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Afghan Opium Production Down Just 2 Percent
Pubdate: Mon, 29 Aug 2005
Source: Rapid City Journal (SD)
Copyright: 2005 The Rapid City Journal
Contact: http://www.rapidcityjournal.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1029
Author: Daniel Cooney, AP
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/heroin.htm (Heroin)
AFGHAN OPIUM PRODUCTION DOWN JUST 2 PERCENT DESPITE CRACKDOWN
KABUL, Afghanistan -- Bumper growing conditions meant that Afghanistan's
opium production remained almost unchanged this year even though a
crackdown on poppy farming cut the land under cultivation by 21 percent,
the U.N. anti-drug chief said Monday.
Antonio Maria Costa warned it could take another 20 years to eradicate
opium from the impoverished country -- despite the recent injection of
hundreds of millions in foreign aid to fight the world's biggest drug industry.
The narcotics trade is blamed for fighting in some poppy-growing areas and
is suspected to be partially funding an insurgency by Taliban-led rebels
that has killed more than 1,100 people in the past six months. It has also
sparked warnings the country is fast becoming a "narco-state" less than
four years after the U.S.-led invasion.
Opium production this year was 4,519 tons, just 2 percent down from the
4,630 tons in 2004, said Costa, director of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime.
He said Afghanistan is still estimated to produce 87 percent of the world's
supply of both opium and its derivative, heroin, despite the authorities'
destruction of some crops.
"We see a significant improvement in the amount of land cultivated in
Afghanistan, a major reduction. One field out of five that was cultivated
in 2004 was not cultivated this year," Costa told The Associated Press in
an interview.
But he said that "heavy rainfall, snowfall and no infestation of crops
resulted in a very significant increase in productivity."
A report by the U.N. agency said the total amount of land being used to
grow poppies dropped from 323,570 acres in 2004 to 256,880 acres this year.
But the jump in crop yield -- the opium harvested from each acre of poppies
- -- was 22 percent, it added.
The money being pumped into anti-drug campaigns by the United States,
Britain and other countries is largely used to train police units to
destroy laboratories, arrest smugglers and destroy opium crops, as well as
to fund projects to help farmers grow legal crops.
Costa said another $510 million has been earmarked by donors for further
assistance this year and next.
The drug czar praised President Hamid Karzai and his ministers for trying
to eradicate drug production, but said some provincial governors and other
officials were involved in the drug trade and should be removed.
"Together with the removal of corrupt governors, we are championing the
indictment of officials who are corrupt or warlords who have benefited from
the poppies," he said.
Meanwhile, the U.S. military spokesman Col. James Yonts reported that
coalition and Afghan forces in southern Kandahar province last week killed
four rebels, including a Taliban commander believed responsible for rocket
attacks, ambushes and other guerrilla-style assaults.
Six suspected rebels were also killed in a separate battle with Afghan
police on Sunday in neighboring Zabul province, said Ali Khail, spokesman
for the provincial governor.
Afghan and coalition forces have stepped up offensives in recent months in
a bid to prevent the Taliban from subverting landmark legislative elections
on Sept. 18.
Yonts said American forces were also doing all they can in Afghanistan to
locate Osama bin Laden but he cannot say when the al-Qaida leader will be
captured.
"When will he be captured? ... I can't give you a date, but I can tell you
this: Everyone remembers 9/11," he told reporters in Kabul.
- ---
MAP posted-by: Elizabeth Wehrman