quorum now being present the subcommittee on national security and foreign affairs hearing in title trans national drug enterprises threats to global stability and u s national security from southwest asia latin america west africa will come to order i ask unanimous consent the only the chairman and ranking member of the subcommittee be allowed to make opening statements without objection that so ordered ask unanimous consent that the hearing record be kept open for five business days so that all members of the subcommittee would be allowed to submit a written statement of the record without objection that is so ordered on national security and foreign affairs turns its attention to a longstanding and growing threat to united states national security and transnational illicit drug trade lissa drugs from mexico latin america or in the caribbean are no strangers to our held numerous hearings on afghanistan producer ninety five percent of the world's poppy crop the forms the basis of the heroin trade today's hearing builds on that record it raises a central question about the relationship between the global illicit drug enterprises and their collective threat to our national security the united states has had geographical country specific drug control strategy ranging wildly widely from the balkan states of eastern europe to colombia guatemala mexico and more recently to west africa while each countries can the sions dictator unique drug control strategy today's hearing examines some of the underlying trends and the related implications for the united states national security there is compelling evidence that illicit drugs create enormous financial power that allows traffic corrode government institutions bribes undermine confidence of the very institutions we rely on to protect us as corruption reaches judges prosecutors police and correctional officers when bribes fail traffickers use ruthless violence and unrelenting to expand their illegal enterprises over time bribes violence and intimidation take their toll especially in weak states the net effect of these assaults is to undermine a nation's rule of law crippling civic institutions and reinforce the public's view  government is ineffective the downward spiral of drug money violence and intimidation once it has begun is difficult to reverse and weak states but this is just half of story with a degraded a we can rule of law or environment non drug actors from the criminal world and their transnational counterparts step in and further exploit an already unstable situation while drug trafficking may be the most lucrative component of transnational crime is hardly the only line of business money laundering weapons trafficking commercial espionage human trafficking smuggling and piracy all flowers alongside illicit drug enterprises further declines in the rule of law public confidence and national governance are the consequences the magnitude of money for melissa drugs probably cannot be underestimated the united nations office on drugs and crimes estimates that the global proceeds from illicit drugs ranged from between one hundred billion dollars to more than one trillion dollars per year illicit drug money flows have been estimated to be the largest segment of the afghan gross domestic product just over fifty percent in two thousand and seven in west africa's guinea bissau to the south it has been reported that drugs and drug related money is the single biggest slice of their gross domestic product and growing drug trafficking wherever it drives it's a serious threat to the national sovereignty of the afflicted state but it is the intersection of drugs with other illegal transnational threats especially terrorism that makes it so treacherous this so called drug terror nexus links the monetary proceeds from drugs with filling the coffers of terrorist organizations like the fock in colombia the taliban in afghanistan and al qaeda in the islamic with grave according to the latest united states intelligence terrorist groups in more than a dozen countries across three are significantly bankrolled by alyssa drug money according to the drug enforcement administration nineteen of the forty three groups the united states designated as foreign terrorist organizations in two thousand and seven were involved in the drug trade or other criminal activities in addition drug trafficking organizations efforts to weaken to topple local governments significantly undermines our ability to achieve vital diplomatic development and economic assistance goals overseas threaten these groups not only testate sta also undermine the goals of regional political bodies like the organization of american states and boldly challenge international institutions like the united nations at today's hearing will learn from experts about the linkages between illicit drugs weak states and the united states national security in the context of latin america afghanistan and west africa the subcommittee plans to hold a second hearing with the relevant government agencies and departments to examine the united states national drug control strategy and the planned use of the nearly fifteen billion dollars to just give a brief introduction of each a starting from my left eye was to eric olson who serves as a senior advisor on security at the mexico institute of the woodrow wilson international center for scholars he has specialized in the americas region but he's also worked on human rights issues in africa asia or in the middle east from two thousand and six to two thousand and seven he served as a senior specialist at the organization of american states from two thousand to two thousand and six as amnesty international's advocacy director for the americas he holds an m b a from american university mr david mansfield is a fellow with the car center for human rights at harvard university's kennedy school of government he also works as an independent consultant for a range of organizations including the united kingdom government the world bank and various non governmental organizations on policy operational issues with regard to illicit drugs in afghanistan and alternative livelihoods has previously worked out overseas drug development issues in each of the major drug producing regions of south and southeast asia and latin america mr douglas farah is a senior fellow at the international assessment strategy center in two thousand and four he worked for nine months with the consortium for the study of intelligence studying groups and intelligence reform of the two decades before that he was a foreign correspondent investigative reporter for the washington post and other publications covering latin america and west africa from two thousand and two thousand and four he was the washington post west african puro chief based in the ivory coast he also be a and a b s in the university of kansas brown serves as a fellow at the twenty first century defense initiative at the brookings institution where she specializes in the interactions between illicit economies and military conflict the felde the brown also serves as an adjunct professor in the security studies program at georgetown university's while school of foreign service where she as an assistant professor prior to assuming her current position at brookings she holds a b a from harvard university and a ph d for the massachusetts institute of technology so i want to thank all of you for bringing your substantial credentials and your experience here before the committee today it's a policy of the committee to swear witnesses in before they testify so i ask that you pre standard raise your right hand established by an act of congress one hundred sixty eight the wilson center is our nation's official living memorial to president woodrow wilson as both a distinguished scholar the only american president with a ph d and a national leader president wilson felt strongly that the scholar and the policy maker were quote engaged in a common enterprise i hope i can represent successfully president wilson's vision of bringing together the scholarly and the policy dimensions today as you've noted already the tragic and disturbing headlines about drug violence in mexico have horrified and alarmed americans about what is happening to our neighbor and strategic partner to the south it raises real questions about the safety of  mexico and for the safety and security of the united states and given the proximity of the violence the fact that it's spills into the united states and that organized crime groups in latin america have formed strategic partnerships with organized crime in the united states the decision to hold this hearing is not only timely but essential in the brief time that i have i would like to talk about three things the dimension of the problem of organized crime and transnational drug trafficking in latin america why and how organized crime is able to take root and prosper in the region and finally a policy framework the us and governments of latin america may want to consider in addressing this  problem let me describe the problem of bet we know that the u s is still the world's largest market for a legal drugs this enormously lucrative market results in roughly thirty five billion give or take a billion in illegal proceeds laundered back to mexico and colombia every year profit margins are so large in fact that according to some drug traffickers they can lose three out of four loads of cocaine and still turn a profit beyond that it's not profitable if we were to take this fact it would mean that drug traffickers could lose seventy five percent of their infant torrie and still turn a profit imagine if ford or g m could do the same estimated that between five hundred and seven hundred metric tons of cocaine departed south america headed to the united states slightly less than was coming in in two thousand and seven while there are many different ways cocaine is moved from the andes to the united states one method is to employ small private planes to move the loads from colombia to central america where bumbles are either dumped in the sea and retrieved or mexico and mexico there are at least five major drug trafficking organizations many more splinter groups that are defending their territories competing with one another trying to set up new route s some of the recent violence that we've seen in the press is the result of intra organizational and inter organizational conflicts and competition as we see second tier lieutenants  spinoff organizations and cartels competing with each other as the head of a rival group are arrested or assassinated so there's a lot of inter organizational and intra organizational violence a third source of the violence is what one could expect when the government aggressively pursues and the cartel the trafficking organizations fight back and that's of course understandable in colombia where there has been a major weakening of the armed grillo movements both the fark and there is evidence that both continued to be engaged in drug related activity likewise th disbanding of the umbrella structure of paramilitary forces this is the paramilitary demobilization that president undertook has atomized the fighting forces but there are new alliances being formed between local commanders forces and drug traffickers in some instances the four is joining with paramilitary and experimenting to continue trafficking sadly despite the formal dismantling of the sea and the weakening of the guerrilla groups colombia still remains the largest cultivator of coca bush in the hammond hemisphere organized crime has been quite agile in new alliances that fit their business model and they could care less about anyone's particular ideological persuasion whether communist leftist anti communist or capitalist to paraphrase michael  corleone it's not ideological it's strictly business finally it's important to point out that organized crime in latin america is not limited to drug trafficking but involves trafficking and other goods such as pirated and counterfeit products and auto parts and cigarettes to name a few as well as legal activities such as kidnapping human trafficking and even quote unquote legitimate or businesses and enterprises and many instances and this is important the same organizations that traffic in illegal drugs also trafficked in products such as weapons or people or engage in apparently legitimate businesses like real estate and construction bottom line there is a two way flow of traffic goods money and humans drugs and other pirated goods and human trafficking often in conflict with what he's a century a weak state that conflict can be ethnic military tends to take place the cultivation takes place in disputed territory borderlands attempts to address drug production weak states trying to penetrate marginal areas but a marginal state trying to move beyond its provincial center and in afghanistan the impact of illegal drugs have on u s national security interests a clear given us strategic interests in afghanistan and pakistan the presence of u s troops and the considerable investment the us has made in governance and security development in the area but the question is how to respond and how to respond in a way that does not worsen the situation and the funds from the illegal drugs trade estimates range from seventy to five hundred million suggesting the some calculation issues and the claims of centralized taxation systems around opium what i feel is this discussion neglects decentralized nature of the taliban the fact that there is no single insurgency but a disparate place of insurgent groups and fundamentally it neglects that in the south of the country there is a widespread view that whether right or wrong it is corrupt government officials that are more involved in the drugs trade than the taliban are groups in this case we have to question how much of the insurgency is a reaction to government approval after all people expect insurgents to phone themselves in whatever way possible theft kidnap drugs that don't expect the government to do so or those in government is the policy response the current narrative on the taliban and drugs funding is to prioritize those traffickers with links to insurgent groups but this this thousand and nine ten growing season which seems probable i believe eradication the threat of it can play catchup catalytic role in areas with from a survival advantage i've seen it work in districts around provincial centers in the east in the north of the country growing insecurity and provides an entry point for insurgent groups in these areas development investments the priority and have and we have to recognise a level of opium cultivation is a reality for some time to come ultimately there globalization is the development of flexible criminal and terrorist pipelines where keep it so tater's arbeit of the operations of both sets of actors and they're highly adaptable and forward thinking these pipelines are recombinant chains of actors and commodities now have the ability to move illicit goods around the globe to wherever the environment and virus most tolerant the most lucrative commodities noted are cocaine and heroin but is the same pipelines asserted weapons weapons traffickers human smugglers brought in contraband well the cocaine from the andean region traditionally moved to central america  mexico and krib in the west africa has become a new and extremely challenging part of the distribution network the drugs of growth of transcontinental drug trafficking structures in recent years with the capacity to project their operations from latin america to west africa is a sobering reminder of the wealth and creativity of these structures and their ability to co opt an already weak and failing state there are several causes of concern for the united states in the emerging cocaine nexus the first is the presence of mexican drug trafficking organizations particularly this in a low cartel in west africa the second is the presence of the far there the fark in the past decade has morphed into the one of the world's largest cocaine trafficking syndicates in both united states and european union have designated terror a terrorist organization the presence of the mexican organizations in the fark in west africa and that cocaine pipeline mean that these groups can reap in repatriate their profits even if the united states were to make significant progress in reducing the flow of drugs across his own southern border the market for the drugs may change but the beneficiaries of these alleged against larger remain in mexico colombia and in our hemisphere while this park has suffered a series of defeats in the past eighteen months its ability to move cocaine to the u s market has been severely curtailed but with the tolerance of not ground for criminal and terrorist groups to make new alliances what i've observed in more than two decades of dealing with drug trafficking transnational criminal organizations is that when they are able to meet a neutral territory they often form alliances that would not be possible under other circumstances syndicates that control the contraband in blood diamond trade just as the blood diamond trade allowed groups like the revolutionary united front in sierra leone to purchase advanced weapons to become a more lethal force the influx of cocaine cash to allow the criminal and militia groups in the region to acquire more sophisticated weapons training and communications at the same time the weak host days have virtually as severely limited ability to confront these groups as noted the un office of drug use drugs and crime conservatively estimated forty to fifty tons of cocaine with an estimated value of one point eight billion dollars passed to west africa in two thousand and seven and is growing rapidly the pentagon's africa command and other intelligence services estimate the amount of cocaine traffic transiting west africa to be at least five times that estimate using un figures the only legal export from the region that was surpassed the value of cocaine is cows from ivory coast higher numbers are used cocaine could work the legal exports of all the region combined would be worth more than the g d p of several of the region's nation none of this is happening in a vacuum the changes of cross the globe have been swift and dramatic in recent years with the number of failed states going from eleven in one thousand nine hundred sixty close to thirty today more than half of those eighteen are in subsaharan africa this trend is important because these growing areas that are either stateless or governed by states there are in practice functioning criminal and enterprises give rise to give rise to hybrid criminal hybrid organizations that make the traditional distinctions between terrorism and organized crime particularly drug trafficking meaningless one of the does one of the reasons for the dismal state of governance in west africa as it since the one nine hundred ninety s the region has suffered a series of conflicts center on natural resources such as diamonds timber oil and gold these resources well valuable pale in comparison to the money the cocaine trade generates for example at the height of the blood diamond trade in early on in liberia the total value of diamonds being smuggled out was less than two hundred million dollars the potential to fuel conflict over the cocaine pipeline the most lucrative commodity so far and one  profits are several orders of magnitude larger than diamond is truly frightening there's a broader potential danger that must be kept in mind as we assess the emerging trends in west africa i mentioned hybrid criminal organizations such as the far in west africa i lebanese muslim organization has long maintained an operational presence on the ground and has significant role in the blood diamond trade and other illicit activities it is inevitable these organizations and the drug trafficking groups will encounter each other and mutually benefit because each has something the other supporters given iran's ties to has gone venezuela has a lot of ties to iran in the fark in the parks history of building alliances with the groups and the presence of hezbollah and other armed islamist groups in latin american west africa it would be dangerous to dismiss the possibility alliance of these actors the histories of these groups indicated they will take advantage of the corrupting weak states in west africa to get to know each other work together learn from each other and exploit areas of mutual interest and fortunately the primary area of mutual interest is a hatred of the for the success of counterinsurgency and counterterrorism efforts as well as for the effectiveness of law enforcement several factors influence the size of the political capital but in a nutshell it is most if the produced as you said there are new developing all the time whether it's russia or brazil or somewhere else so i go back to my question how do we take how do we really dramatically take the profit out of this to make a serious impact was to for a while i do think that you know we have a forty year longer record on the war on drugs and i spent twenty five years covering it fairly closely and every new strategy comes along has some success and then eventually the traffickers are able to adapt around it or fairly quickly i'm not sure that the country is ready for a debate on decriminalization and other aspects but i think it is clear if you look at it the fact is is eric said you can go from seventy five percent or you can move your coke from africa  of oil dropped from one hundred four hundred dollars a barrel to forty dollars a barrel and i think you'd have a similar idea i'm not sure when you're getting at decriminalization or other things that that's any more quick quicker a solution than  focusing very heavily on the consumption side because that's clearly the way it is if you're selling less you're gonna lose less money if you want to debate decriminalization but i think it would be a long and drawn out debate in the country right now i don't think any consensus on which way to go on that so i would i would second the said about the need to really focus on the reduction because that's what's going to make them able to sell less and give them less money is that the quickest thing we can do that efficiently now america now are you know experimenting if you will with the idea of decriminalization argentina chile and mexico have recently taken steps that either dramatically or yeah mostly criminal penalties you know we'll see if that that helps in any way all those countries especially mexico have a growing consumption problem so if that's what it takes personally i think it has to be a combination of efforts there's no magic bullet here i think doug was right we try new things they work for a little while and they fall apart and i think having a consistent multi dimensional multi faceted approach that looks at decriminalization as an option but also look you know raising the cost of doing business for  traffickers and does some things in terms of international cooperation i don't think any of them by themselves will solve this problem but we have to hit them on all fronts if you will and that that's i think the best we can hope seen really a spike in violence is a necessary thing because calderon has finally gone after the cartels have you seen an improvement between mexico's ability government's ability to control these cartels given what has gone on over the past several months you know i think the mexican government is doing some things well i was there a little over a month ago and they're clearly vesting a lot in building a national police force that s texas border paso is that you've had the military and police moved in and somewhat scatter the juarez cartel to other parts south and then as that where the cartels themselves are so weakened that they can't carry out incredibly violent operations the cartels in general i mean there are exceptions like the which is another animal altogether and cartels in general don't like to engage in this outrageous violence they're more interested in the business aspect of it but they do i think engage in that kind of violence when  and i do see the pendulum swing taking place and i have some reservations about it i think too often we need to let the fact that there are areas in afghanistan so where you have a kind of security governance and economic growth second place farmers are moving out and as a consequence of growing other crops they free up labor later on as labor intensive so people so then members of the family go off and work in the city so the combination of the into coping multiple crops and then subsequently the labor means that the returns are high them so in those areas the threat of eradication eradication is credible and it actually acts as to market so you're not opposed to red occasion specific certain areas or a part of the program but not as just a general policy no i mean i think the me i've you know i've written on this many songs i mean it's it's under what conditions it works and under what conditions it's counterproductive the danger i think we have is you know there is a real potential to go up this year as a function of a whole range of different things the price of wheat and pulpy significantly changed over the last two years which is actually being trade with different that's changed now we're back to a situation where opium poppies once again attractive so that factors in place mean people go back to the many or the other side of the politics certain governors will be rewarded or punished in relation  o the election they'll be moved on as a site to a better place or worse and they have been quite active in reducing public so the politics is shifting the economics is shifting and there's a danger that issues in mexico but it is something that's interesting you read in your written testimony mr mansfield some of your all testimony it's often described as a weak state issue while not a world power clearly as compared to the other countries we're talking about mexico is much different what does it suggest as it relates to an issue of whether or not we're dealing with weak powers here that mexico seems to thrive so much mexico see this i don't think mexico can be described as a weak state is as compared to the others it seems to thrive in much the same way i mean what what am i missing or what can we learn from that well i  think you're absolutely right you can't overgeneralize you can't compare mexico to haiti for instance or mexico to honduras mexico is much wealthier much greater resources the issue in mexico however is that it's a much more complex problem you have for instance in the case of mexico a federal police force that's roughly thirty thousand  persons and they have authority or control over about eighty percent of the crime the vast majority of the crime happens at the local level and these organized crime groups operate at the local level and the local police the state minister police especially in states like she was are ineffective are weak basically so i'm not making a broad generalization about weakness of the mexican state it's more the fact that or areas of the government of the country in particular states in particular locality organized crime has found a foothold and it's been able to penetrate the local state  even the state governments in a way that it can't probably at a federal level and that's allowed that cancer if you will to grow and expand over expand over a period of time i would never say that mexico as a whole is at risk of failure or a particular weak state but certainly at part local part localities it is and that's what they're battling with right now provision of public safety and law enforcement not simply in the relationship to organized crime although that's absolutely vital but also with respect to street crime and as long as mexico police forces its citizens that safety minimal security in the absence of the state we also have to realize that mexico's status as a middle income country and impressive wealth at least forty percent of its population still exist land next to it which he needs to consider we don't see his family plot a vegetable that they grow to feed the family some might be so depending on circumstance so we have a particular kind of again is this particular narrative of the most farmers in afghanistan grow a range of different crops and it's a question of the distribution of crops the proportion of land that would be pumping and so part of this is about raising the risks associated with helping reducing the risks associated with engaging in illegal economy many of the goods they produce simply don't have a market they grow them to consume and when they try and take them to market if they're in a remote area price is there an effort to try and develop these markets so that if they produce a crop in excess they can sell that excess so there would be an opportunity for for them to there be an incentive for them to produce more and therefore changeover from crops and i guess  are going to ask for money he knows that the holy who moves that crowd wants extra money because it's a dangerous road to drive so the markets don't function and the great thing about opium poppy for these families is it functions i don't have to take the physical risk of traveling down the road and i don't have to take the economic risk of getting to market and being a price taker and finding that i can sell my own you know profit and i have pharmacy basically have grown on me and realize they can't make a profit by simply taking what they need offer the fellow villages what they need and then left the rest so one issue is the security on the market site as i say you have finite markets the size of markets so one the big questions procurement how do we stimulate the market we keep looking for export markets you know these miracle one thing after another most of those crops have foreign markets but actually there is a foreign market within afghanistan which is the international community actually stimulating the market for illegal goods by the international community buying more local produce is a would be a major advantage i think also not on the economically but politically the whole issue of we the same food i mean i've sat in some p l t one in oregon and you africans are right well part of it is that u s addiction efforts have been very good it's harder for the colombians to get their their product from colombia through central america to mexico and i think the opening of  to take advantage of that as are the bolivian with what you saw for many years was that the bolivian traffickers were growing kaka were not allowed to produce j c l the final product because the colombian wanted that for themselves they're no longer able to control the bolivian africa was a very weak open area that they could exploit as a transfer from one one final thing is the brazil has become a very big market a lot of the bolivian and other stuff moved to brazil to the portuguese speaking parts of west africa where they have a languages that is particularly guinea bissau in angola so you have a language and if you look geographically they're quite close brazil has become a very large consumption market in the bolivians improve and find it much easier in some cases to go to brazil out to the west africa  in the islamic magreb in criminal drug trafficking drug trafficking element i think what you're seeing in terms of the small shipments that move to the smuggling networks and things from west africa t into three kilos moving moving that way they still prefer cigarettes gasoline other things they can smuggle they know how to smuggle but i think the potential because you're in an ungoverned space where groups will need the same facilitation of their product line of questioning and specifically to the issue of hezbollah's presence in west africa in your testimony you spend a decent amount of time talking about their presence there the amount of a greater degree of reliance potentially in west africa upon the drug trade to potentially add to the money going back so let me just ask a question what do you see as the current nexus between hezbollah specifically and the growing drug trade in west africa and what do we worry about in terms of trends going forward well i think that's a very important question to which i don't think we actually know the answer yet that hezbollah is on the ground there  the let's say the diamond the blood diamond dealers that i dealt with there they don't there weren't organically hezbollah hezbollah would tax them and take part of their money as i believe the same is true in the tri border area in latin america and other parts has blood doesn't run the trade has mightily from the trade by the taxation ability to bring protection but they're not organically linked to hezbollah i think that is as the colombian and brazilian and other organizations move into west africa they're either going to have to cut a deal with the traditional lebanese crime family dominates or it's going to get very bloody and has not gotten bloody which to me indicates if you have products if you want to move from west africa to europe you almost have to go through lebanese networks because that's the pipeline that exists and they know how to move stuff when al qaeda wanted to move its diamond profits it didn't set up its own thing in west africa went to has blood network and moved in move diamonds that way and i think that that is what's happening with the drug trade they're going to then i think it's going to strengthen the hezbollah folks because they're going to profit from providing protection movement for those particular products whether that becomes organically linked to hezbollah i doubt it will because that way has blood tends tends to operate but i think that it will strengthen all the criminal networks because cocaine is a product that is useful to the pipeline and the pipeline is useful the cocaine traffickers are the head there the symbiosis that has to take place and if it doesn't get really bloody which it hasn't then i would argue i would say that indicates a level of cooperation that this growing  networks i'm probably oversimplifying what you said but that it may not matter because they'll be able to go other places and so my question is to the extent that we do have a worry that the networks become much more interdependent and interlinked what what are our strategies as a nation to try to prevent i mean we obviously want to do something about drug trafficking but what what are our strategies that we take to try to prevent those connections from being made in the future relative to hezbollah or relative to other operations in africa specifically i think it's very difficult because i think as we've all said you have pipelines that will move almost any given product you put into it from one point to another human trafficking drugs weapons or money moving either way and hezbollah particularly in west africa perfected the art of bringing down all kinds of illicit stuff into the region to sell that would normally be listed but they move it in that fashion so i think our strategy has been largely fairly simplistic i think we've been looking at drug trafficking terrorists or organized crime as different entities and not at not at the overlap and interconnectedness of it i think our presence on the ground in places like west primarily one is to develop that units that can work on the ground there with the colombians the brazilians are also over there now the united states britain and the other thing is we have to get europe to engage much more robustly because one is their market is being penetrated by the drugs but two they have the long history and they know i mapped out with the belgians extensively on this they know that the lebanese criminal networks very well much better than we'll ever know the french know the criminal networks to go into france the british know that and we have to get in there yet there they a of piecemeal fashion so we have to we the europeans will have to engage in a much more robust fashion to look at how these groups overlap because they know these groups much better than we do and then we will next twenty years if i can answer it is very accessible labor intensive illicit economists and this is especially should try to prevent them from accessing because if they do so they get much more than money they get support from the population this has not yet happened in the case of africa main the traffic not labor intensive it's not cultivation and we should make an effort to see that cultivation doesn't really work for example the second question we need to ask if our goal is to dry up the money by targeting that likely going to switch but i join the group to try to develop another illicit economy to penetrate another illicit economy that might be ultimately even more harmful for our interest in the case of product is important  i'm going to ask you this mr flake and others have hearings that if we were to go straight through would be able to finish on that but given the fact of these votes going to take a half hour or more maybe forty five minutes or an hour they've got other classified briefings they have to of resolving the underlying economic factors and governance and all those issues i want to talk as a priority for that is something more important another i want to talk about this a man feels like what's the proper response to drugs in afghanistan when i think the government may be as involved as other parties on that the prospects of what's going on but as well we get that as well as cooperation with our country as opposed with barking and others what's happening and getting on that basis on that how failed is that the role of human intelligence i know that's a serious matter way following the same problems there in terms of language and other setbacks that we have in other areas and how do we gauge the international community dr you mentioned india in some of your remarks why aren't they more  engaged was the role there the belgians and others with the permission we'll submit those records and ask for any other comment you want to make on what we ought to be doing on that as i said we have another hearing coming up with a government agency witnesses that would love to be able to have that information