in particularly
insightful discourse.
We will be joined shortly by Ranking Member Mr. Cummings,
who I will have do his opening statement if he does it at that
point. And I thank everyone for taking the time to join us this
afternoon and I look forward to hearing the testimony of our
witnesses.
[The prepared statement of Hon. Mark E. Souder follows:]
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Mr. Souder. Let me take care of a few procedural matters
first. I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5
legislative days to submit written statements and questions for
the hearing record; that any answers to written questions
provided by the witnesses also be included in the record.
Without objection, it is so ordered.
I also ask unanimous consent that all exhibits, documents,
and other materials referred to by Members and the witnesses
may be included in the hearing record; that all Members be
permitted to revise and extend their remarks.
And, without objection, it is so ordered.
Now, as Ms. Tandy and Mr. Charles well know, it is the
standard procedure in this committee to swear in the witnesses.
And, actually, before we do that, would you like to do your
opening statement at this point before I----
Mr. Cummings. Of course.
Mr. Souder. I yield to Mr. Cummings.
Mr. Cummings. Thank you. Thank you very much.
Mr. Chairman, 2 years after the U.S.-led forces ousted the
Taliban regime, opium production in Afghanistan has skyrocketed
to record levels as farmers have dramatically increased their
opium output.
Earlier this month, the United Nations Office on Drugs and
Crime estimated that Afghan opium production in 2003 reached
3,600 metric tons, a 6 percent increase over previous years'
estimates. The country's highest opium production level since
1999, this volume represents 75 percent of the world's illicit
opium production. Afghanistan since the 1980's has been a
source country for heroin consumed in the West, the Middle
East, and parts of Asia. Since 2000, it has been the world's
leading opium producer. Historically, 80 to 90 percent of the
opium consumed in Europe has traveled the so-called Balkan
route from Afghanistan to Turkey--to Iran to Turkey to the
Balkan countries and finally to Europe.
Although Afghan opium accounts for only a small percentage
of heroin presently being consumed in the United States, opium
production in Afghanistan nevertheless has major implications
for United States security interests. This fact was brought
into stark relief after the September 11 terrorist attacks when
Americans learned that the Taliban regime which aided and
abetted al Qaeda was largely sustained by proceeds derived from
the trafficking of Afghan opium. UNODC estimates that
Afghanistan's 2003 opium output could be worth $2.3 billion, a
figure that dwarfs the country's $40 million in official
exports to neighboring Pakistan. UNODC also reports that opium
poppy is being grown in 28 other countries, 32 provinces,
despite the fact that opium cultivation is officially banned
and carries stiff penalties under Afghan law.
Contributing to the problem are consecutive years of
drought during the 1990's which reduced the amount of aeratable
land in Afghanistan by 37 percent. Irrigation remains a major
problem for Afghan farmers who make 38 times as much profit
from opium as they can from wheat, the second most viable crop.
Because of this, further increases in production are likely
in 2004, absent aggressive countermeasures. Controlled by
warlords and crime cartels, the resurge in the Afghan opium
trade has undermined ongoing efforts by the regime of the
interim Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, to establish a strong
central government, democratic rule, and a legitimate economy.
According to UNODC, Executive Director Antonio Costa, the
results of the 2003 survey, in part, the unequivocal warning
that illegal opium production will continue to thrive unless
resolute actions are taken. Such actions, he said, must include
economic assistance for farmers, eradication of opium fields,
and interdiction of traffickers. Mr. Costa stressed that opium
production poses a formidable threat to the future of the
interim government led by President Karzai when he observed
recently, ``I don't think we can call it a narco-state now, but
Afghanistan is at a critical juncture. It can go either way.''
The more we allow the narco-economy to become ingrained in
the behavior of key people, the more we allow the narco-economy
to penetrate legitimate business, the more we allow military
commanders to benefit and profit from these activities, the
greater the risk, then, the country will go the wrong way.
UNODC believes that hundreds of millions of dollars in
narcotics profits are ending up in the hands of terrorist
groups, including remnants of the Taliban and al Qaeda which
control shipping routes with roadblocks.
A recent U.S. Security Council mission to Afghanistan
affirmed this view, citing drug trafficking alongside terrorism
and factional warfare as a triple threat to the reconstruction
process. In January, Afghanistan pledged more aggressive
efforts to fight drug cultivation and trafficking, and the
country has entered several regional cooperation agreements
with neighboring countries to fight drug trafficking and
terrorism. Still, it appears the flow of Afghan opium across
the porous borders separating these countries continues
unabated, as does the flow of drug proceeds into the hands of
terrorists plotting harm against the United States and our
allies.
Equating drug trafficking with terrorism, UNODC recently
has called on coalition forces in Afghanistan and the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization, International Security Assistance
Force, to help the country fight the illicit drug trade. In
addition, there is reluctance among coalition governments to
involve their troops in antidrug trafficking activity because
the troops immediately would become targets of the all powerful
drug syndicates.
Despite this, news reports indicate that Britain and
Germany have recently sent, or pledged to send, troops to fight
drug trafficking in Afghanistan, and the U.S. military
commanders are evaluating whether to expand the role of
American troops in assisting the Afghan Government's antidrug
efforts. The State Department's Bureau of International
Narcotics and the Law Enforcement Affairs and the Drug
Enforcement Administration play lead roles in implementing U.S.
foreign policy in the area of narcotics control. The DEA has a
small representation in Afghanistan and regional transshipment
countries, and in 2002 launched a multinational operation
containment initiative to deny market access to drug
traffickers and to deny terrorist groups access to illicit
proceeds from drugs, precursors, weapons, and ammunition.
Both DEA Administrator Karen Tandy and Assistant Secretary
of State Robert Charles have recently returned from the Afghan
capital of Kabul where they and other senior U.S. officials met
with President Karzai, UNODC Executive Director Costa and other
representatives from Afghan and the European Union to discuss
the challenges posed by Afghan drug production.
Today's hearing provides us an opportunity to hear from
these two key officials concerning what U.S. foreign policy
initiatives are underway and what more must be done to curtail
opium production and trafficking within Afghanistan, to keep
Afghan heroin from reaching international markets, and to
prevent the drug trade from fueling the vehicles of terrorism.
And so with that, Mr. Chairman, I thank you, and I look
forward to the testimony.
[The prepared statement of Hon. Elijah E. Cummings
follows:]
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Mr. Souder. I want to thank the ranking member, Mr.
Cummings, for his leadership on the narcotics effort. It has
really been great to work on this in a bipartisan way and to
make sure we are tackling it both in the United States, and
before it gets to our streets here in the United States and
around the world.
With that, I think we will go ahead with the swearing in of
the witnesses. It's the standard practice of this subcommittee
to have you testify under oath. So if each of you would stand
and raise your right hands.
[Witnesses sworn.]
Mr. Souder. Let the record show that both responded in the
affirmative. And it would be really sad if we had to go after
our former staff director of this committee if he didn't tell
the truth. So, you are now even more under oath than normal.
Obviously he always tells the truth. I just had to harass
him just because it's his first official appearance.
With that, we will go to Mr. Robert Charles, Assistant
Secretary of State for Narcotics.
STATEMENT OF ROBERT CHARLES, ASSISTANT SECRETARY, DEPARTMENT OF
STATE, INTERNATIONAL NARCOTICS AND LAW ENFORCEMENT AFFAIRS
Mr. Charles. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I also want to
thank both of you personally. You have been leaders in this
fight and in Congress for as long as you have served, and I
think in both of your parties and for Congress as a whole your
leadership allows the rest of us to do our jobs. So I am just
grateful that you are there and for this hearing. I also agree
with both of your opening statements, and just want to add what
insight we can from our perspective.
Again, I appreciate the opportunity to speak before you
today on the subject of Afghanistan, the narcotics situation
and strategy, the administration's strategy for dealing with
narcotics, both within Afghanistan and trafficked from it, is
proactive and coordinated in the interagency. It is intended to
reduce measurably the heroin poppy cultivation, to encourage
alternative income streams, to destroy drug labs, to promote
drug interdiction, and to develop the justice sector to
facilitate proper prosecution and sentencing of traffickers.
This State Department bureau, the Bureau of International
Narcotics and Law Enforcement, is intent on working closely and
effectively both with Congress and the DEA to implement this
strategy. As you indicated, in fact the DEA administrator and I
have recently returned from a fact-finding trip to Afghanistan,
where we represented the U.S. Government at the
Counternarcotics Conference in Kabul earlier this month.
Pieces of this counternarcotics strategy are proportionate
to the urgency and to the needs presented on the ground. The
various pieces of this emerging strategy are both complementary
and independently important. The key words are, I think,
proactive, comprehensive, and accountable.
A few first impressions, again, confirming some of the
things you have said in your opening statements. My recent
meeting with President Karzai reaffirmed my conviction that he
means business. He is serious about tackling the heroin threat
in his country. This is a leader who is dedicated to breaking
the cycle of opium poppy cultivation and narcotics trafficking
in his country before local trafficking rings become cartels
and put down tap roots, transforming Afghanistan into what some
might call a narco-state. President Karzai is determined, I
think, to proceed with every major aspect of breaking the
heroin trade, even as he reinforces the productivity of
alternative legitimate income streams such as through the
production of wheat, maize, barley, and other needed crops.
One thing I would ask if we could take a look, one of the
charts indicates how the Afghan economy really is made up.
Farmers don't make much on heroin poppy. On the other hand,
they do make more than they make in other crops. But I think
one of the things that people fail to understand is that 98
percent of the economy is actually in legitimate crops, wheat,
barley, maize, rice. And so we want to encourage that to grow.
As you know, there are three essential components to our
accelerating counternarcotics strategy. The first component is
targeting the eradication of the heroin poppies. The second is
the targeted, ever-widening availability and reinforcement of
alternative streams of income. Democracies, of course, are
consolidated not by reliance on drug money, but by pairing
well-supported democratic institutions and the rule of law with
the sound growing in free market and legitimate goods.
Afghanistan has great needs, for example, in the area of
legitimate agriculture. Food is a problem, and that is one of
the reasons this strategy, I think, also works well and is
intended to meet those needs. We intend to support the growth
of the legitimate economy in that and other sectors.
Third, and finally, law enforcement, interdiction, and the
justice sector reform are also key to success. We must raise
the costs and risks of heroin trafficking while raising the
incentives for joining and remaining a part of the legitimate
economy. Only 8 percent, as that chart indicates, of
Afghanistan's cultivated land is presently used to grow
poppies, and we must make the incremental risk of associated
heroin poppy profits higher than the extra income it might
produce.
There are other dangers from which we cannot avert our
gaze. Afghanistan's heroin, which sells on the retain market
for about 100 times the farm gate price, the price that the
farmer gets, is a source of a growing reservoir of illegal
money that funds international crime across the region,
sustains the destabilizing activities of warlords, and fosters
local coercion and terrorism. While available information about
this pattern continues to grow, we cannot afford to stand by
and wait as these destructive relationships and behaviors
become clearer and more closely institutionalized. Our
comprehensive approach takes stock of these linkages and is
accelerating the effort to break each of them.
A few final thoughts. On eradication, some would argue,
wait. Other priorities, they suggest, might trump this
activity. I would argue that swift action is essential.
Distinguishing the urgent from the otherwise important requires
that we tackle the poppy crop now. So we are doing that with
the Afghan security, in a two-phase program led by the British
initially, and after April or May, by U.S. support to the
Afghan central government.
Second, I can say without qualification that we have a
commited ally in the Afghanistan Government. President Karzai
believes in democracy, the rule of law and human rights, and a
robust counternarcotics effort. I see no signs of half-
measures, and we are similarly committed.
Third, I am convinced that the drug money in terrorist
organizations in Afghanistan and throughout the region are like
chain links, bound tightly by mutually reinforcing motivations
and operations. While there are other links in that chain, it
is my conviction, based on the information available, that
these two threats overlap palpably and incontrovertibly in
Afghanistan.
Fourth, we are cooperating closely with our European allies
to support the Afghan Government. We are pressing for increased
coordination and cooperation from the British on
counternarcotics, the Germans on policing, and the Italians on
justice sector reform.
Fifth, and finally, INL, the Bureau of International
Narcotics and Law Enforcement, is determined to support and
encourage cooperation between not only other efforts of the
State Department but also DEA, DOD, and USAID. Congress
empowers us to achieve these results for the American people
and for the Afghan people and for the greater local, regional,
and international security of all of us. Congress has funded
the INL coordinated portion of this effort with 50 million in
supplemental appropriations in fiscal year 2004, of which a
significant portion is dedicated to eradication.
Separately, you have funded INL police training and
criminal justice sector development for an additional $170
million. And of that, $160 million is being used to build seven
police training centers for training 20,000 police by June, and
$10 million is being used to develop the justice sector.
In short, we are seeking to prevent the
institutionalization of the heroin cartels, to support
democracy's early days in post-Taliban Afghanistan, to
reinforce the best instincts of a people now freeing themselves
from the terrorist's yoke, and to confront those that still
threaten to destabilize that society through both narcotics
trade and terrorism.
I will gladly add more detail later, but I will just say
again, thank you for bringing this to the fore. And you have
our pledge, my pledge, that we have a full court press on in
both counternarcotics and counterterrorism. Thank you.
Mr. Souder. Thank you very much for your testimony.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Charles follows:]
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Mr. Souder. And now I would like to move to Director Tandy.
STATEMENT OF KAREN P. TANDY, ADMINISTRATOR, DRUG ENFORCEMENT
ADMINISTRATION
Ms. Tandy. Good afternoon, Chairman Souder, Ranking Member
Cummings, and distinguished members of the committee. It is a
privilege to appear before you today on behalf of the Drug
Enforcement Administration to discuss our efforts to stem the
flow of heroin from Afghanistan.
On behalf of the men and women of DEA, I particularly want
to thank this subcommittee for your steadfast support for our
efforts both on behalf of the agency and our mission.
Two weeks ago I returned from Afghanistan, and I saw for
myself that the stakes in our war on narcotics there could
scarcely be more urgent. Opium production has returned to
nearly the same high levels as under the Taliban. This criminal
trade feeds political and economic instability and provides
fertile ground for the development of the sinister
relationships to flourish between drug traffickers and
terrorists. For those reasons, working in this region is a top
priority for the Drug Enforcement Administration and for me.
I want to begin by describing our efforts, efforts
undertaken in the face of a number of operational obstacles
that we encounter daily in Afghanistan. Three decades of civil
war and unrest have left the criminal justice system there
without even its most basic elements. There is yet no developed
police force, no prosecutors, no judges, and no prisons. The
Afghan Counternarcotics Directorate is in its infancy, which
leaves DEA with no viable national or local counterpart drug
agency with which we can work.
Moreover, security constraints restrict our ability both to
move within the country and to conduct our traditional drug
investigations.
That said, DEA is a resourceful agency, and as such we are
making considerable leeway--headway, rather--in the
counternarcotics efforts in this region. We are seizing
opportunities to disrupt Afghanistan's opium trade, deny
terrorists a revenue source, and to inflict damage on the
international drug markets. We are doing this principally in
two ways. The first is interdiction. Like all other drug
traffickers, Afghan trafficking organizations must move their
illicit product to market. However, unlike most other source
countries, Afghanistan is landlocked, and this forces the
traffickers to rely on difficult and complex overland
transshipment routes. DEA and our international counterparts
are focused on various pressure points along these routes.
Through Operation Containment, 19 countries, led by the Drug
Enforcement Administration, are choking off the flow of drugs
and precursor chemicals into and out of Afghanistan before they
can spread to the broader markets. While Operation Containment
has been under way for just 2 years, I am pleased to report
that it is achieving great success. Since January 2003,
Operation Containment has lead to 23 significant seizures of
narcotics and precursor chemicals as well as the dismantlement
and disruption of several major distribution and transportation
organizations involved in the southwest Asian drug trade.
I would like to give you two quick examples of these
successes. Most notably, Operation Containment has led to the
disruption in Istanbul of one of the most significant heroin
trafficking organizations in Turkey, and resulted in an all-
time record seizure of 7.4 tons of morphine base. I would like
to note that this single 7.4 tons of morphine base, this single
seizure is 4 times greater than the worldwide seizures in the
year 2000 prior to Operation Containment.
The operation has also resulted in the seizure of over
1,000 kilograms of heroin in Turkey and the arrest of several
traffickers. It is reported to be, as I said, the largest
heroin seizure in Turkey's history.
Operation Containment also has built law enforcement
cooperation throughout the region. And as a result of these
growing partnerships, a joint investigation by the Drug
Enforcement Administration and our Turkish and Russian
counterparts resulted in the seizure in Turkey of 4 tons of
acetic anhydride, which is the chemical used in the production
of heroin.
In addition, the seizure of 17 tons of acetic anhydride at
a border crossing in Turkey led to an additional 5.5 tons of
the chemical buried at a Turkish farm.
The second way we are attacking the Afghan opium trade is
by working in country with our coalition partners. I have
directed DEA's agents in our Kabul, Afghanistan office to
aggressively focus their intelligence collection on identifying
heroin processing labs, and sharing that information with the
Afghan authorities and our allies among the coalition partners.
DEA strongly supports the Defense Department's initiative
to open an intelligence fusion center in Afghanistan in order
to multinationally share information.
In addition, our offices in Kabul and throughout the region
are focused on identifying the major trafficking organizations
and their money flow so that we can strategically attack them
where they are most vulnerable, whether inside Afghanistan or
elsewhere in the region.
After my recent visit to Kabul and my discussions with the
U.S. Ambassador there, I am particularly pleased to report that
DEA will be and is now working to significantly expand our
presence in Afghanistan and in Kabul.
As this subcommittee knows, the challenges to the
counternarcotics efforts in Afghanistan and the region are
great, but the stabilization--excuse me, the opportunities to
take down the drug trade and support stabilization are just as
great. And for this reason I am cautiously optimistic about the
future of our drug enforcement efforts in Afghanistan.
In my written testimony I've addressed DEA's initiatives in
the region in greater detail, and I would be delighted to
answer any questions the committee may have. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Tandy follows:]
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Mr. Souder. We have also been joined by Congressman Carter.
I appreciate his being with us as well.
I am going to start the questioning. I assume we will go
several rounds. It's unusual for us to have a one-panel
hearing, but we want to explore this subject relatively
thoroughly. We have been having meetings the last few days as
well.
But let me start with my first round with Mr. Charles, that
British government officials had told me a little over a year
ago and have told our staff more recently that attacking
strategic targets like opium warehouses and processing plants
would have an enormous impact on disrupting the trade in and
around Afghanistan. And, in fact, in one of the articles in the
Financial Times it says they attacked one in early January. Why
have these facilities not already been destroyed? And what is
the explanation for lack of action on this matter? And who is
responsible?
It appears from your testimony that we're all of a sudden
becoming aggressive, which is really laudable. The question is,
how do we get to this point? And are those barriers being
lifted? Did you sense the barriers were there before? Could you
kind of discuss this fundamental question of why, since we
appear to have had quite a bit of this knowledge, actions
hadn't been taken up until now?
Mr. Charles. Let me say I have been on this job for 120
days, so I will take full responsibility for everything during
that 120 days.
But let me also go beyond that and say the point you make
is a good one, that there are many force multipliers in a world
in which you have not institutionalized the heroin market yet.
And what do I mean by that? I mean there are no heroin cartels.
You have several warlords who make a lot of money on this. And
you are absolutely right, that if you can target the places
that they keep the heroin, the labs in which they create the
heroin out of heroin poppies, you can disrupt that market in
ways that probably go beyond what we could do anywhere else in
the world because it is not yet institutionalized.
Let me say also that while there are many force
multipliers, this is one that I think the entire interagency
process is beginning to realize can be very significant. And as
you indicated, there was at least one recent example where this
occurred.
From the State Department point of view, we are working
hard to spur greater intelligence sharing, greater information
sharing across all the spectrums, so that when you come up with
CN intelligence, counternarcotics intelligence, it's shared
broadly; if you come up with counterterrorism intelligence and
it happens to bump into things that relate to narcotics, that
is shared broadly.
We are also, obviously, moving out into the field ourselves
to try to kill the poppies, and obviously that will have a
force multiplier effect.
The specific question about could more be done: And I can't
speak to the question of whether more could have been done in
the past, but I can speak to the question as to whether or not
more will be done in the future. And I think we have a stronger
and stronger working relationship with the Department of
Defense. My understanding is that there is some guidance, I
haven't seen it yet, that would indicate that when the
Department of Defense finds, in the course of a
counterterrorism mission, narcotics, they are able to then
either destroy it directly--I think that's what they will do--
or be able to empower others to do that.
We are also supporting the British. And you mentioned the
British. They are active in the field, and we are supporting
them in a number of ways. And I have been pressing them as the
assistant secretary to do more, and I am actually encouraging
them that we think we can do more with them.
So the short answer is I think you are going to see maybe
not an exponential change but a marked increase in interagency
coordination and probably the international or multinational
coordination on this. And that is critical as a force
multiplier.
Mr. Souder. Without getting into, because I don't have all
the information, so I'm not attempting to get into classified
materials. But we are all pretty aware that there is another
agency involved as well that's on the ground with contract
employees. Is the CIA a part of these interagency teams? And
how is that working as you move into the different zones?
Mr. Charles. Well, let me address it in an unclassified way
and put the chart on the wall, so people can see it, something
I asked to be declassified.
There is a chart which is up on the wall now which you will
see indicates, in an unclassified or declassified way, that
there are four terrorist organizations that we know are
involved in Afghanistan: Hezbe-Islami, HIG, Taliban, Islamic
Movement of Uzbekistan, and al Qaeda. At varying degrees of
connectivity or connectedness, you can see that these
organizations have some relationship, we think, to the drug
trade. And you can see again, based on the color coding, that
some of them are stronger, almost definitely involved in one
way or another, and others are possibly involved.
What I would say to you is that my sense, from where I sit,
is that there is an increasing degree of interagency
coordination on information sharing, and that the greatest
force multiplier of all is the sharing of information. At the
end of the day, we have to have people in the country that can
do this job, we have to be all of us commited to the same
mission. And I would also add that we do not want, and I
certainly would never advocate, that we diminish in any way the
counterterrorism effort just because we are also driving hard
to eliminate the counternarcotics, the narcotics problem.
But I would end it by saying--my answer--by saying the
reason I think that everybody working together on the
counternarcotics piece is so important is that you cannot erect
a lasting castle on sand and you cannot erect a lasting
democracy on a heroin economy.
Mr. Souder. We haven't necessarily made government more
efficient, but we have had some clarification of roles, at
least in a theoretical way, with the organization of the
Department of Homeland Security, with the FBI taking a more
security orientation, with the military having a more military
mission, and the CIA having multitasking but more on terrorism
and security risks of the United States. Which has left, at
least theoretically, DEA as the primary narcotics agency, and
has the money in your area inside State as the primary
narcotics area. That isn't saying Homeland Security doesn't
have large chunks, too, and the old Border Patrol and Customs.
But your relationship between the two of you becomes more
critical.
You announced a number of new initiatives that you are
undertaking. Have you talked those through with the DEA and you
are going to coordinate those, in particular, with them?
Mr. Charles. Well, I will let Karen speak to that issue in
terms of the many discussions and the support that we provide
and her view of the support that we provide.
Let me say that my view is that we are working very closely
together on a number of fronts. There are things called
sensitive investigative units that since about 2000 we have
begun to work even more closely on. We are highly supportive of
DEA, not only in Afghanistan, but, as you have indicated and as
other members have indicated, in surrounding countries because
containment is terribly important.
Containment always reminds me of the cold war era word
``containment.'' And I am reminded of what Ronald Reagan did
shortly thereafter, which is to move to what he called
``rollback,'' which is to move even further and more
aggressively.
And if I were to characterize where we are going, I would
say I hope that the place we are going is to roll back the
whole trafficker environment so that we can stabilize all of
these countries more directly. But I think we have a close
working relationship that is, in fact, leading in this area.
Mr. Souder. Thank you.
Mr. Cummings.
Mr. Cummings. Mr. Charles, the UNODC's 2003 estimate
suggested the Afghan opium output reached record levels last
year and accounted for about 75 percent of the opium production
worldwide. What explains that explosive figure?
Mr. Charles. Let me take a short stab at that and say,
incidentally, I think it was the second highest year rather
than the highest year. But that is not to say that it isn't a
matter of enormous concern.
You have a country in which survival tends to be the
driving force right now. Farmers, as I indicated in my
testimony, make about a dollar for the same quantity of heroin
that shows up on the streets of Paris and commands a price of
$100, or the streets of New York, by the way, or the streets of
Baltimore where you have been a leader, and this is a genuine
problem.
What has transpired, I think, is that as the government,
the central government has gotten more in control of the
environment, as the interagency process--and we have migrated
from a military mission which was dedicated to counterterrorism
into an environment where we see both counterterrorism and
counternarcotics as mutually or equally important, or both of
them very important for the long term. We have migrated the
whole strategy. There has been a ponying up of dollars. The
dollars this year, we have $170 million to work with on
policing. And we do all the policing, by the way, at INL, too.
We have seven police academies that we are getting off the
ground in Afghanistan. But there has also been a supplemental
of $50 million, which allows us for the first time to
aggressively go and eradicate.
And I want to illustrate--and I'm not sure we can put this
up on the wall, but there is a picture. This chart illustrates
how the--on the right-hand side as you look at it--how these
plots are largely done. It takes manual eradication or an
incentivizing structure to get people out of the business of
growing them. Because you cannot do aerial eradication in
Afghanistan the way you can on Colombia.
In Colombia we are making some significant progress with
the Colombian Government on aerial eradication. Here, it's
going to be manual and it's going to be driven by incentives
and it's going to be driven by a number of factors which,
frankly, have only just begun to coalesce. And so I would tell
you that as with any major undertaking, including,
incidentally, Plan Colombia, it takes a couple of years to get
the process in motion. And what happened is there was a gap in
time between when the Taliban were thrown out of government and
the military was stabilizing the country. And you could
actually initiate under the leadership of President Karzai a
program that would actively work on both eradication and a
number of other components.
Remember, too--I guess I would just say that it's hard to
imagine what we are confronting in Afghanistan. The way I would
describe it is that it's as if someone said to you, you have to
build a house tomorrow, within 24 hours, and you have to pour
the foundation and put the roof on and stud up the walls and
put windows in and put doors in all at once. And my pledge to
you is we are trying to do that. But the eradication piece is
coming on line now because, literally, it took time to put
these pieces in place. And you, Congress, have given us the
money to do this, and I am grateful for that and we are driving
ahead full force to do that.
Mr. Cummings. Ms. Tandy, you know, I think it was the last
Super Bowl, I saw these commercials where they were saying--
talking about the relationship between terrorist organizations
and the drugs on our streets. And, you know, I was just trying
to figure out, where do you see, how does the--how would you
rank the Afghan drug trade in terms of threats to our security
in this country?
And then I want you to comment, maybe both of you, but Ms.
Tandy you talked about no judges, no prosecution, no prisons.
You know, it just seems like it's almost an impossible task. I
mean, we talk about a thin blue line in the United States with
regard to policing. But, there, there is no line. And I know
you just talked about your seven training facilities and--but
what, how do you deal with that? I mean, you catch somebody,
and is that do they--I mean, what do you do?
Ms. Tandy. Taking it in the order that you asked,
Representative Cummings, the Afghan heroin threat to this
country can be measured in terms of raw numbers, that which is
heroin that makes it into this country from Afghanistan and in
that region. We are still compiling the actual numbers from our
two programs that help us measure that: the heroin signature
program, which measures the samples of heroin coming into the
country at ports of entry to determine what the source is, what
country source or what regional source the heroin is arriving
to the United States from; and our domestic monitoring program
where we buy samples of heroin and have that tested, again, to
determine the regional source.
For us, 20 years ago in this country, Afghanistan
represented 50 percent of the supply of heroin to the United
States. It is and has been around 7 to 10 percent. We won't
know the final numbers for this past year until sometime in
September when all of those samples have been analyzed. But
that is a clear threat to our country, including Baltimore and
this northeast corridor in particular, where heroin is
especially problematic for us.
In terms of the----
Mr. Cummings. Where does the rest of it go?
Ms. Tandy. I'm sorry?
Mr. Cummings. Where does the rest of it go? You accounted
for 7 percent. Where does the 93 percent go? Europe?
Ms. Tandy. A great portion of that goes to Europe,
certainly the UK, which is why they have the lead on
counternarcotics in Afghanistan among the coalition partners.
Mr. Cummings. And when you say they have the lead, it seems
like quite often when the United States is involved we seem
to--we may, even if we are not leading, although we usually
are, it seems like we are putting in a whole lot of resources,
and sometimes others who benefit greatly are not putting in as
much. Now, does the lead also go to how much money they are
putting in?
Mr. Charles. Let me address that, if I may, because that is
something that I ask about regularly. In both my former life
and in this life, it's certainly worried me that we are
proportionately carrying a lot of the burden; historically
have. But let me say, both in addressing your question, your
earlier question, but also on the dollar question, actually for
this hearing I broke it out, and we have about $130 million in
counternarcotics programs that the British are pressing forward
over a 3-year period. We have an additional commitment of 2
million and change to press this immediate initiative on
eradication. They will also--and there is some components you
may want to be briefed on, that can't be discussed in this
hearing, that the British are actively involved in, that I
think are highly supportive of the interdiction effort on
balance. We have asked them to pony up, and they have done so
in a number of other areas that involve information sharing.
I have another list I will give you of other countries.
Don't--please don't take away from what I'm saying that I am
satisfied that we are proportionately--I believe that they are
the lead and they are doing a lot, but I think all of us and I
think collectively can do more. And that is one of the things I
am personally pushing for.
I want to address four points that really come to your--the
four questions, sort of subsidiary questions that I think you
just asked.
One is the impact on this country in heroin. And I want to
tell you that every piece of information I have supports what
the administrator just said, which is that 7 to 10 percent of
the heroin on our streets today is Afghan or at least southeast
Asian--and southwest Asian heroin. The significance of that--
people say that's not enough for us to care a whole lot about
that problem versus, let's say, the Colombian heroin which
shows up, up and down the eastern corridor. I tell you that my
view is that we have about a million addicts in this country,
heroin addicts. That's 70,000 to 100,000 souls right there. So
that's enough reason for me to be involved.
The second thing I would say on the terrorism threat. You
will notice that in the chart that I provided, you have al
Qaeda and a number of other groups that are involved.
Historically, and to this day, we do not have what I would call
evidence of--in a case-making way on individuals beyond those
that have already been apprehended, but we do have something
that is almost as strong for warfighting purposes and for
protecting our national security, and that is very strong
indications, objective indications that there is a very tight
overlap between heroin--drugs, Afghan drugs, heroin, and the
terrorist organizations that are there. And what that means is
that if you took two circles and drew them on a sheet of paper,
and one was drug traffickers and one was known terrorist
organizations, they would overlap each other, in my view, on
the information that I know, substantially.
So that's the second piece. National security is protected
by being aggressive in knocking out the funding source for
terrorism, and Afghan heroin is a part of that.
The third thing is the justice sector. You are right, it
is--as I indicated in terms of the building of a house, it is a
very difficult thing to do everything at once, but--so that
there isn't a sense of utter hopelessness, and in fact I would
urge hopefulness--what we are able to do is a targeted process
of apprehending drug traffickers. What I foresee happening is
we will apprehend, with the Afghan Government, drug
traffickers. There are prisons, there aren't a lot of them.
There will be courthouses. We are putting $10 million in right
now to the building or rebuilding of courthouses. We are
training judges. The INL is doing this. We are training
prosecutors. There will be, in fairly short order, the ability
in a targeted way to send a message that drug trafficking and
criminal activity of this kind is not tolerated in a free and
democratic and noncorrupt Afghanistan. And that's part of what
we are doing.
The final question you asked was with respect to police.
And I would tell you again that we are at the beginning of a
process that I find far more hopeful than I often read in the
media. I think we have a great deal of reason to be hopeful
about the future. We are on track. And I say to you, every
barometer--and I check this every day, and we had a big meeting
yesterday and I talked with the Ambassador. We are on track to
produce 20,000 police, at least, by June. And in that process,
in the seven academies which will bear, each one of them,
about--they will have a capacity for about 1,250 each. We have
the instructors. We are moving it forward. There is no problem
with the recruits that we know of.
We are moving forward, with the leadership of the Afghan
government, to generate a secure environment. And I think--all
I would tell you is keep bringing us back in front of you. Keep
asking us these questions and asking us if we are making
progress. And to date, because I am very much an honest broker
and feel that in many ways I am an oversight guy who happens to
be working in program administration, that we are on track. And
to that end I give you, I guess, a little more encouraging
message.
Ms. Tandy. Representative Cummings, if I could just add
with regard to your question about the justice sector obstacles
for us. It is precisely the lack of institutions currently in
Afghanistan that makes Operation Containment so critical. With
the seizures, prosecution of those who are trafficking the
heroin through the region into Europe and elsewhere, that is
where we are able to have the greatest enforcement impact
currently, until these institutions do mature, do stand up in
Afghanistan.
I also have met with our British counterparts and discussed
with them our statutory framework under 21 U.S.C. 959, which
has an extraterritorial jurisdiction provision and has been
applied most effectively against Colombian traffickers, where
those who never leave Colombia but are sending drugs into the
United States from Colombia are charged in the United States
and extradited from Colombia or expelled for prosecution in the
United States simply because they knew or intended to send
drugs to the United States. We are trying to apply that same
statutory framework to Afghanistan, to remove those trafficking
organizations in Afghanistan and prosecute them in the United
States, to the extent that we can, through intelligence and our
enforcement efforts, make those linkages as to intent; and, if
not to the United States, to the U.K. Under this same kind of
statutory framework. And we are working with them to develop
that procedure in the U.K.
Mr. Cummings. Thank you very much.
Mr. Souder. Congressman Carter.
Mr. Carter. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I have just returned from Afghanistan. I was there last
week. We had an opportunity to meet with President Karzai, with
the Ambassador, our Ambassador, and with folks within their
Defense Department and their State Department. And when it was
my turn to ask the question, this was my question: Let's talk
about the drug situation here in Afghanistan, and what are you
going to do about it? He gave very positive, very direct
answers that it's a major concern. He's on board. He mentioned
the DEA was doing outstanding work there.
But the underlying theme to me--and I'm not speaking
negatively; I was very positively impressed by the President
and his cabinet. But I was--I felt an underlying theme that
they've got a whole lot more problems than this right now, and
this is their cash crop. And it really is. And they don't have
political parties and they are about to try to hold elections
this summer, a whole lot of the police force is going to be
tied up trying to keep things in control. That's the most
heavily armed bunch of civilians on the face of the Earth. And
I asked the general how he distinguished a bad guy from a good
guy, and he said: A good guy only has two clips of ammunition;
a bad guy either has hand grenades or more than two clips of
ammunition. It's a very difficult problem in Afghanistan to
deal with.
And I think they overall are on board to try to do
something with this, but it's a farmer problem. And to me, and
I asked this question, it's a processor problem. It looks like
to me that you are not ever going to get these farmers. These
farmers, you are right, they are making about a dollar off this
deal, but somebody is making a whole lot more than a dollar off
the deal, and those are the guys that are making the heroin.
These guys are producing opium poppy, they are selling that,
and it is the guys who are processing the heroin.
And I missed part of your testimony. It may be that is the
target that you are onto, but it looked like to me--and I was
well aware that this was a small portion of our heroin. I've
been a trial judge for 20 years, so I know at least from my
point of the world a little bit about this. And I knew that
this was not a major source of heroin for our country, but it
is for Europe and it is for Russia and it is for some other
areas over there.
I asked about processing, and I didn't get a good answer.
What do you--it's the heroin manufacturers, if you will, that
are making the money and also the people that are shipping the
finished product out of that part of the world. Where are we on
attacking the manufacturers? And it's going to be our fight for
a while, not theirs.
Ms. Tandy. Representative Carter, the greatest effect of my
trip to Afghanistan 2 weeks ago was to recognize new
opportunities for us to make headway against the stockpiles,
the labs that are processing the opium into heroin, and we will
be seeking to enhance our presence in Afghanistan to do that
now. Until recently, security constraints in Afghanistan
prevented DEA from effectively moving throughout the country.
We have, as a result of my visit there, along with Assistant
Secretary Charles, we have identified some new partnership
opportunities to move successfully through that country. We are
working with the Brits and our other partners in the country
specifically to attack those labs.
I can tell you from my meetings with President Karzai, the
cabinet, and the U.S. Ambassador, there is a great deal of
enthusiasm in that country at all levels for going after those
labs; and I am very optimistic that we will be able to make
progress against the labs. We will do it in part through
enhanced intelligence. I am temporarily detailing from DEA
additional bodies, additional people from DEA to conduct that
kind of enhanced intelligence mining with the U.S. military and
assigning a person to Bagram.
We also are assigning a person to Kandahar--at least one to
Kandahar to work with the Brits and other partners in Kandahar,
again focused on the organizations and labs; and we are
identifying trafficking organizations in that country.
We are also--we have a new country attache. We have a
deputy attache, the new country attache, you may have met, who
would have probably arrived in Afghanistan perhaps the same
time you did.
Mr. Carter. I think he had been there 3 days.
Ms. Tandy. His deputy will be there within 30 days. We are
adding 30 more temporary detailees to the U.S. Embassy, to our
office there in Afghanistan, in Kabul. So I see opportunities
or I can tell you I wouldn't be pulling all of these temporary
assigned people from other places in DEA and moving them into
that country.
I do sense the urgency of making that progress and hitting
where we will have the greatest impact, which is the labs and
those organizations and doing it now.
Mr. Carter. Absolutely. One of the things that I came away
from there was that is really going to be the source of a lot
of the Taliban's political opposition in this election that
they are doing their best to get to. They don't have political
parties. They have regional tribal influences, if you will, and
the Taliban. And they have--we have them shoved down into a
small area, basically there and sort of contained; and
hopefully we will eventually eliminate them.
Al Qaeda, they didn't indicate to us that al Qaeda was a
big player for funds. In your chart that is possible. If your
chart is right, it says possible. That is kind of what they
indicated to us. But it is--the warlords that are up to the
north--get my direction--northeast that are trying to gain
political influence are using opium poppy for that purpose.
But the bottom line is the farmer is just looking for a
market for his crops. He doesn't have a market. They have had a
terrible drought for 7 years. He doesn't--what little grain he
produces, he doesn't have a real great market for it because of
the situation over there, and he had the market with these
processors for this poppy. So you can't hardly blame this poor
guy--and those are poor people--for selling what he can. If we
knock out the guy that is buying, then we have basically made
it--it is not a cash crop anymore.
That looks like to me--and I commend you for what you are
doing, and I can tell you that I came away optimistic on
Afghanistan. But when you look at that place, they got major
challenges over there in that country. I am optimistic because
I think the President's heart is right, and I think he is
really--I am very impressed with the man and the people that he
has around him.
So, you know, I am very encouraged over there; and I thank
you for what you are doing. Ultimately, it is going to solve
the terrorist problem for this country by knocking out the drug
problem.
Ms. Tandy. Thank you, Representative Carter. I share your
enthusiasm and optimism and certainly the recognition of the
challenges, and I thank you for your support.
Mr. Charles. Congressman, I just wanted to add a note of
hopefulness that supports you completely.
In our meeting with President Karzai, I raised the question
whether there was a political issue that we should be aware of
in terms of slowing down in some way. I mean, was there anyone
encouraging us to slow down on the counternarcotics effort for
fear that it would have some political effect? We got the exact
reverse, a firm statement that in no way was any concern going
to register with him in terms of slowing down the
counternarcotics effort. He was full bore on it.
I also wanted to note that, with respect to specifics--and
I completely support what the administrator has just said, and
again we are trying to support DEA in every way we can think of
not only in Afghanistan but to support them from surrounding
countries to do the same thing, to hit the traffickers, the
labs, the stockpiles.
I would suggest that there are a couple of traffickers that
we know, Bashir Norzi and Juma Khan, that, to the extent we can
find ways to tackle their organizations and get at specifically
the stockpiles there, I see no hesitance whatsoever in trying
to do that.
I would also note that, on alternative development--and you
make the point that these are poor farmers, it is true, but I
would say to you that the margin that they get on the heroin
crop versus wheat is--basically, they make a dollar on the
heroin crop, they make maybe half that on wheat.
And there is also something that people often forget, that
is that the Mullahs and a lot of the religious sentiment is not
in favor of them getting deeply involved in the heroin trade.
It is a survival issue right now.
If we can provide--and that is part of what my bureau
does--the alternative development, working with USAID and
others, if we can get that in behind the eradication effort, we
will be able to provide them realistic opportunities both in
income streams and begin to reinforce a culture that probably
does not support ultimately a heroin economy.
Also just to note that we are all waiting for the DOD
guidance. We are looking forward to it, because I think it will
further support what you are describing as hitting the labs and
hitting the stockpiles when they are found.
We are also sending more people in. I am sending three
people in very, very shortly; and we expect to send six in
October to reinforce these efforts in Kabul.
Finally--I will just end there--I think there is a lot to
what you say, and we are highly supportive of the direction you
are encouraging us to go.
Mr. Carter. I realize my time is expired. Just one or two
more comments.
I actually think the more we can do to eliminate the heroin
trade over there the better it is going to make the political
situation in Afghanistan, not the other way. I think that it
becomes a player in these elections through these warlords and
the Taliban.
Also, I want to say, we flew the highway; and they are--
that is--we are to be very commended for that highway. It has
changed the nature of a lot of peoples lives in the central
part of Afghanistan, and that--you are to be commended for
that. That is a good-looking highway, and you can--we saw a lot
of traffic on the highway. I understand it has reduced the trip
from Kabul to wherever it goes by--like from a day and a half
to 6 hours. That has to make someone happy. So we are doing
good work over there.
Mr. Charles. Congressman, you gave us the money to do that.
Mr. Carter. You are doing good work. Thank you.
Mr. Souder. Thank you. I wanted to do some followup, and
Mr. Charles gave me a nice setup. Because part of my concern is
the criticism coming out of Europe, including the United
Nations, which is an ironic position for us, was that we were
inhibiting efforts to go after the heroin trade and were in
fact sitting on it for other reasons.
You referred to the fact that you hadn't seen the
Department of Defense guidance. Supposedly people on the Hill
have been told that there is a policy of the Department of
Defense for discovering poppy fields, labs, warehouses and drug
shipments and that they have a policy of engagement in
narcotics in southeast Asia.
You say that you haven't seen that--at the State
Department, at least. You haven't as the person in charge of
narcotics. I wondered, Ms. Tandy, have you seen a particular
document from the State Department, a strategy of engagement?
Ms. Tandy. I have seen a document from the Department of
Defense. I am not sure that it is a document that is being
translated to the theater of operations in southwest Asia. I am
just not sure if it was a concept document or if it was actual
direction.
But the Department of Defense has certainly discussed
guidance regarding the labs and how the labs are to be treated
by military when they come upon the labs in the country. I am
encouraged by what I read in the document, without getting into
the direction if that is what it was in the document.
Mr. Charles. If I can add, yesterday I had a conversation
with senior folks at DOD; and I think we are definitely
experiencing forward progress, the shift from counterterrorism
to counternarcotics and an understanding that if we have a
little additional effort, the opportunity to hit these labs or
to hit those stockpiles, they will do that.
I will also mention that I took a minute to talk with some
of the Marines on the ground in Kabul just to ask them if they
had the opportunity, if the guidance--which I think is in draft
form now and will find its way, I have no doubt, shortly to the
field, if they would--how they felt about that. I will tell you
that the response was enthusiastically that they would like to
execute on guidance of that sort, that there would be no
hesitancy at all.
So I think we are on the right course. I think it is simply
a matter of sequencing.
They were warfighting, catching terrorists. They are still
doing that. This is something that we would just ask--we are
all working together to try to get, as you suggest,
Congressman--toward greater and greater destruction of the lab,
therefore, the node, therefore, you disincentive the growth of
the heroin, therefore, you create a stable and noncorrupt
democracy.
Ms. Tandy. Chairman Souder, if I could add to that with
regard to the Department of Defense, I have seen from the
Department of Defense a real spirit of trying to see where they
can meet their mission and work with the Drug Enforcement
Administration in new ways; and among those--clearly, they
are--these are recent developments.
The Drug Enforcement Administration has been meeting with
DOD, with State Department, to try to determine where we can
enhance our collaboration together. To that end, the Department
of Defense has made it possible for us to put a DEA analyst
into Bagram, has opened up for us the opportunity to mine the
military intelligence on drugs in Bagram.
They also, in Kandahar, have offered to us the opportunity
to put an agent in Kandahar for the purposes of essentially
working with those returning military men and women who have
been out in country, who have seen some of these labs or
stockpiles, and essentially conduct after-action intelligence
before those labs and stockpiles are destroyed.
What is important to DEA is not only the destruction of
those labs but equally critically that we get the intelligence
and information contained in those locations and working with
the military in Kandahar for the after-action piece of this
before the destruction will foster both of our aims in that
regard. We also have been given the opportunity from DOD to
interview the detainees from the dhows that were seized in the
Gulf earlier this year, and we are putting together teams now.
We have interviewed some of those detainees that were not in
Afghanistan but elsewhere, and we are now putting teams
together to--both DEA and we have invited the FBI to join us,
and they will, to conduct additional interviews of the
remaining detainees from the dhows.
So I do see some clearly enhanced focus in this area and a
great deal of collaboration by the Department of Defense. At
the same time, the DEA is enhancing its operations in
Afghanistan.
Mr. Souder. Thank you. I appreciate the specific details of
that. Part of our job in this committee and the Government
Reform Committee in general is to make sure that our agencies
cooperate. And that we don't have like four different nations
in there simultaneously; the Nation of DEA, the Nation of the
State Department, the Nation of the Department of Defense, and
the Nation of the CIA, sharing that intelligence and
coordinating on the ground and having a joint understanding
that the military might be going after the terrorists. But the
terrorists are at least in part getting their money from the
narcotics; and, by the way, at the very least the weapons they
are shooting at you were probably paid for, since that is a big
part of the elicit economy, not by growing wheat but by growing
opium poppy. If your helicopter is getting shot at, it has
probably been paid for by some kind of rifle on the ground that
was from the illicit economy.
Kind of understanding that we are all on the same page
here, to differing degrees and priority, let me followup. It
sounds like you have put additional people in the region and
you are putting additional people in the region, so I have a
two-part question with this.
My understanding is in Pakistan we have had a reduction
from pre-September 11, from five to six agents and two
intelligence analysts to now three total. Is Pakistan going to
be changed as well in the total region? Do you see DEA either
getting additional dollars or ramping up your presence? And do
you--if you got additional dollars beyond the President's
budget request, would you put them in that zone, or are there
other zones in the world that have similar pressures, Colombia,
for example, domestic, as every Congressman wants more DEA
people in his district, including me, that--so we are all
putting that domestic pressure on. But do you see this as a
place where, if you got additional funding, it would be one of
your priorities?
Last, on the language, when you put people, particularly if
they get outside of Kabul, sounds like a lot of the time is
going to be deprogramming our own military guys and their drug
intelligence to build an intelligence base. But, ultimately, we
all know to find the labs, to find the distribution systems,
you have to penetrate organizations, which is partly buying the
way in and training people from those countries. But also means
you have to be able to talk to them.
Do we have an active effort--understanding that, as we have
heard today, this Afghanistan effort is not likely to be over
in, say, 3 months, it is not even likely to be over in 12 or 24
months, are we training people? Do we have adequate people that
we can put into this zone?
I mean, let me reinforce one other thing, because I am kind
of throwing this, but it is all kind of together.
Meeting with the Afghanistan ambassador to the United
States the other day, in talking and trying to figure out a
question we had been discussing earlier in the day about
whether any of this is moving through China and replacing some
of the Golden Triangle. Basically the response was those would
be new routes to work through China. Yes, we could probably do
it, but it is so easy right now to move through the ``stans,''
and it is so easy to move through Turkey, they don't need to
find new routes. The old routes are working fine.
The question is, are we preparing--even if we ramp up DEA,
do we have people who can work undercover, who can break into
these often very closed societies? And what are some of the
challenges you are looking at with that?
Ms. Tandy. Chairman Souder, with regard to our ability to
work undercover, develop the sources that we need beyond
debriefing returning military forces and mining the military
intelligence, we have not in the past been able to do that as
effectively as I see our opportunities now. Part of that is
because, essentially, we are confined to the bunkered quarters
of the U.S. Embassy within Kabul and with really an inability
to move around due to the lack of sufficient security.
That picture is changing for us. We have, even despite
those obstacles, during the past year in Kabul been able to
develop sources through our work within the country with a
variety of partners. I see that--while we have developed some
sources, I see that improving immeasurably as we are about to
be able to move around within the country.
You are right. That is essential to penetrate the
organizations. It is essential for us to gather our own
intelligence and to combine that with what other information
has been obtained by our coalition partners, our military
partners and others. So I am actually quite optimistic that we
are going to see a much clearer intelligence picture and that
DEA will be able to conduct more traditional intelligence
gathering than we do on our investigations.
With regard to the funding priorities, there is a--we have
within DEA really done a scrub of all our placement of agents
and analysts and staff positions around the world to determine
whether where they were placed originally still makes sense
today as compared to the threat, and where the threat picture
changes do we need to shift some of our existing resources in
the world to new places? That has resulted in what is referred
to as a right-sizing proposal, which is a request that is
pending before our Appropriations Committee.
I understand that is--it looks like that will be moving
very shortly in a favorable way. In that proposal, we have
sought the movement of a number of positions into the southwest
Asian region to support Operation Containment.
As I said, the enhanced staffing for our efforts, our new
efforts in Afghanistan are essentially coming from borrowing
from existing positions elsewhere and detailing those into the
country. The two people I mentioned, the attache and the deputy
in Kabul, are permanent positions.
We originally sought a total of six positions for the
country; and because of security when the office was created,
we were only able to staff it with two. Now we will be able to
get up to the six, but we are borrowing from other existing
sources to do that.
So, to answer your question, we are streamlining our
resource needs so that we match our resources to the current
threat all around the world; and if additional funding is
provided, clearly because I am borrowing to supply the
necessary staffing to this region, those positions, a number of
those positions would go to this region.
We also have positions in Pakistan that we were not able--
that we are not able to fill currently. There are six of them
in Pakistan. They are important. But we have not been able to
fill those because of security issues in Pakistan, which leads
me to a prior question that you posed, that Assistant Secretary
Charles answered, that I would like to address as well, and
that is our relationship between the Drug Enforcement
Administration and INL.
We have a very close working relationship. Obviously, in
the embassies it is the NAS officer and DEA who are trying to
work through DEA's funding means within the country to
effectively combat the narcotics in any given country.
I have spoken directly with Assistant Secretary Charles
about some of our funding request issues. He has been
responsive. He has been focused on DEA's needs to effectively
combat counternarcotics, certainly in southwest Asia, certainly
in Afghanistan, as well as the rest of DEA's presence around
the world.
I am very pleased with our working relationship and
optimistic that our funding needs will receive the kind of
attention from INL and certainly from Assistant Secretary
Charles that DEA has been hoping for and is seeing.
Mr. Souder. One of the problems when you detail people to a
project like Operation Containment is that there is a lot of
movement, and you don't get the people who are getting anchored
into their countries who built and developed the sources over
time.
Many times when I talk to agents in South America, even if
they haven't been in Colombia the whole time, they have been in
adjacent countries, they have built up an expertise in network
and kind of know the enemy. Do you see longer times of service
or building in people? I know it is a tough place to serve. But
if we don't build that network of DEA agents with experience
there, I am not sure we will ever penetrate.
Ms. Tandy. Chairman Souder, DEA has some of the most
courageous men and women who serve under the harshest
circumstances. In the last month alone, I have had agents
ambushed, shot at, and engaged in a gun battle in Haiti. I have
had agents approached and almost the subject of home invasions
in other countries and evacuated them.
We are often serving in harsh conditions with great moral
courage. And it is not the living conditions in Afghanistan. It
was really having the ability to move around effectively within
that country, which requires phenomenal security arrangements.
With regard to your concern about the lack of in-depth
appreciation for the country situation as a detailee, I
understand completely your concern in that regard. It would not
be my preference to have detailees, but that is the only way
that I can get resources into that country quickly.
As I said before, I see, feel, and sense a great urgency
for us to get on the ground there now that we can move around
and to move forward; and the only way I can meet that need is
to do it with--four out of the six are detailees, two are
permanent.
The need for the kind of permanent resource commitment, and
understanding and appreciation for the country situation in
DEA's enforcement efforts there will have to come through a
traditional approval process that will take some time to work
its way through, both in terms of--within the administration
and the State Department; and the next stop would be,
obviously, through OMB and ultimately to the Hill. Those stops
take a little time. So this is my immediate approach to
addressing our needs, with that longer range funding picture to
go through the appropriate procedures.
Mr. Souder. Thank you. I am going to come back with some
more questions to you.
I want to yield to Mr. Cummings.
Mr. Cummings. I want to go back to this whole issue of
training the police. You know, we have had a situation--I mean,
this committee--subcommittee has heard testimony with regard to
Mexico and how we had people even in high positions who were
corrupt. And when you have--when you are dealing--with regard
to drugs and folks accepting bribes.
It seems like, you know, if you think about Afghanistan,
basically you are talking about a country being reborn. It
seems to me that I am sure you have a lot of people who want to
see their country do well, probably the vast majority. But you
also have--I don't know how much these policemen are paid. How
much are they paid? I mean, compared to--I know it is relative,
but compared to other folks in Afghanistan.
Mr. Charles. I will get you an exact wage. But I will tell
you that they are not well paid. I mean, they are well paid
from Afghan standards, but they are going to be subject to the
same pressures that law enforcement anywhere else in the world
is subject to in terms of the power of drug money.
Mr. Cummings. Do you think that because--I mean, do you
think that because it is, again, a country being basically
reborn, is that--do you think that helps to prevent some of
that corruption or does--and you can look at it from a whole
other angle and say, well, this is a new country. So people
believing that there is discord, believing that we are still
trying to get administrator, prosecution, and judges right,
they might say, well, then they have these folks who are in the
drug world saying, look, you know, the risk is not that bad. I
mean, do you all--how do you deal with that? I mean, do you all
see that as a problem?
Mr. Charles. Let me give you what State does, and let me
give you my analogy of a gut sense of an answer to that
question; and with respect to Congressman Souder's question, as
with respect to yours, I am going to speak more bluntly than
probably most people do.
I recently spent time also in Baghdad. I spent more time
with the recruits there than I got to, given the time I had in
Kabul. We are just coming off the ground. There are about 3,000
trained police in Kabal, an additional 1,400 that the Germans
have trained, and we are shooting for 20,000 again by June.
But, by way of analogy, I talked a little about the whole
notion of what it means in Baghdad to folks who are also going
through police training, young people coming through to become
professional police officers in an environment and in a culture
where you are simultaneously teaching the culture at the same
time and trying to empower them to make fullest use of their
freedom and to preserve it against the onslaught of drug money
as well as terrorism.
I was amazed at the enthusiasm of these young police
officers. I found that--I asked, are you learning? And I got
lectures back about how democracy works. I was being told about
what they foresaw for the future of their country. I find while
there are a number of factors that are different among and
between the countries, I think you find that you are absolutely
right. Afghanistan is in a moment of rebirth; and in that there
is a sense of enthusiasm, despite poverty, despite the odds
that lie out there against them.
I guess I would say to you that I hope, because the
training also includes this component, that the notion of
professionalism and of standing their ground for noble reasons,
as long as they have the right weapons and they have the right
training and they have the right protection and they have the
right sense of esprit d' corps, we will stand with them.
I will tell you, I don't think there is any country on the
face of the globe that doesn't face this threat, the power of
drug money. I think that we have to be duly on guard. But, you
know, we are actually trying to develop a way to monitor the
professional futures of these people.
I was just talking back at the Department with someone
about how we can monitor these people over an extended period,
give them added training, give them new specialized training as
they may need it, and reinforce them in time.
So the answer to the question is, we don't know yet. But I
will tell you that what I have heard from the ground and from
people who are in contact with those trainees is a sense of
optimism.
Mr. Cummings. Administrator, do we--can we trace this drug
money? I mean, do we have a pretty good idea that it is going
to terrorist organizations, a sizable amount of it? Can we
actually trace that?
You may have answered this while I was out of the room. I
don't know.
Ms. Tandy. No, actually I didn't get that question, but it
is a good question. We cannot trace that yet. What I have found
is that we need to do much more on the drug money front in
terms of investigating it to determine those links, to trace
the money, to stop the money, to seize the money, and share it
with those countries that help us.
With the situation that we have here in terms of drug money
in the United States is that $65 billion in U.S. dollars
changes hands for drugs in the United States every single year.
All law enforcement, local, State, Federal, combined, takes out
less than $1 billion out of that $65.
We are, in DEA, in a hard press, attacking the drug money
side in a way that we have not done in a long time. I have
established in headquarters a new operation, a new office
section to attack the drug money side. Every division now has
drug money units in it within DEA. We are devoting resources to
doing exactly what you have asked about, which is, are we
tracing that drug money?
I have a management review team that is leaving on Saturday
for southwest Asia, both on the drugs and the money side, to
determine what more we can do in that region to answer your
question, to establish these links and trace that flow of the
money from heroin in the region. They will be there reviewing
the entire region, Afghanistan, and the entire region of
southwest Asia to determine how we can step up our efforts on
the money side.
Mr. Cummings. Just a last question. The chairman and I
guess our entire committee, when we began to form the homeland
security department, particularly after September 11, and all
of our concerns that came out of that horrific event, one of
our biggest concerns was whether we would--because we were so
busy trying to fight terrorism, whether the fighting of drugs
and other crime--in your instance drugs--would be diminished.
In other words, that it would be--that because our emphasis was
so--that we wanted to make sure that another September 11 never
happened again.
I was just wondering--you know, I just heard you talk about
borrowing, and I was just wondering, do you feel that you
have--that you have enough to do what you have to do? I know
Mr. Charles is sitting right there, and I know you have said
some very kind things, but he is the kind of guy who can take a
punch. But I was just wondering, because this is something that
really concerns us.
You know, in my neighborhood, they don't worry so much
about terrorists over in Afghanistan and other places. They
worry about terrorists right in their neighborhoods. They have
terrorists every day. They can't even come out of their houses.
They hate to come home, because they don't know what drug
addict has broken into their house before. So they are
literally terrorized every day, and they feel it.
So I was just wondering, do you feel comfortable--and, by
the way, congratulations to both of you--with your situation?
Ms. Tandy. I do. The administration and the Congress have
been very generous with DEA. The administration has sought
additional agent positions for DEA. We received, as a result,
216 new positions for 2003. We received another 300 plus in
this latest omnibus appropriations bill that was passed. And we
are scheduling--we are hiring and we are scheduling training,
basic agent training, as many classes as we can accommodate at
our training facility as fast as we can do them.
But that takes time to staff up, to hire. It is a 16-week
training course that basic agents go through. That is after the
very rigorous hiring selection process. I will tell you I do
have a hiring preference for those with financial background,
to again beef up what we are doing on the money side.
So we will get there. It just takes some time. We do have
funding and positions to do that, but it is just going to take
some time to get there.
When I talked about borrowing positions, it is really more
from the standpoint of the approval process and just the
natural length of time that is required to get through the
various stages of approval to move permanent positions into
place. So the borrowing is really more addressed to the short,
immediate term while we go through the longer term process.
Mr. Cummings. Thank you very much.
Mr. Charles. If I can add a quick footnote to that, and
that is, Congressman, you don't hear very often stories in the
Federal Government of people and organizations that work
together effectively; and, frankly, having been an oversight
guy, I made a lot of the effort to point out when that didn't
happen. I can give you concrete examples here where DEA and
State I think are working together in some ways better than
they have ever worked together. We are about to help them, DEA,
work through, organize and pay for a big conference in Peru
dedicated to the internal and DEA sides working together on
regional counterdrug issues. We are working collectively or
together on an initiative that relates to Mexico, and it
involves dollars.
By way of example,and I am going to break some glass here,
very often I actually wade back in on embassies, because I
think that is my job, to say DEA needs to get into the field.
They are making a bona fide statement that they cannot prowl
the corridors and get the information they need. They need to
be out in the field, so I want you to work with them to help
them get out in the field.
Dollar for dollar, I think there is an enormous amount of
cooperation here, and a good example is I pulse from the
reverse universe. I go back to what they call NAS officers, who
are the narcotics affairs section people in these embassies who
are working for State, and I say, what is your relationship
with DEA? How is it working? And they are coming back with
better answers than I ever heard when I was asking those
questions before.
Mr. Souder. Before yielding to another drug warrior, Mr.
Ruppersberger, who usually asks this question and probably will
followup on what we just started here, which is really great to
have two colleagues from the other side of the aisle really
pushing us on the drug way, to say do we have adequate
resources, I want to point out that Director Tandy did say that
if she got additional funds that more of these positions could
be permanent and there would have to be less borrowing. And
that we are likely--while no administration that I have ever
met goes to Congress and says, yes, my President's budget is
insufficient, nevertheless, we can certainly find--if we found
more money, how would you use it and what things can be done?
Then we as the appropriating branch can help address that.
With that, I would like to yield to Mr. Ruppersberger.
Mr. Ruppersberger. I want to make a couple of statements,
and I will try to bring them into questions.
First, just as Congressman Cummings was talking about as
far as the drug interdiction generally, my concern with all of
the resources that we are putting into terrorism, as we should,
and then the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, that is something
that we have to deal with. But I am concerned about the
resources, both on a Federal, State and local level, whether--
if you look at the big picture right now, drugs are still the--
probably the worst issue we deal with in our society. I think
90 percent of all violent crime is still drug related.
Now our job here in this committee and in Congress is to
try to oversee and provide resources; and some of the things
that I have seen just--specifically just with DEA, the Afghan
situation is a very difficult situation. I was also just last
week in both Baghdad and Afghanistan and met with Karzai. When
did you meet with Karzai?
Ms. Tandy. Two weeks ago.
Mr. Ruppersberger. Well, this was last week; and that
country has a long way to go. The infrastructure--I mean, the
fact that they were under different control with Russia and
everything else. My concern is that Karzai is still around.
Because, as you saw, if you met with him, he has tremendous
security. And when we--and he does--I think one of the reasons,
and I hope that he wins his election, is because he has
relationships with the warlords and with other people in the
country.
When we talked with him about the issue of what is
happening with heroin again, his concern was that he knows it
is a problem. It undermines his ability just to create an
economy for jobs. Because the money is just coming in as far as
heroin is concerned.
But my thought, after I left there, it is going to take a
long time, and we are going to have to have a lot of patience
to deal with the issue of turning these warlords and farmers
and taking that product--and whether it is eradication, but
then you have to put something else in there. With all of the
political issues that are there, it is going to be difficult.
I think the way we get in, though, is our fight against
terrorism. Because we know that a lot of money and focus is
going in that arena.
By the way, Secretary Charles, I would agree with you also
on the teamwork approach. Both being in Afghanistan and Iraq
and some other countries, I have never seen the teamwork in all
of the different agencies coming together. I mean, from the CIA
to the military to the DEA, the Secretary--I mean, it is all
coming together, and there is one focus.
The only way we get out of those countries, though, is to
train their police officers and their defense for security. We
had our delegation. There were six of us from the Intelligence
Committee; and we made sure, even though they didn't want us to
go out into the red zone, that we went and laid a wreath on
behalf of those 23 police officers in Baghdad that were killed.
Because the strategy has changed--and you probably are
aware of this--that they are not only going after our
coalition, the United States and Great Britain, but also they
are trying to put the pressure and kill and do whatever they
can to these police officers.
We probably had about 300 people in the academy in Iraq,
and these individuals were so happy that we were there they put
their hands over their hearts. I think that the insurgents,
along with the outside al Qaeda groups that are now, say, just
in Baghdad and also in Afghanistan, they are making a mistake.
Because when they start killing Iraqis, Iraqis are getting
upset about it. Their resolve is strong.
Now let's get to some questions.
First thing, I think one of the things with Afghanistan, is
that the good news for the United States is that almost all of
the heroin from Afghanistan is going to European countries. I
think most of ours comes from Mexico and Colombia. Am I
correct?
By the way, Colombia is an example of us training
Colombians to take care of their own problem. They are getting
a lot stronger. They are getting better results.
I heard over there, because I asked questions about the
issue of drugs, that Great Britain and other countries could
probably do more than they are doing to work with us to help
their problem. It is more of their problem than our problem
right now. How would you respond to that?
Mr. Charles. Well, let me say we discussed this briefly
earlier. I think that what we are doing, what I am doing
personally--and I have engaged with them both on U.S. soil and
abroad, particularly on Afghanistan, to try to get them to--all
of us to work together in a more aggressive approach. Let me
say that there are things that the British are doing that they
are doing exceedingly well, some of which we can't talk about
in this room. There are other things that we could be doing a
lot better together on.
As you probably know, in Afghanistan, the counternarcotics
piece is being worked with the British, the police training
piece is with the Germans, and the justice sector reform and
the building of courthouses and the training is being worked
with the Italians. One of my priorities is to bring them more
on board and have us drive harder at the target.
Mr. Ruppersberger. Because I saw that as an issue, that we
need--I mean, the Europeans are the victims of Afghanistan
right now more than we are, would you agree? Other than the
issue of money and terrorism.
Mr. Charles. I do agree.
Mr. Souder. Supplemental to his question, because you put a
specific dollar amount on Britain before, do you have a dollar
amount for the Germans or French and other European countries?
Mr. Charles. Yes. One of the things that this--one of the
charts that I have here is strictly counternarcotics. I can get
you the other ones as they relate to justice and to police
training. The Germans are being very--I think very cooperative
and very aggressive. In fact, so are the Italians.
Mr. Ruppersberger. How about the French?
Mr. Charles. Yes. It is a varying--everybody contributes
what they can contribute. Or that has sort of been the history
up to this point.
One of the things that I am suggesting and pushing is that
people contribute more and we drive harder at these targets.
Now in the justice sector component, it is a smaller
overall piece. In other words, $10 million we are driving at
the justice sector. So the Italian piece relative to that might
be proportionally more but dollars less.
The police training piece we are pushing very hard for.
That is a dollar-intensive effort. But let me say to date we
have trained again about 3,000, they have trained about 1,400.
There is a concerted effort to ramp up on both sides. So far as
I can tell, we are working closely together. I talked to them
briefly in Madrid about that when we were on another topic.
But let me just give you some numbers. I gave you the U.K.
numbers, and those are fairly large. But Australia, we have
$261,000; France, $230,000; Italy, $1.6 million; Canada,
$165,000; Germany was $365,000. We also have Canada, Ireland,
Japan, Austria, Netherlands. What I am telling you is this is
definitely a mutual effort.
Mr. Ruppersberger. The good news I saw with Afghanistan
versus Iraq is we have more coalition in Afghanistan. That
shares the load, including putting our own people at risk, too.
Mr. Charles. That is right.
Mr. Ruppersberger. I see the red light.
The political situation has to be resolved. They are
talking about elections and whatever in Afghanistan. I don't
see this production situation in Afghanistan alleviating itself
for a long period of time, because the first thing you have to
get the political control, the security and whatever.
Two things I want to say. First thing, what would our more
long-term goal be to deal with the Afghan heroin issue? I know
eradication and all of those issues, but I think if you raise
expectations and you don't make them, that is even worse. So we
have to be realistic.
Second, I am just concerned again that we take--that we
don't take our eye off the ball in Colombia and Mexico, Burma,
some of these other hot spots that we know that we have to deal
with, also. We are focusing a lot on terrorism, but there is a
lot that is happening in other parts that if we don't keep our
eye on the ball in some of those other hotspots--South America
is a perfect example. If we don't keep our eye on the ball, are
we OK globally? Because I think if you talk to most agencies
throughout the world, including intelligence agencies, they
will tell you that most of the focus now is over in the Iraq
and the Afghan area.
Mr. Charles. Why don't we both give you an answer? I know
the administrator has something to say, also.
Ms. Tandy. On the long term--in the short and long term on
the enforcement side of that, I can tell you where the focus
is. It is to attack the stockpiles, the labs, go after the key
trafficking organizations, both in the region and----
Mr. Ruppersberger. Is this long term in the whole world or
just Afghanistan?
Ms. Tandy. I am talking both in the region--in southwest
Asia as well as within Afghanistan. We are identifying what has
commonly been referred to in the past as kingpins. We are
identifying trafficking organizations within----
Mr. Ruppersberger. Not the farmers as much, the traffickers
once they are getting--that really----
Ms. Tandy. Trafficking organizations.
Mr. Ruppersberger. Follow the money.
Ms. Tandy. Yes, and in terms of the region as well, those
that are transporting and trafficking, both in terms of the
drugs and the chemicals that are being used at the labs to
actually process the opium into heroin, the long-term piece of
that has already started now, and we are working closely with
our British counterparts in the country.
On the enforcement side, the U.K. has been a very strong
leader, and DEA has a very strong partnership with the Brits in
attacking these areas of the counternarcotics issue.
Regionally for us, it is Operation Containment until INL
and the coalition pieces come together in terms of standing up
a real police force and standing up prosecutors and judges and
prisons to effectively house traffickers at this level. It is
Operation Containment attacking in the surrounding countries
the flow of heroin and the money and the chemicals out of
Afghanistan that is going to further cement our enforcement
success in that region over the long term and the short term.
Mr. Ruppersberger. But are we taking resources away from
what affects the U.S.A., the Mexico and the Colombia area? I
mean, that is what worries me.
Ms. Tandy. I can tell you for the Drug Enforcement
Administration we are not taking any resources away from
Colombia and Mexico.
Mr. Ruppersberger. That is good to hear.
Ms. Tandy. We have a right-sizing proposal that I mentioned
earlier in my testimony that actually enhances our position in
those countries.
With regard to the source heroin, source countries for the
United States which you asked about during your opening
statement, it is Colombia, by and far the largest heroin supply
source for the United States, at about 80 percent. Afghanistan,
the southwest Asian region is No. 2, with Mexico closely on the
heels of that. And southeast Asia----
Mr. Ruppersberger. Coming to the United States?
Ms. Tandy. Coming to the United States.
Mr. Ruppersberger. It is Afghanistan No. 2?
Ms. Tandy. Well, we can't isolate it out as Afghanistan.
Mr. Ruppersberger. Because all of the documents I have read
and research, including a lot that I have over there, said the
opposite, that the two major areas were--in the briefing
information--were Mexico and Colombia for the United States,
and Afghanistan was all of the European areas but not the
United States.
Ms. Tandy. Well, I can tell you that from our programs
within DEA testing the signature of heroin coming into this
country to determine its regional source as well as the
purchase of domestic samples of heroin and determining where
that is coming from geographically, what we have seen is that
the No. 2 is Afghanistan, excuse me--southwest Asia, to include
Afghanistan.
Mr. Ruppersberger. Could you get me that information?
Because I tell you, we have a committee that was getting
briefed to the contrary; and I will get the documents. I would
like to see that because we got to get our facts straight if we
are talking about helping and authorizing.
Ms. Tandy. I think part of the confusion is that there is
only a hair worth of difference between southwest Asia as a
source and the volume coming out of Mexico. It is a percentage
point at best difference between the two.
The actual numbers we are not going to have until September
when we finish analyzing the samples from those two programs to
further isolate precisely where that standing is. But I will be
delighted to give you the information we do have to date.
Mr. Ruppersberger. I will try to get you a copy of that
briefing so you will see what we had.
Mr. Charles. Congressman, if I can respond to your long-
term versus short-storm and long-term overall strategy. In
Afghanistan, the strategy, as it should be and as it is all
over the world, is to put these countries in the driver's seat
as democracies controlling their own problems and ultimately
bringing them down to a manageable level so that we back out.
We have helped them to create the democracy, to stabilize the
environment, to knock out the drug trade, to wring it out, if
you will, from the democratic process, so that it doesn't
infect the process.
The same is true in Colombia. I can guarantee you that we
are not diverting anything. In fact, quite the reverse. We have
an Indian region initiative that we will talk about at some
other future date in which we are spending about $1 billion
very directly on stabilizing, regionalizing and ultimately
creating more of a drug-free environment there.
We fly against the crops there. We are building judicial
institutions there. We are doing many, many things there, also
supportive of domestic law enforcement there.
In Afghanistan, in Iraq--and you mentioned Iraq for
stabilization. We have $800 million dedicated to the
proposition of this bureau, to the proposition of training the
police. We are it in Jordan, and we just built that academy,
and we are doing it also in Baghdad. That academy that you were
at is actually managed by INL with MPs also teaching there.
In Afghanistan, the end game is similar. It is freedom, it
is democracy, it is a self-administered set of programs.
But the thing I think that is important to keep in mind
is--and this is where in many ways you are seeing both halves
of the canoe here to get us across the lake--the law
enforcement community, the U.S. law enforcement community,
which is what the administrator has been talking about, throws
the pitch out to the field. There also has to be a catcher out
there somewhere. That is what we do. We help the countries to
be able to absorb, interact, have a high-integrity law
enforcement community that they can interface with.
One example that I feel it is important to give, because it
was asked by the chairman a moment ago, in terms of the support
and containment strategy, is there any good news, bad news in
the ability to execute this from the catcher's point of view,
from the working-in-these-countries' point of view. I will tell
you the bad news is, as it relates to Afghanistan, is that
there is very little law enforcement capacity in these
countries that surround Afghanistan, arranging broadly.
Therefore, every effort, whether it is intelligence sharing,
whether it is execution of finding things and destroying them
or running down traffickers or prosecuting them, all of that is
something we are building right now. The anticorruption
efforts, all of these fit together like pieces in a jigsaw
puzzle. We are desperately trying in each of those countries to
ramp that up. Since I have been there, it has become, I think,
an added priority.
In Pakistan, though--because I think I don't want to leave
you with a wrong impression. In Pakistan, I think we are
getting significant cooperation; and I want to tell you how
significant. We fly a number of aircraft in there in support
of--or we have them being utilized with the antinarcotics
police that work in Afghanistan--in Pakistan. They have been
conducting aerial surveillance. They have been working on
counterterrorism activities, doing medivacs, rescue operations
all related to the border. We have antinarcotics forces in--the
antinarcotic force in Badakhshan has increased operations 60
percent over 2002.
Nationwide, heroin seizures on INL-supported programs are
224 percent up. Opium seizures are up 125 percent; 63 percent
increase in seizures in Badakhshan itself. We talked about the
road earlier, 431 kilometers, which allows law enforcement,
antiterrorism forces, antinarcotics forces to actually get into
country.
We have 80,000 acceptable 10-print finger cards which gives
us a program that didn't exist before. Pakistan has destroyed
4,200 hectares of opium poppy in 2003.
So there are certainly positive pieces of news as it
relates to the countries surrounding Afghanistan. But the issue
is a big one. I would just tell you on the dollar side, the
question about could more be done, the answer is, I think this
is--these are all locations in which more could be done.
I think that the one thing to keep our eye on is it is not
as if something shifting from one priority to another, from one
region to another. It is the fact that--I think you put your
finger on it, Congressman--that counternarcotics in these
places has the potential to disrupt democracy, to fund
terrorism, and to ultimately diminish the security that we have
back here.
We lose, as the administrator I think alluded to earlier,
thousands last year, I think the CDC said 21,000 young
Americans died at the hands of drugs. We cannot afford that
kind of an effect in this country. That is why we have to be so
aggressive abroad in trying to turn the clock back and get this
back, roll it back.
Mr. Ruppersberger. OK. Good.
Mr. Souder. Thank you.
I want to say for the record that on Tuesday we are having
a hearing on the Andean region, and the Department of Defense
will be here, in addition to the Colombia--focused on Colombia,
but also Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador.
Because, as you heard from a number of us today, we are all
very concerned about Afghanistan. We're all very concerned
about Iraq, for multiple reasons, and particularly the heroin
problem, that 7 to 10 percent coming into our United States.
But we don't really know from all of the signature problems
precisely what is doing it. Obviously, if Europe didn't get the
Afghan heroin, we would see another explosion out of the Indian
region, because that market would also increasingly supply
Europe.
We have the interconnections that we need to--but we don't
want to forget both our domestic and our Andean area which is--
that and Mexico are the primary suppliers to us. So our
committee will stay focused on those areas even as we do this.
I wanted to make sure, because I probed a little bit with
Director Tandy, but I wanted to ask Mr. Charles, too, that if
you had another hundred million, would you be able to use it in
this region? Also, precisely what did you mean in your
testimony when you said that you reprogrammed $50 million for
accelerating success in Afghanistan? Where did that come from?
Mr. Charles. Let me answer the second one first, and then--
that $50 million actually that I was talking about was the
supplemental. The $170 million that I indicated was actually
for police and justice sector programs in Afghanistan. The $50
million is what the U.S. Congress gave us.
Mr. Souder. So when your testimony says, to which the
administration added $50 million in reprogrammed funds, that
didn't necessarily come from your department. That could have
come from other parts of the government?
Mr. Charles. I will get back to you, but I think it was
supplemental funding. I don't think it was reprogrammed away
from another area, but I will come back to you on that.
The answer to your question about what would you do with an
additional $100 million, we are not asking for more money right
now. But I would tell you that there are parts of the world in
which that money could be highly--if you said regionally what
would you do with it, I would put immediately $40 million of it
directly into Afghanistan right now.
We are driving hard on the eradication piece, but, as the
other Congressmen have indicated, it is necessarily targeted.
We are only going to be able to hit--and I want to keep
expectations at this level--10 to 15 percent of the overall
crop this year. That will send a strong signal, but you can do
more. You can also do more, I think, on information sharing,
and there are a number of other areas. So I would probably put
$40 million of the hundred there.
In Pakistan, we have a crying need for some additional--I
think it could be absorbed, let's put it that way--an
additional $40 million probably.
Then with the remainder, I think probably southeast and
southwest Asia are critically important areas. Turkey is a
critically important area. There is no question that I think we
can do more in each of those areas. If the question is, could
it be absorbed, the answer is, absolutely, it could be
absorbed.
I also want to note that very often in this we get in the
mindset or the impression that somehow we are just sitting in
place spinning our wheels against a problem that continues to
blow at us, and we are never going to go forward. I take a very
different point of view. I am absolutely committed to the idea
that in each of these places, Afghanistan and Colombia in
particular, there is a real end game and that real end game
relates to both counterterrorism and counternarcotics, and you
get them down to a level where it is manageable indigenously
and with multilateral international support as and when needed.
I think one of the things that we forget is--I was in
conversation just yesterday with an ambassador from a foreign
country, and I was trying to explain that in this country there
was a fellow by the name of Elliott Ness. He took a long, hard
view at Al Capone and organized crime in this country, and he
went after them with all of his heart, and he helped to beat
them.
That is what we are trying to do in these places, bringing
crime, terrorism, narcotics down to a level in which it is
manageable in the way that we manage crime elsewhere. We will
never eliminate crime from Los Angeles or anywhere else in the
world. We will get it down to a level where it is manageable.
That is our end game in places like this.
Mr. Souder. I appreciate your patience with us. I have one
other question, because you have been, appropriately, very
cautious about the links between al Qaeda and the drug
terrorism, although we have seen links with other terrorist
organizations. But you had specific references in your
testimony to these real major operations in Turkey where you
said, in 2002, we got as much as all of--in one bust all of
2000. That, in Europe, your best evidence that you can sort
through were these--because both of you stated in your
testimony that we want to break this stuff up in Afghanistan
and others while we are dealing with maybe regional drug lords
before this really explodes again and dominates and prohibits
democracy from flourishing in Afghanistan and rebuilding the
country. It is what President Karzai says. It is what the
former king says.
That is an extraordinary amount of money. Somebody is
making a lot of profit when you have $1 billion takedown, some
phenomenal number you said, on the heroin.
Ms. Tandy. In the United States, it is $65 billion a year.
Mr. Souder. Also, the one big bust in Turkey where you
found the stockpiled stuff, were the busts in Turkey--were they
just profiteering? Were they early signs of a large cartel?
Were there any signs of those people being on a watch list?
What type of organization is that big that they would have in
one stockpile that much?
Ms. Tandy. I don't have the details at this point to
provide to you. I am not sure if the investigation is still
continuing there. So, with your permission, what I would like
to do is get back to you with as much as I can provide to you
with regard to those details.
Mr. Souder. I would really appreciate that.
Because one of our challenges, without disclosing too much
from your agents, as our former staff director and your now
employee, Chris Donesa, could testify as well, when we were in
Europe we heard that one of the problems we have with
organization law in Europe is that we can't follow this stuff
through because you can't continue to see how the stuff moves
in the finances and through the organizations. Therefore, when
sometimes we take it down in Turkey or places before it gets
into the distribution network, we can't see. We have
assumptions that it may have been going to some of the al Qaeda
networks in Europe, but they are assumptions.
We are being very cautious about what we actually say,
because we have some legal problems that we have to address
with Europe. If the heroin is being consumed there, you would
think that they want to help us with some of this information.
But anything you can give to the committee would be
appreciated. Do you have anything you want to say?
Thank you very much for your testimony and look forward to
continuing to work with both of you. Thank you for your
leadership, and we will continue to work on a close basis.
With that, the subcommittee stands adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 4:10 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
[The prepared statement of Hon. Tom Davis and additional
information submitted for the hearing record follow:]
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