Panel I of a Hearing of the Middle East and South Asia Subcommittee on the House Committee on Foreign Affairs

Statement

Panel I of a Hearing of the Middle East and South Asia Subcommittee on the House Committee on Foreign Affairs - Counternarcotics Strategy and Police Training in Afghanistan

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REP. JOE WILSON (R-SC): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

And Ambassador, thank you for being here today. I particularly appreciate you bringing us up to date. I'm the co-chair of the Afghan caucus. And so we're working closely with members of their parliament when they come visit, and however we can coordinate with visiting governors of the Afghani provinces.

And again I want the best, and so does our caucus, for the people of Afghanistan. That's why I'm so concerned about the poppy production, the potential for the narcotics trade and the terrorists to be working together in narcoterrorism. And I'm very, very concerned. In fact, last week, I was in Kabul, and we were briefed on this, and I really was concerned by the briefing. And I hope that indeed our efforts are coordinated and proactive.

Additionally when I was in Kabul last week, I visited with the 218th Brigade of the South Carolina National Guard, which I served with for 25 years. I met with General Bob Livingston, who explained what they were doing to train the Iraqi -- the Afghani police, and how encouraging it is that we have 1,600 troops from South Carolina, the largest deployment since World War Two.

And our troops are very enthusiastic about happening the people of Afghanistan, but part of it, obviously, is what you're doing. And that's why I have a concern about the Afghan judicial system and what is the status of its ability to provide fair, interruption-free trials and prosecution of major drug kingpins. And if this doesn't occur, does that mean that they need to be extradited to the U.S. or European countries?

MR. SCHWEICH: Yeah, that's an excellent question. With respect to counternarcotics-related crimes, because of the level of corruption and also the fact that the system was decimated by the Taliban and the Soviets before it -- there really was little infrastructure -- you have a system in Afghanistan now where there are many competing systems of justice. You have a customary system, you have an Islamic system, you have the pre-Soviet constitutional system, and you have the post-Soviet constitutional system, and they are not all reconciled. So, first of all, you have competing systems. Then you have the issue of corruption and lack of honesty on the part of some people who are in the system.

So, because that was going to take a long time to fix, we worked with the Afghan government to establish the Criminal Justice Task Force and the Counternarcotics Tribunal. That is run by the U.S. Department of Justice with the Afghans. They have vetted prosecutors, vetted judges, vetted investigators. They have a new building they're about to open, a very high-tech facility for Afghanistan.

They have now 1,700 cases in there. A couple of their most recent successes were really quite impressive. I think I've got some information on that. Most recently Mesri Khan (ph), a well-known narcotrafficker, was convicted He and two associates were sentenced to 17 years in prison for conspiring to bring 200 kilograms of heroin to the United States. They recently convicted a lieutenant colonel in the police force for 10 years. And in July of '07, there were five senior border police who were arrested in Takhar province with 123 kilograms of heroin, $30 million street value. They've been indicted and are awaiting trial.

I don't want to overstate the success. You're only talking about 30 prosecutor and judges. But they're active, they're functioning, they're not corrupt, and they're convicting people and they're putting them in jail.

For the higher-level traffickers, we've been trying to get more extraditions because we don't think the court system is quite ready for that. There will be a new announcement soon of a high-level target that's being brought into the United States shortly. We have three here already. And we're working with the Afghan government to improve the capacity to extradite those people.

We also want people extradited to Europe. That's where much more of the drugs go than to the United States. And thus far we haven't found much interest. But we have a justice attache, Mary Lee Warren, whom I'm sure you know, at the EU, who is an expert in drug prosecutions, and she's going to work with them to try to get some extraditions to Europe.

Now, that's the counternarcotics group; you still have the overall judicial system, which is not nearly as developed as this counternarcotics tribunal.

In Rome, there was a conference about three months ago, where the international community met. President Karzai was there, the secretary-general of the United Nations was there, Richard Boucher and I represented the United States at this conference. And we were able to work with the Afghans in the development of their new five-year plans, which you might have heard about -- the Ministry of Justice, the Attorney General's Office has a five-year plan; each of them have new five-year plans, and the supreme court has a five-year plan. And it's a really good plan. These are priorities of what they need in terms of personnel, the vetting, infrastructure, equipment, buildings, and we're asking the international community now to sign up, check off the box which one you're going to support.

So there's a coordinated plan. Everybody sees what's needed. They're not having -- there were never conflicting justice programs going on. I was paying for two sets of prosecutor training, and I didn't even know it. So all this has now been reconciled, and we have specific plans for the three main ministries, and we're asking international governments to sign up to fund those plans. So this is all in its early stages, but the Counternarcotics Tribunal is functioning, and we're optimistic that the rest of the system will be able to catch up if we see sustained international support for this effort.

And it's, by the way, easier to get international donors for justice reform than it is for military activities. So as I travel around Europe to capitals, I'm always asking them to contribute to this justice effort that's going on. There's actually going to be a trust fund set. It's going to be, we think, a subaccount to the Afghan Reconstruction Trust Fund, where international donors can fund these projects I was talking about. And this is going to be a -- part of my job is to push the international community to do this. So the structures are in place, but we don't have the results yet.

REP. J. WILSON: Thank you very much.

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