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96–524 PDF 2004

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

(II)

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM

TOM DAVIS, Virginia, Chairman

DAN BURTON, Indiana

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

DOUG OSE, California

RON LEWIS, Kentucky

JO ANN DAVIS, Virginia

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania

CHRIS CANNON, Utah

ADAM H. PUTNAM, Florida

EDWARD L. SCHROCK, Virginia

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee

NATHAN DEAL, Georgia

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan

TIM MURPHY, Pennsylvania

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio

JOHN R. CARTER, Texas

MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee

——— ———

——— ———

HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

TOM LANTOS, California

MAJOR R. OWENS, New York

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri

DIANE E. WATSON, California

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts

CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland

LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California

C.A. ‘‘DUTCH’’ RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of

Columbia

JIM COOPER, 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

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

DOUG OSE, California

JO ANN DAVIS, Virginia

EDWARD L. SCHROCK, Virginia

JOHN R. CARTER, Texas

MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri

LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California

C.A. ‘‘DUTCH’’ RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of

Columbia

——— ———

EX OFFICIO

TOM DAVIS, Virginia HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

J. MARC WHEAT, Staff Director

NICOLE GARRETT, Clerk

TONY HAYWOOD, Minority Counsel

(III)

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

(1)

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

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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 ecoVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:02 Nov 20, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00006 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\96524.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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nomic 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 unVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:02 Nov 20, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00011 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\96524.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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dermined 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

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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.

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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

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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

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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

35

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

36

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.

37

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.

38

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

39

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

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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

41

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

42

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

43

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?

44

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

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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?

46

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.

47

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

48

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

49

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.

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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.

51

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 picVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:02 Nov 20, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00055 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\96524.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
52

ture 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.

53

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

54

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 longterm 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

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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.

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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 desVerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:02 Nov 20, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00060 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\96524.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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perately 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.

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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

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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?

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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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