Afghan President Hamid Karzai has criticised the first joint operation by Russian and US agents to destroy drug laboratories in his country.
Mr Karzai said he had not been informed of Russia's participation - a sensitive issue in Afghanistan ever since the Soviet occupation ended 21 years ago.
He called it a violation of Afghan sovereignty and international law.
Russia said more than a tonne of heroin and opium, with a street value of $250m (£157m), was destroyed in the raid.
Officials in Moscow have in the past accused coalition forces in Afghanistan of doing little to tackle drugs, and thereby helping to sustain the estimated 2.5 million heroin addicts in Russia.
'No authorisation'
On Friday, the head of Russia's drug control agency said its agents had taken part in an operation on Thursday to destroy a "major hub" of drug production about 5km (three miles) from the Pakistani border, near the city of Jalalabad.Viktor Ivanov said that along with 932kg (2,055lb) of high-grade heroin and 156kg (345lb) of opium, a large amount of technical equipment was destroyed.
But in a strongly worded statement on Saturday, President Karzai's office alleged that Russian military personnel had taken part in the "illegal" raid.
"While Afghanistan remains committed to its joint efforts with the international community against narcotics, it also makes it clear that no organisation or institution shall have the right to carry out such a military operation without prior authorisation and consent of the government of Afghanistan," it said. ...
A senior source in the delegation of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who is currently on a visit to Vietnam, told the AFP news agency on Sunday that Kabul's reaction to the anti-drug operation was "simply surprising and incomprehensible" because "the Afghan interior ministry participated in this operation".
The BBC's Quentin Sommerville in Kabul says Afghanistan's elite counter narcotics force did participate in the operation but it appears that the president's office was not informed of who would accompany them. ...
via BBC News - Afghan President Karzai criticises US-Russia drugs raid.
Raised eyebrow. A real Halloween scare. Russia calls a bluff. The empire, deprived of $250 million, will strike back. And then? How far will this go?
1 comment:
"Russian and US agents to destroy drug laboratories in his country."
This is odd. The US agents encouraged opium cultivation and its distribution into Russia and elsewhere in the early 1990s as a method to make local allies. It was part of a scheme to get a foothold into Caspian oil.
I guess, as with Saddam Hussein and Manuel Noriega, the US policy is to make friends with whomever whenever the relationship can be exploited for one's own benefit. When it the relationship becomes sour or less than favorable, the policy changes to incriminate them, lock'm up (Noriega) or kill'm (Hussein).
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