Afghanistan Watch: GOP disappointed in new drug chief?

March 30, 2007

GOP disappointed in new drug chief?

According to a press report this week, Congressional Republicans are upset with the appointment of a State Department official to a newly created post of an anti-narcotics chief in Afghanistan. According to one staffer, the position was intended for someone to "knock heads together;" when someone from Foggy Bottom was tapped they've argued that "all this has done is put another player on the field."

There seem to be two worries: first that Thomas Schweich, most recently of the INL and a former chief of staff at the US Mission to the UN, is not senior enough to make this happen, and second that he harbors "soft on drug" inclinations (one staffer said "It's putting the fox in charge of the chicken coop.")

Schweich's positions are not clear yet. From his comments he certainly doesn't seem one of those namby-pamby incrementalists so derided by the drug warriors. On alternative livelihoods without eradication, he has said "we don't think that's ever worked anywhere in the world." He's a clear proponent of spraying (though with the Afghan government's consent.)

Perhaps its his "pessimism" that has earned him enmity: he has said that eliminating poppies in the south is "a longer term proposition, maybe five or 10 years." For congress, that sounds hopelessly long. For those familiar with the challenge, it seems more than a bit optimistic...

House GOP protests drug czar for Afghanistan:WASHINGTON, March 27 (UPI) By SHAUN WATERMAN: Republicans in Congress are angry at the Bush administration's choice of a State Department official to fill a new post to oversee U.S. efforts against drug smuggling and corruption in Afghanistan. "It's putting the fox in charge of the chicken coop," said one senior House GOP staffer. A little-noticed announcement from the White House last week named Thomas Schweich to the new job: coordinator for counter-narcotics and justice reform in Afghanistan. MORE

The announcement said that Schweich, who currently oversees part of the Afghan drug portfolio as the principal deputy assistant secretary in the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement at the State Department, would be granted the personal rank of ambassador in the new post. White House spokeswoman Emily Lawrimore told United Press International that the ambassador rank was a technical appointment "necessary for him to hold negotiations with foreign countries" in the new post and was not Senate confirmable. She referred further calls to the State Department, where several officials did not respond to numerous phone and e-mail requests for information and comment over a two-day period. Last month senior Republicans on the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, led by the ranking member, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., wrote to Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, asking for the appointment of "a high-level coordinator of overall Afghan narco-terrorism policy." The bluntly worded letter said inter-agency rivalry and U.S. policy failures in Afghanistan risked allowing it to slide back into chaos. "The open and public dispute with our British allies on opium eradiation methods, along with the many different and often conflicting views of NATO, our Department of Defense, the Drug Enforcement Agency, and other U.S. agencies on how best to handle the narcotics challenge does not bode well for success," the letter said. Disputes have run the gamut of policy issues, from how to deal with local drug kingpins who might be allies of the U.S. or Afghan military, to what priority to give to efforts at eradicating the opium poppy, as opposed to taking down the smuggling networks that distribute it. The letter said U.S. efforts against narco-terrorism in Afghanistan should be modeled on those in Columbia, "utiliz(ing) all U.S. agencies, assets and assistance." The appointment of Schweich, who began his State Department career under his mentor John Danforth when the latter was ambassador to the United Nations, appeared to be an effort to respond to concerns in Congress and elsewhere about poor policy and operational coordination in Afghanistan. But some congressional Republicans are unsatisfied with the new appointment. "We wanted a cross-agency coordinator ... someone at the top of the government, at the level of the White House ... to really knock heads together," said the senior House GOP staffer. "All this has done is put another player on the field," said the staffer. Regardless of the individual, the staffer said, appointing a State Department official to the post would create the impression that the person was simply going to "carry water for the institutional agenda of the State Department." "This post will have no ability to bring the other agencies to the table. It's not the coordinator we want or need," concluded the staffer. Prior to his appointment to the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement, Schweich was chief of staff at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations under Ambassador Danforth. Schweich, a partner in Missouri law firm Bryan Cave, LLP, had earlier served Danforth as chief of staff when he was appointed special counsel to investigate the Justice Department's handling of the siege of the Branch Dravidian compound in Waco, Texas. Schweich received his bachelor's degree from Yale University and his J.D. from Harvard University.

Posted by Carl Robichaud on March 30, 2007 at 12:31 PM in Opium, Politics, U.S. Policy | Permalink

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March 30, 2007

GOP disappointed in new drug chief?

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