Front Line in the War on Drugs
AFGHANISTAN’S NATIONAL INTERDICTION UNIT.
Imagine taking on the challenge of converting hundreds of Afghan civilians into a paramilitary force— one that’s capable of battling the world’s largest opiumproducing operation. That’s what the Drug Enforcement Administration set out to do two years ago.
Admittedly, Afghanistan’s new National Interdiction Unit faces overwhelming odds—poppy production in Afghanistan is at an all-time high. But the unit’s initial successes—narcotics seizures are also at a post-Taliban-regime high—provide a glimmer of hope that the rising tide of drug production in Afghanistan can be halted and, ultimately, reversed.
In less than two years, the NIU has seized and destroyed more than 150 tons of opium, heroin, hashish and chemicals with a U.S. street value of $2.2 billion.
Poppy fields and the drugs they spawn are bankrolling the growing insurgency in Afghanistan and throughout other Southwest Asian, Middle East and North African countries. Along with the crippling societal effects that Afghanistan-produced heroin and opium are having on Western populations—primarily in Europe—the drugs are fueling a similar epidemic in Afghanistan.
In response to these societal and battlefield threats, the U.S., U.N. and European Union countries have launched a broad range of initiatives aimed at assisting Afghanistan break the drug chain inside its borders. From poppy growers to drug producers and traffickers, these activities are geared at undercutting the burgeoning drug business through a series of Westernfunded, Afghani-executed initiatives.
Directed by Afghanistan’s Counter-Narcotics Ministry, Afghan-oriented efforts are supported principally by the U.S., U.K., Norway, France and Germany. The U.N.’s Office on Drugs and Crime also lends its weight to these activities. Afghan President Hamid Karzai showed his support for the effort by chairing the first Presidential Commission of Counter Narcotics in August 2005.
The Commission meeting covered several widely publicized initiatives, including the establishment of a Counter Narcotics Consultative Group and a Counter Narcotics Trust Fund. It also addressed plans for establishing district and provincial development Shuras and committees.
Attendees at this first counter-drugs gathering also heard of progress in campaigns aimed at educating Afghan citizens about the dangers and illegality of involvement with drugs. The most significant of these was the issuance of a fatwa—a religious decree—by the religious council of Afghanistan condemning as un-Islamic any involvement in the narcotics trade. About 180,000 copies of the Fatwa were distributed at mosques and other public places throughout Afghanistan.
In addition to these high-level initiatives, the gathering also shed light on progress in fielding a Counter Narcotics Police of Afghanistan (CNP-A) force of 750 officers by the end of 2005. For a number of reasons that goal would not be met, attendees were told, but the effort was—and still is—underway.
ATTACKING THE SHORTFALL
Responsibility for bolstering CNPA ranks rests with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. At the outset of counter-narcotics efforts in Afghanistan, the DEA took on responsibility for recruiting, vetting and training 144 new officers for the counter-drug force. Plans now call for training hundreds of additional officers for the program.
When the initiative was launched, DEA Foreign Advisory Support Teams (FAST) took on these challenges. FAST members were trained at the U.S. Army Infantry Center and School, Fort Benning, Ga., and were assigned to Afghanistan for four-month tours.
But the weight of these commitments, coupled with budgetary constraints, forced the agency to look outside its ranks for both a bankroller and an organization capable of conducting the recruiting and specialized training over a prolonged period. Fortunately, neither proved hard to find.
Recognizing the linkage between battling insurgents and reducing the drug revenues that fuel their activities, U.S. Defense Department officials came up with funds for the training program. Defense officials then turned to the private sector in search of an organization with the people, experience and equipment needed for the job. That search ended in Moyock, N.C., home of the Blackwater Training Center.
As anyone who has observed a tactical training exercise at the Moyock facility can attest, the company’s security professionals are prepared for any high-risk situation they’re likely to encounter. The company’s ranks include combat-hardened operators skilled in virtually all aspects of land, maritime and air combat operations, as well as tactical police specialists from departments throughout the U.S. The company’s military and police units can be found today performing security-related missions in many of the world’s hot spots.
The first round of the DEA program, which ran through September 2005, involved recruiting, vetting, training and equipping the new, 125-member drug-interdiction unit. Along with Afghan officials, the DEA team recruited and vetted candidates for the program, and prepared for the first round of training and equipping the new force.
The new organization—the National Interdiction Unit (NIU)— is now a functioning branch of the CNP-A, and is housed at the same location as the complementary Counter-Poppy Eradication Force.
Most members of the U.S.-funded NIU training team have law enforcement backgrounds; however, former military operators conduct specialized training in subjects such as communications and logistics.
The NIU training regime focuses on schooling recruits in the fundamentals of self-defense, basic law enforcement, druginterdiction operations and close-quarters battle techniques (using Simunitions). The six-week program also includes such fundamentals as physical fitness, first aid, rifle and pistol training, and effective use of communications gear. From there, trainees are introduced to the more job-specific subjects, including land navigation, helicopter operations, target analysis, vehicle and residence searches, evidence handling, interviewing and interrogation techniques, and informant- and suspect-handling procedures.
Soon after the first class of recruits graduated in October 2004, the scope of the NIU training program was expanded. Today, in addition to providing basic training, instructors conduct follow-on instruction in areas such as intelligence collection and processing, logistical support, and operational communications techniques. A medical support specialist is also assigned to the team. In addition to conducting medical training classes, he and other combat medics staff a small sick call facility that treats NIU officers and staff.
The training team also established a mentorship program to afford NIU graduates every opportunity to maximize their professional contributions to their unit and to their country and to “grow” future NIU leaders. This program combines activities that would be found in typical police mentorship programs in the U.S., such as advanced firearms techniques, intelligence-gathering and operational planning, with such military-specific skills as logistical planning, counter-ambush actions and identification and avoidance of IEDs.
The near-term goal of these mentoring activities is to identify NIU members with the greatest leadership potential and move them into positions of increased responsibility. Over the longer term, these persons will become the core of a self-sustaining NIU capability.
Quarterly skills assessments are conducted to measure NIU graduates’ progress in the mentorship program, and the results of these assessments are tracked by a program manager. Three additional trainer-specialists were added to the six-man training team to assist with the mentorship and assessment programs.
While the NIU training program is funded by the U.S. government, a complementary counter-drugs initiative—the Strengthening the Afghan-Iran Drug (SAID) border-control and cross-border cooperation initiative—is funded by the European Commission and Austria. American specialists are also responsible for conducting training in this program.
For its part, the U.K. has responsibility for another counterdrug force, the Afghan Special Narcotics Police. Like the NIU, the ASNP have made significant inroads into curbing drug operations in Afghanistan.
The activities of the various counter-drug units are orchestrated, when necessary, by a Coalition coordinating cell. Procedures are also in place for drug-fighting Afghan units to get emergency support from the Coalition quick reaction force.
CULTURAL HURDLE
In spite of their considerable experience in training and interacting with members of other cultures, the NIU cadre soon realized that this job held unique challenges. The job of transforming ordinary Afghan citizens into a cohesive, effective drug-enforcement team called for much more than teaching them basic survival skills and how to identify and arrest drug dealers. Before any progress could be made toward those goals, the training team had to first overcome a formidable cultural barrier—getting male recruits to accept as equals the women within their ranks.
Years of living under the repressive Taliban regime had relegated Afghan women to sub-second-class citizens. Now, because women are often used to transport drugs, a call went out to them to join the ranks of the NIU.
Not surprisingly, just two women answered that initial call. Reporting for the first day’s orientation session in traditional burkas, they soon found themselves outfitted in military-style field uniforms. Within a week, both women had, literally, let down their hair. And by the end of the third week of training, the men were showing the women the respect they were due as full-fledged colleagues in the program.
That isn’t to say there weren’t some tense times during training, such as the first time a women recruit was told to demonstrate how she’d been trained to immobilize and handcuff a suspect—in this case, one of her male counterparts.
Without hesitating, she grabbed one of the suspect’s arms, swung him around, and pressed him against a wall. In seconds, he was cuffed. Beaming, she turned and faced the class, which burst into applause.
It wasn’t long before word reached prospective male recruits to expect stiff competition from their formerly burka-clad colleagues—and not just about their prowess (some might say “enthusiasm”) in handcuffing suspects and demonstrating appropriate striking techniques with wooden batons. A woman was the honor graduate of the second NIU class, which completed training on December 16, 2004.
Thus far in the training program, six classes have added 144 NIU graduates—15 of them women—to the steadily growing ranks of counter-narcotics police pitted against Afghanistan’s formidable drug lords. Presently, 127 of them remain in uniform. Two have been killed during counter-drug operations; the others either voluntarily or involuntarily left the ranks of the NIU.
In addition to training NIU recruits, the DEA team determined how best to outfit the force. The trainers drew up an equipment list suggesting the most appropriate weapons, vehicles and communications gear and forwarded it to the U.S. DoD, which filled the order.
Present plans call for training hundreds more NIU officers during the next few years. In anticipation of this increase in the size of the force, work is already underway on constructing facilities for all NIU officers in Kabul. The compound will be equipped with barracks, a dining hall, training areas, a heliport and a communications center.
That will be quite a change from the improvised training site and housing used up until now. That program was conducted in old facilities on the outskirts of Kabul, with local hires providing security. Before training could begin, the DEA team had to supervise construction of classrooms, installation of electronic training equipment, and upgrades to the facility’s perimeter.
The new facilities are tangible evidence of the Afghan government’s commitment to curbing drug production and trafficking. With continued training and long-term mentorship, members of the NIU will play increasingly important roles in that effort. ♦