NATO must fight Afghan ‘drugs mafia’

BERLIN: NATO must focus on destroying Afghanistan’s ‘drugs mafia’ when the alliance expands its peacekeeping mission across the country next year, British Defence Secretary John Reid said on Wednesday.

“They have to be defeated, they have to be destroyed,” said Reid, whose nation will take the lead role in the NATO force next year as it moves into volatile southern Afghanistan. NATO defence ministers were discussing the expansion of the Afghan mission that will see allied troops, mostly from Europe and Canada, replace some US units who have been fighting the remnants of the Taliban. Reid said on Tuesday that thousands of extra allied troops would be needed as NATO widens the mission. At a news conference on Wednesday he declined to say how many British troops would be deployed when his country takes over from the Americans in southern Helmand province next spring.

NATO’s 11,000-strong force currently operates in the Afghan capital, Kabul, and in the northern and western half of the country. The separate US-led combat mission with about 20,000 troops covers the south and east.