At Interior Ministry, 80% Benefit.

"Top Afghan officials privately admit that perhaps 80 percent of the personnel at the Ministry of Interior, Afghanistan's chief law-enforcement agency - from local police chiefs up to the top bureaucrats - may be benefiting from the drug trade. At a press conference announcing his resignation last fall, Interior Minister Ali Jalali said that the ministry had a list of 100 top officials who were being watched for evidence of drug trafficking.

"The result is a government that is either incapable or unwilling to prevent a trade...rapidly undermining the country's rule of law and the Afghan people's faith in their leadership. 'The wrong elements can be a sapling in our society, and if we act now, we can remove it with less damage', says Habibullah Qaderi, Afghan minister for counternarcotics, a government agency that is separate from the Ministry of Interior. 'But if it becomes a tree, there will be more destruction when you remove it'.

"Already the corrupt sapling is becoming a tree, Mr Qaderi says, adding that Afghanistan cannot afford to wait for the proof of guilt. 'If we had removed these people one by one, the country would have been much, much better".

"The Afghan people need to trust that their government is working in the national interest. 'People have to be close with their government. The day there is a distance, that becomes very dangerous'".

How Those Interviews Were Made: The Monitor said it used "a reporting device in this story that it normally avoids", adding: "The key interviews, all taped, were with sources who did not realize they were speaking to the press. This presents a risk to fairness and privacy, in that the interviewees might speak more casually and loosely than they would if they knew they were speaking to a reporter.

"We decided to go forward for several reasons. The subjects in these interviews are all public officials, not private citizens, discussing what should be public business.

"The issue of drug trafficking, illegal in Afghanistan as nearly everywhere else, is critically important to the future of that country and others. We could find no other safe way to collect direct evidence of this official corruption. But because we could not directly confront these police chiefs without endangering the lives of reporters or interpreters, we decided to withhold their names".