The Taliban's bumper crop

Opium production in Afghanistan - controlled largely by the Taliban - continues to rise dramatically, according to the UN. (Note the lack of scare quotes around "resistance" in the Independent's headline.)

In an annual survey of opium production released yesterday, the UN reported that Helmand province had produced 48 per cent more opium compared to its record-breaking crop last year. Opium production in Afghanistan as a whole will reach a "frighteningly new level" at 8,200 tons, 34 per cent higher than last year, the report said.

[...]

...The report by the UN office on drugs and crime said: "An astonishing 50 per cent of the whole Afghan opium crop comes from one single province: Helmand."

Although cultivation of the opium poppy had decreased in parts of Afghanistan, "where anti-government forces reign, poppies flourish".

"With just 2.5 million inhabitants, this relatively rich southern province has become the world's biggest source of illicit drugs, surpassing the output of entire countries such as Colombia (coca), Morocco (cannabis) and Burma (opium) - which have populations up to twenty times larger."

The head of the UN agency, Antonio Maria Costa, said: "No other country in the world has ever had such a large amount of farmland used for illegal activity, beside China 100 years ago," when it was a major opium producer.

He urged Nato to more actively support counter-narcotics operations. "Since drugs are funding insurgency, Afghanistan's military and its allies have a vested interest in destroying heroin labs, closing opium markets and bringing traffickers to justice. Tacit acceptance of opium trafficking is undermining stabilisation efforts."

The war against the Taliban is worthy and winnable, but the war on drugs isn't - and the latter may be sabotaging the former:

When William Wood, America's ambassador to Colombia, was named envoy to Afghanistan a few months ago, there was concern he would bring with him the US crop eradication technique of choice.

Discussing possible new strategies for coping with the record increase in opium production in Afghanistan with a New York Times reporter this week, Mr Wood acknowledged spraying poppy crops with herbicide was "a possibility".

The government of President Hamid Karzai has rejected crop spraying in the past, as do the British who have the unenviable responsibility for dealing with poppy production in the troubled Helmand province.

Such tactics could damage the health of the local population in areas of open irrigation channels, and contaminate the legal crops which are interspersed in Helmand with the illicit opium poppy. There are also fears crop spraying could drive local farmers into the arms of the Taliban and enable the Taliban to accuse the "occupying forces" of poisoning the Afghan people.

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The Senlis Council yesterday reiterated its call for a "Poppy for medicine" programme which would would allow farming communities to produce morphine locally, providingrural communities with economic opportunities. But the US, Brit-ish and Afghan governments remain opposed to any legalisation of opium in Afghanistan, which has a million addicts.

Damian P.

Posted by damian at August 27, 2007 08:38 PM