http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060902/ap_on_re_as/afghan_drugs
U.S. says Afghan opium out of control
By MATTHEW PENNINGTON, Associated Press Writer
28 minutes ago
Opium cultivation in Afghanistan is spiraling out of control, rising 59
percent this year to produce a record 6,100 tons - nearly a third more
than the world's drug users consume, the U.N. said Saturday.
Antonio Maria Costa, the U.N. anti-drug chief, said the results from his
agency's annual survey of Afghanistan's poppy crop were "very alarming."
"This year's harvest will be around 6,100 tons of opium - a staggering 92
percent of total world supply. It exceeds global consumption by 30
percent," Costa told reporters in Kabul after presenting the survey to
President Hamid Karzai. Opium is the raw material of heroin.
In a scathing statement, Costa said the Afghan government should take
much stronger action to root out graft, saying governors and police
chiefs of opium-growing provinces should be sacked and charged. He
accused corrupt administrators of pocketing aid money.
Costa warned that the south of the country was "displaying the ominous
hallmarks of incipient collapse, with large-scale drug cultivation and
trafficking, insurgency and terrorism, crime and corruption."
The bulk of the increase was recorded in lawless Helmand province, where
cultivation rose 162 percent and accounted for 42 percent of the Afghan
crop. The province is facing an upsurge in attacks by Taliban-led
militants fighting NATO forces.
"Public opinion is increasingly frustrated by the fact that opium
cultivation in Afghanistan is out of control," Costa said. "Afghan opium
is fueling insurgency in western Asia, feeding international mafias and
causing 100,000 deaths from overdoses every year."
Western officials say militants are implicated in the drug trade,
encouraging poppy cultivation and using the proceeds to help fund their
insurgency. However, government officials and police, particularly at
provincial and district levels, also are deeply involved.
The top U.S. anti-narcotics official in Afghanistan also warned that the
illicit trade in opium and heroin threatened the country's fledgling
democracy, instituted after the ouster of the hard-line Taliban regime
nearly five years ago by U.S.-led forces.
"This country could be taken down by this whole drugs problem," Doug
Wankel told reporters in Kabul - echoing strong rhetoric voiced by Karzai
last month. "We have seen what can come from Afghanistan, if you go back
to 9/11. Obviously the U.S. does not want to see that again."
"If this thing gets out of hand, you could move from a narco-economy to a
narco-state. Then you have a very difficult chance for this country being
able to achieve what it needs to as a democracy and a nation representing
its people," he said.
Wankel described the drug trade - already estimated to account for at
least 35 percent of the country's gross domestic product - as a "national
security threat to Afghanistan, the region and the world."
The survey conducted by the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime showed the
area under poppy cultivation in Afghanistan reached a record 407,700
acres in 2006, up from 257,000 acres in 2005. The previous highest
331,360 acres in 2004.
The estimated yield of 6,100 tons of opium resin - enough to make 610
tons of heroin - is up from 4,100 tons in 2005, exceeding the highest
ever global output of 5,764 tons recorded in 1999.
Last year, about 450 tons of heroin was consumed worldwide, according to
the U.N.
Costa also criticized international military, political and economic
efforts, saying they were having little impact on drug cultivation. He
said foreign aid was "plagued by huge overhead costs."
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