Production of the opium poppy in Afghanistan plunged 91 percent this year, thanks to a ban its Taliban rulers imposed last year against poppy growing, UN officials said Friday.
Growers this year harvested 200 tonnes of the poppy -- the plant used for the production of opium, heroin and other drugs -- compared with 4,600 tonnes in 1999 and 3,300 tonnes last year, said Mohammad Amirkhizi, senior policy adviser at the Vienna-based UN Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention.
About 150 tonnes of this year's harvest came from the 10 percent of Afghan land controlled by the opposition Northern Alliance, which is fighting a protracted war against the Taliban regime from its bases in the north. The harvest season this year has ended and the planting season will soon begin.
In 1999 and last year, the opposition-held territories produced between 100 and 150 tonnes of the poppy, roughly 4 percent of overall production, Amirkhizi said, citing ground surveys by UN officials.
Still, opium produced in opposition-held lands amounts to "a modest amount of production" because of the small size of the territory, said Pino Arlacchi, the agency's director.
The UN agency is to release its annual report on opium production in about a week. Afghanistan is among the world's leading opium producers.
Opium production had been an important source of revenue for the Taliban, who have earned tens of millions of dollars by taxing poppy farmers and traffickers.
Under pressure from the UN, the Taliban banned poppy growing in July last year, calling the industry "un-Islamic" because the religion bans drug use and production.
The Taliban's poppy ban, however, applies only to cultivation, and officials believe drug trading continues from a stockpile estimated at 2,900 tonnes -- more than a year's supply.
Arlacchi said the fall in poppy production might not hold because the Taliban seem to be losing their ability to enforce the ban.
There has been growing concern that the Taliban regime could lift its ban to ease its financial situation as it becomes increasingly isolated.
Several UN officials have said recently that they have no way of monitoring opium production because all their workers left the country immediately after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the US.
"We won't know whether the ban is being implemented," Arlacchi said. Although cultivation season is about to begin, "we won't know until February 2002 when flowers blossom if the ban is holding."
"Next spring the Taliban probably won't be there, but the opium poppy will," Arlacchi said, adding that the UN and world governments should begin to develop a plan for banning opium after the Taliban fall from power.
The US is supporting the Northern Alliance. The Taliban are harboring Osama bin Laden, the alleged mastermind of the terror attacks, and Washington has said the Afghan rulers must surrender the alleged terrorist or face consequences.
The alliance's leader, Ahmed Shah Massoud, who was assassinated shortly before the terrorist attacks, had hoped to phase out opium cultivation, Arlacchi said.
"He told me he was committed to this," Arlacchi said. "I believe the leaders of the Northern Alliance know their credibility will be undermined if they allow it."
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