Afghan leader shields drug trade: ex-US official

He also rejected allegations from diplomats that his brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, was involved in the drug trade, an accusation that Schweich repeats. The brother visited a number of embassies in Kabul to ask what the allegations were, and was told that they had no evidence implicating him, the president said.

Asked for his comment, the minister of counternarcotics, Gen. Khodaidad, also rejected suggestions that the Afghan government was not pursuing the big traffickers or senior officials, but he said gathering evidence against them was harder.

“We know the retailers and the small sellers,” said General Khodaidad, who like many Afghans goes by only one name. “We are trying to find out the network, and who is the real person behind the network.”

Both he and the United States ambassador in Kabul, William Wood, acknowledged difficulties in the battle against narcotics, but said a positive trend was emerging this year, proving that the main thrust of the counternarcotics strategy was working. As many as 20 of the 34 Afghan provinces may prove to be free of poppies this year, up from 7 in 2006 and 13 in 2007, they said.

Poppy cultivation is decreasing across a broad band of provinces in the north, center and east of the country, where the government is stronger and law and order are better, General Khodaidad said.

In particular, two provinces that have traditionally been among the largest producers of opium, Badakhshan and Nangarhar, are showing a sharp fall in poppy production this year as a result of strong local leadership and incentive packages for farmers, General Khodaidad said.

Poppy production is now concentrated in the five southern provinces where the insurgency is strongest and the government is weakest, the minister said. But he said that with good local leadership, and the support of the international community, he was confident that the government could turn the situation around there, too, in time.

Although the figures are not in yet, 2008 may be the first year in which the area cultivated with poppies has decreased since 2004, Ambassador Wood said. The lawless Helmand Province in the southwest remains the big problem and alone provides some 50 percent of the poppy crop, he said.