Afghan Leader Warns of Terrorism, Drug Ties

President Hamid Karzai warned Wednesday that militants were receiving support from drug traffickers and that his nation could fall back into the hands of terrorists if its booming heroin trade wasn’t stamped out.

At a news conference with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Karzai said, “We will have terrorism attacking ... for quite some time.” He also said there was “cooperation between the drug trade and terrorism.”

“The question of drugs ... is one that will determine Afghanistan’s future.... If we fail, we will fail as a state eventually and we will fall back in the hands of terrorism.”

The U.S. and other countries have pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into counter-narcotics programs, but they have had little impact in Afghanistan, which supplies nearly 90% of the world’s opium, from which heroin is derived.

In the latest violence, five medical workers were killed Wednesday as they were returning to Kandahar after treating refugees in a nearby camp, said Dr. Abdul Qadir, director of the U.N.- and U.S.-sponsored Afghan Help Development Services, which employed the five.

Gunmen opened fire on their vehicle as they drove through the desert.

Three other medical workers in the vehicle were wounded, Qadir said.

Rice said U.S. forces would remain “for as long as they are needed in whatever numbers they are needed to make certain that they defeat the terrorists and Afghanistan becomes a place of stability and progress.”