[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 113 (Wednesday, September 13, 2006)]
[House]
[Pages H6511-H6513]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
NARCOTICS PROBLEM IN AFGHANISTAN
Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to claim Mr. Poe's
time.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Without objection, the gentleman from
Indiana is recognized for 5 minutes.
There was no objection.
In Memory of Tom Jehl
Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, my subject for tonight is on Afghanistan and
the narcotics problem, but before I address that, I would like to
insert into the Record an excellent newspaper article about Tom Jehl,
who died Tuesday in Fort Wayne.
He had this tremendous love for the University of St. Francis and
Fort Wayne football team, and that love and this story is about how it
kept him alive in the drive for the national championship, and how this
year it is the inspiration for that team.
This is in NAIA, not Notre Dame's division. They will be the national
champ in that division, but the University of St. Francis has been in
the championship for the last few years, and Tom Jehl was their biggest
cheerleader, and he is going to be sorely missed in Fort Wayne, and I
hope it inspires the team, the Cougars, to go all the way this year
[From the Fort Wayne News--Sentinel, Sept. 13, 2006]
In January 2005, Fort Wayne businessman and Lifetime Sports
Academy co-founder Tom Jehl was diagnosed with aggressive
strains of carcinoma and sarcoma cancers. A few weeks later,
doctors at the Mayo Clinic told Jehl he had six months to
live.
Jehl died Tuesday at age 76. This story is how he turned
that prediction into 21 months with the help of some young
friends.
When Jehl was informed of his diagnosis, one of the first
people he called was University of Saint Francis Football
coach Kevin Donley. The pair had met eight years earlier
while waiting to participate in an hour-long radio sports
show.
``I didn't know anything about Lifetime Sports Academy and
Tom Jehl,'' Donley said, ``and he didn't know anything about
me and thought I was a fool to start a football team at Saint
Francis. I thought, `This guy's getting a half-hour of my
deal,' and he's thinking, `I'm getting a half-hour of his
deal and they'll never play a game.' ''
Almost, but not quite.
``I was trying not to listen to him,'' Jehl said a few
weeks ago, laughing. ``Out of the comer of my ear I hear him
say `We intend to win a national championship,' and I was
like, Oh, brother, are we bringing a caseload to Fort Wayne!
And he's on before me?' ''
A former Central Catholic quarterback, class of 1948,
Jehl's first love was football. He played his college ball at
Loras College in Dubuque, Iowa, before joining the Air Force,
and it had always been his dream that Fort Wayne high school
players would have a closer option. A few weeks after their
meeting, Jehl walked into Donley's office and asked how he
could help.
Over the next few years, Jehl helped the school name the
football stadium after
[[Page H6512]]
Bishop John M. D'Arcy and then was the major contributor to
get artificial turf for the stadium.
``I don't think we'd be where we are with our football
program without him,'' Donley said. ``He's been such a mentor
to me and a friend to me and has helped me in this community
to know what the heck to do. He turned out to be one of the
best friends I have in life.''
In April 2005, Donley and Saint Francis President Sister M.
Elise Kriss asked Jehl to attend a healing prayer Mass at
Trinity Hall. When Jehl and his wife, Marg, arrived early,
Kriss said Donley wanted them to stop by a spring football
practice.
As Jehl approached the field, Donley dismissed the players.
The Jehls and Kriss walked to the front of the building where
the team was waiting, pointing up to ``Tom Jehl Football
Complex'' posted on the side of the building.
``I had no clue,'' Jehl said. ``I never heard a cheer so
loud in all my life. Then I thought, `What the heck am I
going to say?' ''
Afterward Donley made a few remarks, talking about how the
players had been praying for Jehl every day and were
dedicating the season to him.
Jehl remembered making a few comments, mostly saying the
right things, including telling the players maybe he could
make it to the first game in September.
``Mr. Jehl, the final game is Dec. 15, and you aren't
getting off the hook until then,'' linebacker Brian Kurtz
said. ``You're going to be around here until Dec. 15, and
we're going to win it all for you.''
The players presented Jehl with a silver ring from their
runner-up finish in 2004 and told him the goal was to get him
a gold one the next season. Jehl said he'd try. After all,
the Cougars had lost the title in the final seconds and would
be favored to return to the championship game.
``I kind of got revved up a little bit, and I had been
pretty negative about the whole future of my health,'' Jehl
said. ``I wasn't doing myself any good walking around and
talking about my time period and such. About a week after the
Mass, I began to change completely. I figured they went to
all that trouble, so who was I to walk around with such a
negative attitude?''
The doctors' prognosis never wavered, but Jehl kept
fighting with natural herbs, prayers and encouragement.
Inhaling energy from the children at Lifetime Sports
Academy, he made it through the summer as the Cougars
prepared for another title try. With Jehl watching every game
from the sidelines, the Cougars kept rolling.
``It was like living in one of the most unbelievable
stories of all time, and I felt it all the way,'' Jehl said.
``They knew I was there, and I knew they were there. They put
their heart into it, and many said they'd be praying for me
every day.''
The Cougars again reached the national title game. Jehl
flew to the game with friends and gave a pre-game prayer,
saying ``Let's finish the job,'' at the end.
This time the score wasn't so close. Carroll College won
27-10.
After the game, Jehl didn't say anything to the players,
just climbed on the plane for the ride home. He knew there
was nothing he could say.
``The other team was more ready for us,'' he said. ``It was
a good fight, and a couple of plays turned things around.
They came that close. I think that if they had won that game,
I'd have been cured right there.''
But the cancer was spreading, and Jehl spent more time than
ever this summer at Lifetime Sports Academy, talking with
coaches and enjoying the kids.
Though he was unable to go to the Cougars' season-opening
game in Iowa last Saturday, he attended the Saint Francis
preseason scrimmage two weeks ago, 15 months past his
original diagnosis.
Narcotics Problem in Afghanistan
Unfortunately, Mr. Speaker, the temptation in Afghanistan right now
is to say, I told you so. I have been trying not to jump up and down
and say, I told you so, but I can't resist doing it at least once: I
told you so.
In the narcotics committee, we have been raising for years, since we
went into Afghanistan, that the heroin problem was going to lead to a
rerise of the Taliban. It was inevitable. Now, there are broad
strategies in Afghanistan that are very complex. Afghanistan has never
really been governed as a nation. It has always been much more tribal
even than what now people are becoming familiar with between the Kurds
the Shia and the Sunni in Iraq.
And for those who say in Iraq we should have allowed the Baaths into
the government, we should have let more territorial control, well, we
did that in Afghanistan. So we tried both ways. In Afghanistan,
President Karzai, a good man, a dedicated man who has understood the
battle, has tried to work with the tribal leaders in the region. But in
those regions, in the absence of a workable economy at this point, they
went from a somewhat large narcotics country to the dominant heroin
country in the world.
Let me give you some idea of that scale. Under the Taliban, they had
produced, let's take this on an equivalency because I can't remember
the numbers off the top of my head, but let's say 20 million hectare,
or 100,000 hectares and 20 million tons of whatever the quantity of
heroin is. A number of 20. Then they went down to zero. When the
government changed in Afghanistan, initially there wasn't a growth in
heroin, but it went up by a factor of three times. Then it went up
again by a factor of four times what it was under the Taliban, an
equivalent of 60, then an equivalent of 80 if you use a 20 base number.
Now, supposedly, this was getting stabilized. But again this year,
the UNDCP, the narcotics office of the Department of the U.N., is
saying that it rose 59 percent again. Now, 59 percent is an
extraordinary number, but over a base that is four times the previous
world record and now it is up 59 percent again, what you see is that
what used to be the grain and bread basket of the world, down around
Kandahar and the Helmand Province, is now heroin as far as the eye can
see.
Afghanistan has not always been the heroin center of the world. They
have always had some heroin, but they had it up and down over the
years. Since we have moved in there, because the Department of Defense,
and particularly the British, who had charge of this, have neglected to
do the spray operations, have neglected to go after this, they now have
a problem that is nearly insurmountable, and now it has spread to the
Taliban.
Congressman Hoekstra as well as Congressman Shadegg and Congressman
Ruppersberger and I were what may be the only delegation that will ever
get into Helmand. With the battle between the State Department and the
Defense Department, finally the State Department did let us get on the
ground. We got down to Helmand. I have been to Colombia 12 times. I
have been in Afghanistan before. But when we got down in the Kandahar-
Helmand region, we got up in a Black Hawk and went for 45 minutes, and
as far as the eye could see there was heroin, with poppies coming out.
And when you see the immensity of the heroin problem, that is going
to move in to all the nations around it, spread from Afghanistan into
the other stans, Uzbekistan and Kazihkstan, and move on into Turkey and
into Europe. It is going to corrupt. It is not like Colombia, where you
had the Medellin cartel and the Cali cartel. Here you don't have that
same type of one dominant country moving through. The Afghans don't
manage the heroin all the way through. It is going to corrupt the
entire eastern side of Europe and move into Asia.
On top of that, it is corrupting the government inside. And every
time I have gone to Afghanistan, I have asked the same question. They
say, well, these guys have really sophisticated weapons. They are
getting IEDs similar to what we see in Iraq. They are getting new
rocket launchers that can take our airplanes out. What do you think
they are buying them with? Do you think they are making Dell Computers
in Afghanistan? Do you think they are making plastic parts for the auto
industry in Afghanistan? No, they are buying them with heroin.
And we have been asleep. The British have been asleep, NATO's been
asleep, and the U.N.'s been asleep while the heroin is on the ground
growing in massive quantities and now funding the killing of troops
from my district. Men and women from my district are being shot at with
heroin money because of the addiction around the world and because our
governments wouldn't act.
Now, there are some things we can do. First off, we need the
Department of Defense and our Federal agencies, and particularly the
British, who are extremely frustrating in this process, and the NATO
people that are taking over to start to recognize that narcotics is the
core funding of terrorism in Afghanistan. They have no other income.
Secondly, we need back the Schumer amendment in the DOD
appropriations bill that put $700 million towards the drug problem in
Afghanistan. And I am not always a big ally of Senator Schumer, but we
need to back his amendment here. He is right. We need a unified
campaign like in Colombia, where drugs and terror are treated the same
way.
[[Page H6513]]
This is an inseparable problem, and we better get it now or we will
never get Afghanistan back
the problem
Counter-narcotics efforts in Afghanistan are failing. A recent report
by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) indicated that
opium cultivation rose 59% in the past year. . . . from 104,000 to
165,000 hectares.
Afghanistan is producing 92% of the world's opiates including heroin
and this total actually exceeds global consumption by an astounding
30%.
The problem is particularly acute in the southern provinces and most
notably in Helmand. If one considered Helmand an independent nation, it
would be the world's second largest opium producer following the rest
of Afghanistan.
Afghanistan's central government has been unable to exert enough
influence to stem the rising opium tide and this has fueled rampant
corruption at the provincial level.
why it's important
This rise in opium production coincides with a resurgence of Taliban
inspired violence especially prevalent in Afghanistan's southern
provinces. The drug profits, totaling at least a third of Afghanistan's
GDP, are fueling a deadly insurgency that has reached unprecedented
levels since we toppled the Taliban regime in 2001. American and allied
soldiers are fighting and dying every day because of this illicit
relationship.
In a larger sense, the Taliban's resurrection is threatening
Afghanistan's emerging democracy and restricting the growth of
legitimate trade and commerce. It's no coincidence that the largest
increases in opium production occurred in the areas where the central
government is weak and the Taliban is strong.
At the provincial level, there is widespread corruption between
government officials, narco-traffickers, tribal leaders and Taliban
insurgents. The Taliban is encouraging farmers to grow poppy while
providing protection for narcotics shipments through Afghanistan. This
symbiotic relationship is destroying the fabric of Afghan democracy and
threatening to reverse all of the nation's progress since 2001.
Afghanistan's drug based economy is destabilizing the entire region
and providing the financial means for a return of radical Islamic
fundamentalism to this fledgling democracy.
the way forward
The Department of Defense (DOD) and other federal agencies need to
accept that narcotics smuggling in Afghanistan is fueling the Taliban-
led insurgency. Defeating the Taliban is impossible without
simultaneously addressing the drug problem so the DOD must play a
greater role in non-eradication efforts.
On September 7th, the Schumer amendment was inserted into the DOD
appropriations bill for $700 million towards the drug problem in
Afghanistan. At conference, I recommend mandating this funding to jump-
start a new, counter-narcotics policy in Afghanistan.
Since narcotics and terrorist operatives function in a mutually
beneficial and symbiotic fashion, our national policy must shift toward
a ``Unified Campaign'' against drugs and terror similar to the
initiative in Colombia which has yielded significant results. Our
national policy should not focus solely on eradication. Instead, the
DOD must be mandated to support other federal/international agencies in
pursuit of narcotics traffickers as well as terrorist organizations.
More specifically:
Purchase or lease adequate DEA helicopter lift and support gun ships
to support enforcement actions against drug kingpins (also known as
High Valued Targets or HVTs) or heroin labs.
Utilize the State Department's ten Huey II helicopters, currently
being used for eradication, to support DEA law enforcement operations.
Purchase an adequate number of counter-narcotic canines to support
all drug enforcement operations including airport security/cargo
inspection and road check-points.
Provide $18.5 million for the DEA to create human-intelligence
networks.
The successful counter-narcotics lessons from Colombia are also
clear. Upon the U.S. Congress' request, the Colombian National Police
visited Afghanistan in July 2006 and made several recommendations to
curb the narcotics problem. The Colombian police are experts at dealing
with the terrorism and drug nexus so we should give great weight to
their recommendations. They encouraged the Afghan police to develop
their investigative and intelligence collection techniques to exploit
human informants in order to take-down drug kingpins as well as to
trace and eliminate the trafficking networks. In addition, the Afghan
police needs to learn how to develop legal cases in order prosecute
major drug kingpins.
A key mechanism of the DOD's efforts is the use of the Central
Transfer Account (CTA). This account was developed to preserve the
integrity of the Department's counter-narcotics efforts and should
remain firewalled from other uses. A recent reorganization proposal
within DOD to expand the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense (DASD)
for Counter-Narcotics responsibilities to also include counter-
proliferation and other unspecified ``global threats'', derails the
singular focus of the CTA. If the CTA's resources are combined with
other responsibilities, such as the Nunn-Lugar program which focuses on
dismantling Soviet-era nuclear warheads, the DOD's counter-narcotics
mission would be seriously distracted if not compromised. Counter-
proliferation and counter-narcotics are distinct activities and the DOD
should not combine both functions under one office.
Finally, provincial corruption is the lubrication which keeps the
narcotics engine running in Afghanistan. The potential profits from
narcotics trafficking are a compelling temptation to many officials in
this poverty stricken nation. Unless the Afghanistan government, with
the support of the international community, can root out corruption at
all levels and successfully prosecute those who violate their own laws,
we'll struggle to gain any ground.
conclusion
Narcotics smuggling is feeding the terrorist insurgency in
Afghanistan. The two activities are inextricably linked and must be
combated in a unified fashion.
We must succeed in Afghanistan. The maintenance of a stable and
democratic Afghanistan is pivotal for regional and global security.
____________________