Afghan poppy farmers are some of the richest in the country, so poverty is not a big factor driving drug production in Afghanistan, which last year produced 93 percent of the world's opium, a UN report said.
Despite millions of dollars spent to eradicate the crop and encourage farmers to turn to others, opium production has risen sharply since US-led and Afghan forces toppled the hardline Islamist Taliban government in 2001.
But some of the poorest Afghan farmers do not grow the poppies from which opium is produced, while those on some of the richest farmland are the biggest producers of the drug, which is processed to make heroin and exported to the West.
"Poverty does not appear to have been the main driving factor in the expansion of opium cultivation in recent years," said a report by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) received by wire agencies yesterday.
"There is no evidence that opium poppy cultivation is the choice of the poorest of the poor farmers," it said.
While it is difficult to measure income in Afghanistan the UNODC study looked at farmers' key assets.
The southern province of Helmand, which produces around 70 percent of Afghanistan's drug crop, has the country's highest level of car and motorcycle ownership and the second highest ownership of trucks, combine harvesters and tractors.
"It appears that the wealthier provinces were actually more likely to cultivate opium than the poorer ones," the report said.
The biggest factor in whether farmers grow opium is the level of Taliban insurgency.
Afghan and mostly British forces are engaged in almost daily battles trying to wrest control of the string of towns and villages along Helmand's fertile strip from Taliban insurgents.
Forty-four percent of Helmand households said their economic situation had improved in the last year, compared to 27 percent nationwide, the UNODC said.
Meanwhile, a suicide bomber blew up an explosives-filled car near international troops in eastern Afghanistan yesterday, killing an Afghan child, a provincial governor said.
The bombing just outside the city of Khost was the second suicide attack in Afghanistan since Thursday when a blast in Kabul killed six civilians and wounded four international soldiers.
First reports said the blast damaged a vehicle of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), said Arsalla Jamal, governor of Khost.
Jamal said that there were no injuries among the ISAF troops.
Gaza is rapidly running out of its limited fuel supply and stocks of food staples might become tight, officials said, after Israel blocked the entry of fuel and goods into the war-shattered territory, citing fighting with Iran. The Israeli military closed all Gaza border crossings on Saturday after announcing airstrikes on Iran carried out jointly with the US. Israeli authorities late on Monday night said that they would reopen the Kerem Shalom crossing from Israel to Gaza yesterday, for “gradual entry of humanitarian aid” into the strip, without saying how much. Israeli authorities previously said the crossings could not be operated safely during
Hungarian authorities temporarily detained seven Ukrainian citizens and seized two armored cars carrying tens of millions of euros in cash across Hungary on suspicion of money laundering, officials said on Friday. The Ukrainians were released on Friday, following their detention on Thursday, but Hungarian officials held onto the cash, prompting Ukraine to accuse Hungary’s Russia-friendly government of illegally seizing the money. “We will not tolerate this state banditism,” Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrii Sybiha said. The seven detained Ukrainians were employees of the Ukrainian state-owned Oschadbank, who were traveling in the two armored cars that were carrying the money between Austria and
Kosovar President Vjosa Osmani on Friday after dissolving the Kosovar parliament said a snap election should be held as soon as possible to avoid another prolonged political crisis in the Balkan country at a time of global turmoil. Osmani said it is important for Kosovo to wrap up the upcoming election process and form functional institutions for political stability as the war rages in the Middle East. “Precisely because the geopolitical situation is that complex, it is important to finish this electoral process which is coming up,” she said. “It is very hard now to imagine what will happen next.” Kosovo, which declared
MORE BANS: Australia last year required sites to remove accounts held by under-16s, with a few countries pushing for similar action at an EU level and India considering its own ban Indonesia on Friday said it would ban social media access for children under 16, citing threats from online pornography, cyberbullying, online fraud and Internet addiction. “Accounts belonging to children under 16 on high-risk platforms will start to be deactivated, beginning with YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Threads, X, Bigo Live and Roblox,” Indonesian Minister of Communications and Digital Meutya Hafid said. “The government is stepping in so that parents no longer have to fight alone against the giants of the algorithm. Implementation will begin on March 28, 2026,” she said. The social media ban would be introduced in stages “until all platforms fulfill their
RSS