[NYTr] Afghan: Helmand Prov's Drug Prodn Surpasses All of Colombia's (BBC, AFP)

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

BBC - Aug 27, 2007
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6965115.stm

Afghanistan opium at record high

By Alastair Leithead, Kabul

The UN says opium production in Afghanistan has soared to record
levels, with an increase on last year of more than a third.

The UN Office on Drugs and Crime report says the amount of opium
produced there has doubled in the last two years.

It says Helmand province is now the biggest single drug-producing area
in the world, surpassing whole countries such as Colombia.

Afghanistan now accounts for more than 93% of the world's opiates.

Despite billions of dollars of aid and tens of thousands of
international troops, the report says 193,000 hectares of opium poppies
are being grown in Afghanistan.

'Insurgency link'

"The results are very bad, terrifyingly bad, because cultivation has
increased by 17% to an historic level," said Antonio Maria Costa,
executive director of the Office on Drugs and Crime.

"No other country beside China in the 19th Century ever had such a
large amount of land dedicated to illegal activities.

"The province of Helmand in the south has cultivated more opium than in
the rest of Afghanistan. It has become the largest single entity in
terms of both production and cultivation," he said.

Despite the overall increase, twice as many provinces are now drug-free
in northern and central Afghanistan and the report says growing opium
poppies is now closely linked to the insurgency and the instability in
the south.

And what is to be done? The report recommends more determined efforts
to bring that security.

It urges the government to get tough on corruption, which it says is
driving the drugs trade and it lists poor governance, a weak judiciary
and failing eradication programmes for these new frightening record
levels.

© BBC MMVII

                              ***

AFP - Aug 27, 2007
http://www.afp.com/english/news/stories/070827203717.0mxd825p.html

Afghanistan's opium production doubles

KABUL (AFP) - Afghanistan's opium production has doubled in two years,
reaching a new high in 2007, with the country almost the exclusive
supplier of the world's deadliest drug, the United Nations announced
Monday.

Production was estimated to have jumped 34 percent this year over last
with the number of heroin labs also increasing, the UN Office on Drugs
and Crime said in its Annual Opium Survey.

The southern province of Helmand had meanwhile become the world's
biggest source of illicit drugs, surpassing the output of entire
countries.

This was despite a multi-million-dollar effort led by Britain and the
United States to cut the opium trade which finances the growing Taliban
insurgency that has killed thousands of people, including scores of
Western soldiers.

The production of opium, used to make heroin, had soared to
"frightening record levels in 2007," the UNODC said in a statement on
the survey.

The amount of Afghan land used for growing opium was now larger than
the combined total used to grow coca -- the raw ingredient for cocaine
-- in Colombia, Peru and Bolivia, it said.

The total opium harvest for the year was estimated at 8,200 tonnes, up
from 6,100 tonnes last year, a 34 percent spike, it said. The harvest
normally ends around late July.

The area planted with opium poppies had risen to 193,000 hectares
(476,710 acres) from 165,000 last year, representing a 17 percent rise,
it said.
Afghanistan had become "practically the exclusive supplier of the
world's deadliest drug", accounting for 93 percent of the global
opiates market, the survey said.

Opium cultivation was "closely linked" to the Taliban insurgency with
the hardline Islamic movement, which has ties with Al-Qaeda, using the
drug economy to fund arms, logistics and pay, it said.

The survey outlined several other disturbing findings.

About 80 percent of opium poppies were grown in a handful of provinces
along the border with Pakistan that see the worst unrest.

Helmand, where opium cultivation rose by 48 percent, has become the
world's biggest source of illicit drugs, surpassing the output of
countries like Colombia (coca), Morocco (cannabis) and Myanmar (opium)
which have populations up to 20 times larger, the UNODC said.

There were also important opium and heroin markets in the province.

Fourteen percent more of the population was involved in opium
cultivation this year than last, the report said, despite campaigns to
persuade farmers to choose legitimate crops.

The gross income from a hectare of opium was 4,600 dollars, compared to
530 dollars for wheat, it said.

However, while production had soared across the country, 13 of
Afghanistan's 34 provinces were now opium-free, double the number of
last year.

UNODC executive director Antonio Maria Costa called on the
international military forces operating in Afghanistan under the NATO
umbrella to help in the fight against opium -- which they have so far
refused to do.

"Since drug trafficking and the insurgency live off each other, the
foreign military forces operating in Afghanistan have a vested interest
in supporting counternarcotics operations," he said in the statement.

Costa also said the Afghan government's poppy eradication programme
should also be undertaken "more honestly and more vigorously" and
farmers choosing not to grow opium should be given rewards, such as new
schools and hospitals.

"It would be an historic error to let Afghanistan collapse under the
blows of drugs and insurgency," he said, adding "this double threat is
real and growing."

Costa told reporters that a meeting in Brussels in early September
would decide if NATO soldiers should be involved in the drugs fight. He
said he was convinced the threat "will make them think and change their
mind."

In London later Monday, international think-tank the Senlis Council
said the report showed that counter-narcotics operations were making
things worse.

"US-led efforts to destroy poppy crops are at odds with
counter-insurgency and development efforts," said executive director
Emmanuel Reinert

Farmers were growing poppies because they lacked a profitable
alternative, said the statement.

In June, the Senlis Council proposed a "Poppy for Medicine" solution
modelled around using opium for producing legitimate painkilling drugs,
such as morphine.