[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.

                          ____________________