Chief Ousted As British Troops Head For Afghan Drug Region

The Telegraph (UK) ^ | 12-23-2005 | Ahmed Rashid

[blam]

Chief ousted as British troops head for Afghan drug region

By Ahmed Rashid in Kabul
(Filed: 23/12/2005)

Britain has had a feudal chief removed from the region at the heart of Afghanistan's drug trade in an effort to calm the violent region before some 3,000 British troops deploy there next year.

Sher Mohammed Akhunzada was removed from office as governor of the south-western province of Helmand, bordering Pakistan, last week. His family, who have governed the province for more than 25 years, has long been suspected of heavy involvement in drug trafficking.

The combination of drug and Taliban activity in the region has made it one of the most volatile in Afghanistan. The US formally announced on Tuesday that it would withdraw 3,000 troops from southern Afghanistan, including Helmand, by next April.

A 6,000-strong Nato force, led by the British, is supposed to take over in the region. But deployment plans have been delayed because of concerns over the levels of violence.

A British Army reconnaissance mission in Helmand has reported back far higher levels of violence and instability in the province than previously thought.

"The Taliban, the drugs mafias and just ordinary criminality have created a totally insecure environment - much worse than we thought possible," said one Western military officer.

British officials in London said that Britain had made clear to the Afghan government that its troops would struggle to provide effective back-up in the country's fight against drug trafficking as long as the feudal chief remained.

Akhunzada confirmed yesterday that he had been removed and given a seat in the Afghan senate, which was inaugurated on Monday.

"It was the decision of the President to move me to the upper house of parliament," he said. "Of course I am a little upset but I respect his decision."

Akhunzada said he was aware that Britain had wanted him out because of his family's alleged involvement in Afghanistan's huge and violent heroin trade.

"We have nothing to do with drugs. I have been the one who reduced opium production in Helmand," he said. An engineer who is virtually unknown in local politics, Mohammed Daud, has been appointed in Akhunzada's place.

But the Akhunzada family has by no means lost its role in the province: his younger brother, Amir Mohammed Akhunzada, has been appointed as the new deputy governor.

The Akhunzadas are known in Afghanistan for their fierce resistance to Soviet occupation troops in the 1980s, which made the region a violent, lawless zone. At the same time they are credited with introducing large-scale poppy farming to Afghanistan, importing seeds and expertise from Pakistan.

Today Helmand still remains Afghanistan's centre for heroin production and farming expertise - which is being transferred to all of the country's 34 provinces.

Several of Sher Mohammed's relatives have been murdered by rivals. The US has a total of 19,000 troops in Afghanistan and is keen to replace as many as possible with Nato troops.

Nato agreed earlier this month to boost its International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) to about 15,000 next year from around 9,000 troops, with Britain commanding in the south, alongside Canadian and Dutch forces.

Dutch diplomats' concerns have mounted over the wisdom of contributing more than 1,000 Dutch troops to the Nato force, particularly since a high-level Afghan official advised them, jokingly, to bring enough body bags with them to the south. The Dutch economy minister, Laurens-Jan Brinkhorst, insisted yesterday that the Netherlands intended to go ahead with the plan.

The planned mission has revived memories in the Netherlands of the massacre of Bosnian Muslims by Serb forces in the Srebrenica enclave in 1995 when they were ostensibly under the protection of lightly armed Dutch UN troops.

The Dutch government won security guarantees for its troops from Nato allies earlier this month as well as an agreement with the Afghan authorities that no detainee handed over to them by ISAF would face the death penalty.

[Khurkris]

Oh yeah...thats gonna work jess fine...../wise-ass