Pentagon issues report
Despite millions of dollars in Pentagon and State Department aid for Pakistani counternarcotics operations, the country’s overall capability to deter narcotrafficking remains woefully inadequate and will require continued U.S. support, according to a Defense Department report.
The June 18 report by Deputy Assistant Defense Secretary for Counternarcotics and Global Threats Will Wechsler describes Pakistani counterdrug forces as unprepared for a pending increase in narcotrafficking tied to U.S. and coalition forces’ crackdown on drug operations in Afghanistan.
The Pakistani government “currently does not have the manpower, nor the willing leadership, to effectively counteract the enormity of the narcotics issues throughout the country,” Wechsler writes. “At this time, Pakistan counternarcotics capabilities are weak.”
This is the first time since 1998 that DOD has sent a Pakistan counternarcotics plan to Congress, according to the department. The new evaluation is in response to reporting requirements for counternarcotics operations mandated in the FY-09 Defense Authorization Act.
DOD officials are particularly concerned over smuggling routes near Baluchistan, as well as those along the Northwest Frontier Province and the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) near the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.
Narcotics are usually smuggled from Afghanistan into Pakistan via clandestine land routes running through the border regions and into Baluchistan. From there, the drugs are then transported to various points along the Makran Coast, including the port city of Karachi, and then shipped to international markets, the report states.
While U.S. and coalition forces have zeroed in on other transportation routes between Afghanistan and Pakistan, most notably along the Khyber Pass, Afghan traffickers are looking more and more to the Baluchistan connection to move their product.
“With recent high levels of poppy cultivation in Afghanistan and as substantial pressure is levied on Afghan traffickers, it is assessed that an increased amount of narcotics will be trafficked east and south through Pakistan, eventually reaching the international market.”
At the tactical level, the biggest challenge to Pakistani counterdrug operatives is the inherently tribal nature of the local narcotics smuggling operations in Baluchistan and surrounding areas, Wechsler writes. These long-standing organizations have “well established” ties within local communities, making them “difficult to penetrate” by military and law enforcement, the report states.
DOD and the State Department infused a total of $173 million in equipment, training, infrastructure and overall support to Pakistan’s Anti-Narcotics Force (ANF), as well as the Pakistani coast guard and various units of Frontier Corps civilian militias between FY-06 and FY-08, according to the report.
State Department officials from the Narcotics Affairs Section (NAS) at the U.S. embassy in Islamabad also stood up a “narcotics control cell” in the FATA secretariat “to help coordinate counternarcotics efforts in the tribal areas,” the report notes.
But limited counternarcotics intelligence capabilities within Pakistan’s military and law enforcement and other shortfalls have only hindered the government’s ability to break these organizations.
Compounding the problem is the Pakistani government’s seeming unwillingness to address the issue, the report continues. “Pakistan lacks the political will and enough capable security forces to effectively interdict smuggling activities, even along the most common routes,” the Pentagon writes.
Even though Pakistan has drafted a “drug control master plan” to address trafficking in the country, the government has yet to approve the policy and support it with manpower and materiel, the report states.
While troublesome in its own right, the growing narcotics problem in Pakistan and Afghanistan has taken on a new dimension, as ties between the Taliban insurgency, local narcotraffickers and al Qaeda strengthen in the region.
“With connections being seen between the insurgency, on both the Pakistan and Afghanistan sides of the border, and narcotics smugglers, the disruption of illicit narcotics trafficking only becomes more vital,” the report states.
Consequently, the Pentagon is working quickly to fully integrate the counternarcotics mission into ongoing counterinsurgency operations in the region, a senior defense official told Inside the Pentagon in June.
“It is not going to be a night-and-day thing,” the official said at the time. “There will be fits and starts and there will be failures along the way, but we can at least start with all the thinking from day one, and try to minimize the time that it [will] take.” -- Carlo Muñoz
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