Afghan opium poppy cultivation has exploded to a new record high this year, with the multibillion dollar trade now fueled by Taliban militants and corrupt officials in Afghan President Hamid Karzai's government, a UN report said.
Afghanistan has opium growing on 193,000 hectares of land, a 17 percent increase from last year's record of 165,000 hectares, an annual survey by the UN's Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said.
The country now accounts for 93 percent of the global production of opium, the raw material for heroin, and has doubled its output over the last two years, the report, released on Monday, said.
PHOTO: AP
"The situation is dramatic and getting worse by the day," said Antonio Maria Costa, the UNODC's executive director.
"No other country in the world has ever had such a large amount of farmland used for illegal activity, beside China 100 years ago," when it was a major opium producer, Costa said in an interview in Kabul.
The burgeoning drug business casts doubt on the effectiveness of projects funded by the US and other Western donors to battle the illicit trade.
It also adds pressure on Karzai to consider new ways of curbing an expansion that threatens to turn Afghanistan into a "narco-state" where some observers warn that groups such as al-Qaeda could once again find sanctuary.
Karzai last year rejected US offers to spray this year's crop, after Afghans said the herbicide could affect livestock, crops and water supplies -- fears the US calls unfounded.
Costa said the UN supports the government's position, but added that crop eradication was a key element of any strategy to combat its growth.
Afghanistan is on course to produce 9,000 tonnes of opium this year, up 34 percent from 6,724 tonnes last year, Costa said.
The farm-gate value of Afghanistan's annual crop is about US$1 billion, the UN survey said. The street value of the heroin produced from it is many times higher.
While the number of poppy-free provinces in the country's north has increased from six last year to 13 this year, production in the insurgency-hit southern provinces has exploded to unprecedented levels.
The province of Helmand alone, with 102,770 hectares under cultivation, now accounts for over half of the national total.
General Khodaidad, Afghanistan's acting counternarcotics minister, acknowledged that the drugs strategy had failed in the country's south and west, which he blamed on inept local officials and poor policing, but also to open borders with Iran to the west and Pakistan to the east.
Khodaidad said the government needed to review its strategy, and threatened to sack inefficient and corrupt officials and reward those that curbed the production and trade at a national conference scheduled for today.
Costa linked the booming trade primarily to the rise of insurgent activity in the south.
"The government has lost control of this territory because of the presence of the insurgents, because of the presence of the terrorists, whether Taliban or splinter al-Qaeda groups," Costa said.
"It is clearly documented now that insurgents actively promote or allow and then take advantage of the cultivation, refining, and the trafficking of opium," he said.
Taliban militants levy a tax on farmers and also provide protection for convoys smuggling opium into neighboring countries, Costa said.
Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr has fired his national police chief, who gained attention for leading the separate arrests of former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte on orders of the International Criminal Court and televangelist Apollo Carreon Quiboloy, who is on the FBI’s most-wanted list for alleged child sex trafficking. Philippine Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin did not cite a reason for the removal of General Nicolas Torre as head of the 232,000-member national police force, a position he was appointed to by Marcos in May and which he would have held until 2027. He was replaced by another senior police general, Jose
STILL AFLOAT: Satellite images show that a Chinese ship damaged in a collision earlier this month was under repair on Hainan, but Beijing has not commented on the incident Australia, Canada and the Philippines on Wednesday deployed three warships and aircraft for drills against simulated aerial threats off a disputed South China Sea shoal where Chinese forces have used risky maneuvers to try to drive away Manila’s aircraft and ships. The Philippine military said the naval drills east of Scarborough Shoal (Huangyan Island, 黃岩島) were concluded safely, and it did not mention any encounter with China’s coast guard, navy or suspected militia ships, which have been closely guarding the uninhabited fishing atoll off northwestern Philippines for years. Chinese officials did not immediately issue any comment on the naval drills, but they
POWER CONFLICT: The US president threatened to deploy National Guards in Baltimore. US media reports said he is also planning to station troops in Chicago US President Donald Trump on Sunday threatened to deploy National Guard troops to yet another Democratic stronghold, the Maryland city of Baltimore, as he seeks to expand his crackdown on crime and immigration. The Republican’s latest online rant about an “out of control, crime-ridden” city comes as Democratic state leaders — including Maryland Governor Wes Moore — line up to berate Trump on a high-profile political stage. Trump this month deployed the National Guard to the streets of Washington, in a widely criticized show of force the president said amounts to a federal takeover of US capital policing. The Guard began carrying
Ukrainian drone attacks overnight on several Russian power and energy facilities forced capacity reduction at the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant and set a fuel export terminal in Ust-Luga on fire, Russian officials said yesterday. A drone attack on the Kursk nuclear plant, not far from the border with Ukraine, damaged an auxiliary transformer and led to 50 percent reduction in the operating capacity at unit three of the plant, the plant’s press service said. There were no injuries and a fire sparked by the attack was promptly extinguished, the plant said. Radiation levels at the site and in the surrounding
RSS