New State Department Report Raises More Concern Over Afghanistan

By Andrew Cochran

The U.S. State Department today released the 2006 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (INCSR), an annual report which "describes the efforts of key countries to attack all aspects of the international drug trade in Calendar Year 2005." Much will be written about this report and the intersections with terrorism. For starters, it renders another official U.S. government verdict on the alarm bells about Afghanistan at a time when Taliban and Al Qaeda are attempting a comeback. Robert Charles posted here on January 14 about the threat to Afghanistan from the narcotics. The report officially recategorizes the country from a "Jurisdiction of Concern" to a "Jurisdiction of Primary Concern." It's the movement here that matters, indicating the country's slide in its battle against money laundering gangs.

That latter category includes the UAE, a designation which might be claimed by critics of the DPW port purchase deal as a justification for nixing the deal. But leaders in the war against terrorist financing, such as the U.S. itself, the U.K., France, Canada, Germany, and Israel, are also designated as "Primary Concern" countries. So the tag shouldn't be held against the UAE. The website includes a long list of factors to be considered in categorizing the countries. Here is a segment of that discussion:

The "Jurisdictions of Primary Concern" are those jurisdictions that are identified pursuant to the INCSR reporting requirements as "major money laundering countries." A major money laundering country is defined by statute as one "whose financial institutions engage in currency transactions involving significant amounts of proceeds from international narcotics trafficking." However, the complex nature of money laundering transactions today makes it difficult in many cases to distinguish the proceeds of narcotics trafficking from the proceeds of other serious crime. Moreover, financial institutions engaging in transactions involving significant amounts of proceeds of other serious crime are vulnerable to narcotics-related money laundering.

The links to the 2006 and the 2005 INCSRs are in the Counterterrorism Library in the left sidebar.

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