Afghanistan's opium harvest is set to increase by nearly 60 percent this year due to a massive jump in cultivation in the insurgency-hit south, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) says.
UNODC’s Annual Opium Survey found the area used for opium cultivation had reached a record 165,000 ha in 2006 compared with 104,000 in 2005. Afghanistan produces more than 90 percent of the world's opium, which mostly ends up in the heroin markets of western Europe and Russia.
“That is a crop of staggering size: 6,100 mt, which is well above - 30 percent above - world demand,” Antonio Maria Costa, UNODC's executive director, said in the Afghan capital, Kabul, on Saturday.
In Helmand, the southern province where Taliban insurgents have been attacking Afghan government and international troops, cultivation soared 162 percent to 69,324 ha, accounting for more than 40 percent of the total area under cultivation in the country, the UNODC survey revealed.
"These are very alarming numbers. Afghanistan is increasingly hooked on its own drug," Costa said.
The rise follows a 21 percent drop in cultivation in 2005, officials from the Ministry of Counter Narcotics said.
Government and international agencies have spent millions of dollars trying to halt the booming opium trade.
The UN was concerned that the bumper crop was helping fuel the deadly Taliban-led insurgency in the south.
Costa said southern Afghanistan was displaying the "ominous hallmarks of incipient collapse", with large-scale drug cultivation and trafficking, insurgency and terrorism, crime and corruption.
Costa said that some high-ranking government officials including governors, police and soldiers were involved in the drug trade.
“The final period of the governor of Helmand in power between September and December last year is what caused a massive planting [of poppy] which became the massive harvest of 2006,” Costa said.
Only six of the country’s 34 provinces were now opium free. Cultivation fell in eight other provinces this year, mainly in the north of the country, UNODC said.
Habibullah Qaderi, the minister for counter narcotics, said that poppy eradication programmes were insufficient and that more help and developmental projects were needed to provide farmers with alternative livelihoods.
“There needs to be more incentive to give to farmers to stop cultivating this crop,” Qaderi said.
UNODC’s Annual Opium Survey found the area used for opium cultivation had reached a record 165,000 ha in 2006 compared with 104,000 in 2005. Afghanistan produces more than 90 percent of the world's opium, which mostly ends up in the heroin markets of western Europe and Russia.
“That is a crop of staggering size: 6,100 mt, which is well above - 30 percent above - world demand,” Antonio Maria Costa, UNODC's executive director, said in the Afghan capital, Kabul, on Saturday.
In Helmand, the southern province where Taliban insurgents have been attacking Afghan government and international troops, cultivation soared 162 percent to 69,324 ha, accounting for more than 40 percent of the total area under cultivation in the country, the UNODC survey revealed.
"These are very alarming numbers. Afghanistan is increasingly hooked on its own drug," Costa said.
The rise follows a 21 percent drop in cultivation in 2005, officials from the Ministry of Counter Narcotics said.
Government and international agencies have spent millions of dollars trying to halt the booming opium trade.
The UN was concerned that the bumper crop was helping fuel the deadly Taliban-led insurgency in the south.
Costa said southern Afghanistan was displaying the "ominous hallmarks of incipient collapse", with large-scale drug cultivation and trafficking, insurgency and terrorism, crime and corruption.
Costa said that some high-ranking government officials including governors, police and soldiers were involved in the drug trade.
“The final period of the governor of Helmand in power between September and December last year is what caused a massive planting [of poppy] which became the massive harvest of 2006,” Costa said.
Only six of the country’s 34 provinces were now opium free. Cultivation fell in eight other provinces this year, mainly in the north of the country, UNODC said.
Habibullah Qaderi, the minister for counter narcotics, said that poppy eradication programmes were insufficient and that more help and developmental projects were needed to provide farmers with alternative livelihoods.
“There needs to be more incentive to give to farmers to stop cultivating this crop,” Qaderi said.
This article was produced by IRIN News while it was part of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Please send queries on copyright or liability to the UN. For more information: https://shop.un.org/rights-permissions
Share this article