THE WEST AT WAR: DRUGS WIPEOUT - WE'LL BOMB POPPY FIELDS
Blair targets terror profits
POPPY fields which supply the Taliban's multi-billion-pound drugs trade are to be a key target of military strikes in Afghanistan.
The decision has been taken by Tony Blair and President George Bush to stop Osama bin Laden using drugs profits to wage war against the West.
A senior Downing Street aide said: "We have reliable information that the Taliban are planning to use money from drugs to finance military action, and that bin Laden has ordered farmers to step up production."
Specially-adapted US planes will be used to spray and destroy the poppies, from which opium is produced and processed into heroin.
The US is currently funding the development of a fungus that attacks the roots of opium plants.
There is an estimated 3,000 tonnes of opium stockpiled inside Afghanistan, the equivalent to 300 tonnes of pure heroin.
The drugs, thought to be worth £20billion, will be bombed when military operations against the Taliban have begun.
The Afghan regime collects a 10 per cent tax on the £20-a-kilo that local poppy farmers earn from the crops that provide 80 per cent of Europe's heroin. This year they produced a record harvest with a Western street value of £4billion.
Some of the enormous revenues generated from the drugs trade are funnelled into secret accounts for arming and supporting Islamic terror groups around the world. It is believed that at least £350,000 of this drug money was used to fund the suicide hijackers attacks on New York and Washington.
The decision to attack the poppy fields comes as the United Nations orders the freezing of the finances of terrorist suspects and any person or group linked "directly or indirectly" with them. It is part of a global build-up of military and diplomatic pressure on bin Laden.
President Bush said yesterday that the campaign against those responsible for the attacks on America will be waged "wherever terrorists hide or run or plan".
He used his weekly radio address to the nation to warn that "this will be a different kind of war".
Meanwhile, in New York it was announced that rebuilding on the site of the World Trade Centre will cost up to £40billion. It was also revealed that a Manhattan grand jury is investigating possible Mafia involvement in the theft of hundreds of tons of scrap metal from the Ground Zero site. As the start of military action grows nearer, the first lorry loads of 200 tonnes of aid for refugees living in opposition-controlled areas of Afghanistan left Peshawar in Pakistan yesterday. In the Middle East yesterday, three Palestinians were killed and dozens wounded by Israeli troops firing at stone-throwers and gunmen in Gaza.
- SINN Fein president Gerry Adams told his party's annual conference yesterday that the attacks on America were inexcusable. The man known by the security services to have once led the IRA's Belfast brigade told delgates: "Terrorism is ethically indefensible."
c.mclaughlin@sundaymirror.co.uk