The amount of farmland in Afghanistan planted with cannabis fell by nearly a fifth last year after one province carried out a strictly enforced drug eradication campaign. However, a bumper crop showed production had risen compared with 2011, said the UN.

Officials in Uruzgan province, which borders Kandahar and Helmand, largely stamped out cultivation of the drug, acting out of concern that it was financing the Taliban. In 2011 there were more than 1,000 hectares (2,471 acres) of the crop there, but last year less than 100 ha. But planting in most other areas remained largely steady, with just over half of commercial production concentrated in the south of the country.

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