BERLIN/KABUL, 22 January 2005 — Violence in Afghanistan is expected to increase when the Afghan government steps up its war on drugs, German Defense Minister Peter Struck said yesterday. Afghan opium output has surged to near-record levels since 2001, when the Taleban regime, which harbored Osama Bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda, was ousted in a US-led invasion

The United Nations said in November that drug exports accounted for more than 60 percent of Afghanistan’s economy and it risked turning into a “narco-state”. “We have to expect that the security situation will worsen when the Afghan government massively increases measures to combat drugs, probably in the next two or three months,” Struck told a news conference.

Germany has 2,200 soldiers in NATO’s 9,000-strong International Security Assistance Force, which is focused on peacekeeping in the capital Kabul and the north and plans to extend its presence in other areas of the country. The Afghan deployment is Germany’s most high-profile contribution to the war on terror. Berlin opposed the Iraq war and has ruled out sending troops there.

Struck said that while destroying drug crops is not part of the German mission, its troops were passing on information to the Afghan authorities and would also provide logistical help to British and US troops involved in the anti-drug campaign. “It’s not the case that we drive through the provinces of Kunduz and Faizabad with our eyes closed and don’t see the poppy fields,” Struck said.

He said German forces would certainly be needed in Afghanistan until parliamentary elections, which have slipped from their planned April schedule and which he said might not take place until the autumn. “The question of when one can assume Afghanistan is stable and the central government in Kabul has consolidated its authority cannot be answered as of today ... Of course we are trying to make that happen as soon as possible,” Struck said.

Meanwhile, Afghan authorities launched an investigation yesterday into a failed suicide bomb attack on warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum, with suspicion falling strongly on the ousted Taleban regime. Dostum, who helped the US topple the Islamists in 2001 and stood in last October’s presidential polls, survived the blast during prayers for Eid Al-Adha in Sheberghan on Thursday. At least 21 people were injured, including the ethnic Uzbek strongman’s brother, when a bomber wearing explosives under his clothes blew himself up outside a mosque. “A four-man delegation left Kabul on Thursday night to Sheberghan to assess the blast,” Afghan Interior Ministry spokesman Lutfullah Mashal told AFP.

“We have seen that the Taleban have claimed responsibility, but right now we don’t know who might have been behind the attack — the delegation is going to find out that,” he added. Unconfirmed reports have said the Taleban were involved. The fundamentalist movement is known to blame Dostum for massacring some of its troops after the US-led invasion of Afghanistan three years ago.

The burly warlord also battled with the Taleban for control of Mazar-e-Sharif in 1997, in a brutal campaign marked by bloody attacks on retreating soldiers.