Afghanistan’s ministers implicated in drug running

LAHORE: Afghanistan’s anti-narcotics minister has said that a few members of the cabinet are involved in the country’s drugs trade and are possibly using foreign aid to fund trafficking. “I don’t deny that,” Habibullah Qaderi was quoted by The Age as saying on Monday, when asked whether the cabinet was implicated in the £2.7 billion-a-year drugs trade. However, he refused to name people because such allegations are difficult to prove, especially in the weak Afghan justice system. “The admission will dismay Western governments, which last week pledged $10.5 billion in aid to help fight poverty, improve security and crack down on drugs,” The Age reported. “It raises the prospect that donated funds could be used indirectly to kill British soldiers, 3,300 of whom will be stationed in Helmand province, where corrupt officials, insurgent fighters and drug lords reign.” European diplomats and aid workers have named high-ranking officials, including a politician with close links to President Hamid Karzai, as drug lords. “The Afghans complain that 75 percent of aid is spent directly rather than being filtered through their government, but the reason for that is that a significant proportion is otherwise skimmed off into the pockets of drug lords,” The Age quoted one American aid worker as saying. However, diplomats say that while allegations continue to float around, the absence of hard evidence makes prosecution of the suspected men impossible. “We all know the names. But I have never seen any direct evidence and I don’t know anyone who has,” one diplomat told The Age. daily times monitor

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