Drug conference addresses mammoth heroin problem

Following a two-day international conference on reducing opium proliferation in Afghanistan, the executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Antonio Maria Costa, said the next two years were critical in the country's efforts to control the drug. “The recent UNODC survey of [opium] farmers’ intentions points to perhaps an even more severe drug cultivation problem in 2004,” he told IRIN on Tuesday, in the capital Kabul, where the gathering was held. Costa said the 200-delegate conference had come up with five action plans to deal with the heroin menace; strengthening law enforcement; developing an alternative livelihood for poppy growers; establishing an effective criminal justice system; launching a massive public awareness campaign on the illegality of drugs and enhanced drug abuse prevention. According to the United Nations, 2003 saw Afghanistan's second biggest opium harvest ever at 3,600 mt of opium, enough to produce 360 mt of heroin. This is second only to the bumper production of 4,600 mt of opium in 1999, a year before Taliban hardliners banned cultivation of the crop. But Costa acknowledged how difficult the problem was to deal with. “In a democratic country law enforcement means investigation, prosecution, judges, courts and penitentiary. In Afghanistan you get none of these." No new money to fight the cultivation and trafficking of opium was made available at the meeting. Afghan authorities said they are hoping to raise millions of dollars to fund the country’s five-year national drug control strategy announced in May 2003. Although no firm figure has been set, Mirwais Yasini, director general of Afghanistan's Counter Narcotics Department (CND) said that the country needed US $300 million to reduce opium cultivation by at least 70 per cent by 2008. Britain, where much of Afghanistan's heroin ends up, is the lead nation in anti-narcotics operations in Afghanistan. London has already committed some 70 million pounds (US $126 million) over three years to the anti-opium drive. "This is not an issue one country can tackle on its own," Yasini said. "We would like the whole international community to help us." Afghanistan now produces more than two-thirds of the world's illicit opium supply and poppy cultivation is spreading to areas where it was never grown before, according to the latest UNODC report released last October.