Addicts in the Afghan police force

By Kate Lunau - Wednesday, March 24, 2010 - 2 Comments

At training centres, up to 41 per cent have tested positive

Photograph by Hitoshi Yamada/ Zuma/ Keystone

In Afghanistan, the illegal drug trade helps pay for Taliban weapons, explosives and training. To rebuild this war-ravaged country, counter-narcotics efforts are crucial—but according to a new report for the U.S. Congress, much of the Afghan police force is addicted to drugs.

At regional training centres, 12 to 41 per cent of police recruits tested positive for drugs, notes the report, prepared by the U.S. Government Accountability Ofﬁce. And that number could even be deceptively low: opiates leave the system quickly, and “many recruits who tested negative for drugs have shown opium withdrawal symptoms later in their training,” it says. The report only confirmed what was already widely believed. Just last year, one U.K. official suggested some 60 per cent of police in Helmand province, a hotbed of narcotics production, were addicted.

This isn’t the first mark against the Afghan police force. Critics say it is badly trained and corrupt, with some reports suggesting that locals fear them as much as the Taliban. While the international community has long treated them as a crucial part of reconstruction, “the truth is, there wasn’t much infrastructure to reconstruct. There was no police, so they had to start from scratch,” says Lael Adams, a graduate student at Boston University who previously worked for the Ministry of Rural Rehabilitation and Development in Afghanistan. An Afghan police officer’s duty, then, “is to serve a state that hasn’t served them.”

With an estimated two million Afghans struggling with drug addiction, the problem goes well beyond the police. Still, U.S. officials are looking at ways to curb addiction among officers, including new rehab clinics at training centres. But there are larger challenges in the way of creating an effective police force. “Building a state means building a state of mind,” Adams says. “That sense of national pride is key to forming an effective police force, and the international community can’t create that by pumping in more money.”

Canada is Colombia North

By Jason Kirby and Nancy Macdonald - Monday, August 17, 2009 at 8:00 AM - 20 Comments

Sixty-two per cent of the meth seized in Japan is from Canada

When Krysta Edwards crossed over from B.C. to Washington in June, border ofﬁcers allegedly found a hidden compartment in the 23-year-old North Vancouver resident’s Ford Explorer. Inside was 27 kg of Benzylpiperazine, or BZP. Despite its origins as a treatment for intestinal worms in cattle, BZP has found new life as the it party drug at night clubs, and the little blue pills recovered from Edwards’ truck, stamped to look like Homer Simpson, were worth US$1 million. For those on the front lines of American law enforcement, it was yet another reminder of the huge synthetic drug industry booming in Canada. “They used to just throw marijuana in hockey bags and stuff it in the trunk, but now we’re seeing a level of sophistication similar to what we’ve been dealing with on the southern border [with Mexico],” says Chief Thomas Schreiber, with U.S. Customs and Border Protection in Blaine, Wash.

Canada is well known for its B.C. Bud, a highly-potent form of marijuana. But a new industry is thriving. The United Nations Ofﬁce on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), in its 2009 report, said Canada is the largest ecstasy supplier to the U.S. Meanwhile, Japan says Canada is the single biggest source of seized ecstasy tablets. Asian-Canadian gangs have also ramped up the production of methampetamines, shipping vast quantities to the U.S. and overseas. According to the U.N., Canada accounts for 62 per cent of the meth seized in Japan by weight, and 83 per cent in Australia. The spoils are enormous. The U.S. Department of Justice estimates Canadian drug trafﬁckers now generate between US$33.7 billion and US$56.2 billion each year from U.S. drug sales. Continue…