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C O N F I D E N T I A L LONDON 006160 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SIPDIS 
 
WHITE HOUSE PLEASE PASS ONDCP FOR SISSONS, STATE FOR SCA/A, 
INL, EUR/UBI 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 08/22/2016 
TAGS: SNAR AF UK
SUBJECT: ONDCP DIRECTOR WALTERS AND INL A/S PATTERSON MEET 
AFGHAN CN MINISTER 
 
Classified By: Classified By: PolMinCouns Maura Connelly for reasons 1. 
4 b and d 
 
¶1. (C) SUMMARY:  ONDCP Director Walters and INL A/S Patterson 
met August 9 in London with Afghanistan,s Counter Narcotics 
(CN) Minister Habibullah Qaderi.  The Minister said 
Afghanistan's CN Strategy is good but needs to be implemented 
fully; he agreed that more needs to be done on public 
outreach.  Qaderi said this planting season will determine 
whether ground eradication is sufficient:  if poppy 
production increases significantly, it will be time to 
consider other options.  Walters and Patterson stressed the 
need to show progress given the enormous costs of CN efforts 
to date.  END SUMMARY. 
 
¶2. (C) Director Walters and INL A/S Patterson met August 9 in 
London with Afghanistan,s Counter Narcotics (CN) Minister 
Habibullah Qaderi.  The Minister,s spokesman Zulmay Afzaly 
sat in, as did Brian Blake and Gerard Burns of ONDCP, Gina 
Costante of the U.S.-UK Joint Narcotics Analysis Center, and 
Poloff (notetaker).  The meeting was scheduled for thirty 
minutes but lasted a full hour.  Qaderi affirmed that 
Afghanistan,s CN Strategy is good but needs to be 
implemented fully, and said President Karzai now shares this 
view.  The CN Strategy needs the full support of all 
ministries and international partners; Qaderi has sometimes 
considered quitting because he did not feel he had that 
support.  In his view, the CN challenge has three main 
factors: 
 
- External:  The Pakistani border is open, Lashkar-e-Tayiba 
is training Afghans in Pakistan,and the Taliban live in 
Pakistan and conduct cross-border operations.  Qaderi said he 
did not know to what extent the Government of Pakistan might 
be involved. 
 
- Economy:  There are not enough jobs (the Iranian embassy is 
swamped with visa-applicants) and the infrastructure needed 
to revive the economy is still lacking.  Qaderi agreed with 
Walters that the concept of "alternative livelihoods" does 
not involve some other crop that can directly substitute for 
opium poppy, as none exists; rather, it means enabling 
farmers to make a living, which is what rural development is 
all about.  Roads are a huge factor for development, the 
Minister said:  in Farah province, road construction led to 
farmers being able to earn five times as much for their 
watermelons.  Qaderi also cited the need for investment in 
agriculture and animal husbandry, access to credit for 
farmers, and water and electricity projects. 
 
- Corruption:  The GOA lacks the institutional capacity to 
tackle the huge corruption problem.  Yet steps are being 
taken:  85 police chiefs have been sacked, and the Minister 
expects five governors to be sacked soon and the other 29 
"changed." 
 
¶3.  (C) Qaderi highlighted two other factors crucial to CN 
success: 
 
- Public outreach:  he agreed with Director Walters that 
talking to the population is key, and that President Karzai 
and his ministers need to get out more despite the security 
risks.  The Minister perceived that due to public outreach, 
this year's eradication program had met with less popular 
resistance than last year's, despite covering three times the 
area (15,000 hectares vs. 5,000). 
 
- Mainstreaming CN:  all ministries need to see CN as their 
responsibility, and the international community needs to 
convey its strong support continually.  All government 
projects should include CN messages in their public outreach. 
 
¶4.  (C) Eradication:  Qaderi assessed that eradication was 
 
"very good" this year, and that surveys show it is deterring 
farmers from planting opium poppy.  He insisted that this 
planting season will determine whether ground eradication is 
sufficient:  if poppy production rises significantly, it will 
be time to review our strategy and consider other options. 
He was adamant that the governors must be the primary channel 
for eradication, with the Central Eradication Force as their 
backup, but asked that funding be directed through his 
ministry - otherwise he loses influence.  He credited 
governors with 13,000 of the 15,000 hectares of poppy 
eradicated this year. 
 
¶5.  (C) CN Ministry:  Regarding his own ministry, Qaderi said 
it had made progress but still has a long way to go.  The CN 
Trust Fund has 35 million dollars, of which 10 million has 
been committed to some 15,000 projects.  Prosecutors and 
judges are moving to a new facility.  It is important to go 
after the "big fish"; new legislation is needed on 
money-laundering and asset forfeiture, but even with that, 
the GOA lacks the tools to put the major dealers out of 
business.  The new law on wiretapping helps, but the biggest 
impact would come from credibly threatening the property and 
money of the major dealers. 
 
¶6.  (C) Amnesty:  On the issue of amnesty, the Minister said 
that is a question for Parliament to decide.  It could 
include some formula for partial return to the state of 
ill-gotten gains.  Some dealers are signaling their desire to 
go straight and invest in Afghanistan, he said.  Even a few 
asset seizures would send a strong signal, but the GOA needs 
to show it is acting in a balanced way, not just picking on 
specific individuals. 
 
¶7.  (C) Need To Show Progress:  Walters and Patterson 
stressed the need to show progress in Afghan CN, given the 
enormous cost of efforts to date.  The Minister said that we 
should wait for this year's final statistics before setting a 
goal for next year.  He remarked that the 19,000 dollars per 
hectare that the U.S. has spent on CN in Afghanistan is 
equivalent to twice the cost of the land itself.  If we gave 
farmers 1,000 dollars per hectare rather than the current 60, 
that would make a huge impact.  He politely suggested that 
the U.S. approach was unnecessarily heavy and expensive, 
noting that he had personally talked Dyncorp down from 700 
persons on a project to 125. 
 
8.(U) ONDCP Director Walters and INL A/S Patterson cleared on 
this cable in draft. 
 
Visit London's Classified Website: 
http://www.state.sgov.gov/p/eur/london/index. cfm 
Johnson