December 24, 2008
United Press International
BRUSSELS -- NATO's top military commander says he's surprised that some member nations aren't following through on promises to battle the Afghanistan drug trade.
U.S. Gen. John Craddock, NATO's supreme allied commander, was disappointed to learn during a recent trip to Afghanistan that despite a recent agreement by NATO country defense ministers to include attacks on narcotics traffickers as part of the mission, some countries weren't carrying out the anti-drug campaign, The New York Times reported Tuesday.
U.S. officials say it is critical to cut off the drug money that funds the Afghan insurgency. But disagreements have surfaced over how aggressively NATO forces should go after drug traffickers and what role NATO soldiers should play in a mission that had been defined as "security assistance," the newspaper said.
Craddock told the Times profit from the narcotics trade "buys the bomb makers and the bombs, the bullets and the trigger-pullers that are killing our soldiers and marines and airmen, and we have to stop them."
Some NATO members including Germany, Italy, Poland and Spain, have indicated they regard counternarcotics operations as law enforcement, rather than a military matter, the newspaper said.
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