-Caveat Lector- U.N. says Taliban's destruction will mean more opium
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:VMchRLlBBlE:www.agriculture.com/worldwide/AgricultureFarming/10_19_2001.reulb-story-bcpakistanafghanopium.html+taliban+opium&hl=en ISLAMABAD, Oct 19 (Reuters) - The destruction of Afghanistan's ruling Taliban will almost certainly trigger a rise in opium production, the U.N. Drug Control Programme said on Friday. The warning from Bernard Frahi, head of the UNDCP office for southwest Asia, came only two days after the programme put out an annual report showing a dramatic fall in production over the past year because of a rigid Taliban ban on growing opium poppies. ``We have been told that farmers are resuming poppy cultivation in several areas,'' Frahi told Reuters, listing regions that are in the Taliban-held part of Afghanistan where U.S. and British planes began bombing on October 7. ``Fields are being prepared for the planting which starts in mid-October, so it started yesterday, and continues until the end of November,'' said the French narcotics expert. The harvest is in April and May. Frahi attributed renewed cultivation mainly to farmers' expectations that the Taliban administration, busy fighting for its existence against U.S. attacks, will not be able to enforce its ban on poppy cultivation. In addition, Frahi warned that the cut-off of outside sources of funds for the Taliban and the al Qaeda network of Osama bin Laden -- chief suspect in the September 11 attacks on the United States -- could drive them into partnership with drug smugglers. ``Terrorist groups inside Afghanistan don't have any funding anymore so of course they will look for immediate funding. What would be the best thing to smuggle today?'' Frahi said. ``We might see a convergence between the clandestine networks for trafficking and terrorism.'' U.N.-TALIBAN COOPERATION Frahi said it was impossible to estimate the rise in production because the UNDCP has been unable to monitor what is happening in Afghanistan since all foreign staff were evacuated following the September attacks on New York and Washington. But their programme had enjoyed its most dramatic success in the past year, thanks to a decree by Taliban spiritual leader Mullah Mohammad Omar in July 2000 banning opium cultivation. At first dismissed by Washington, the Taliban ban was firmly enforced and UNDCP teams that surveyed the country this year expressed amazement at the conversion of fields from lucrative poppies to wheat. In contrast, production of poppies, which are turned into opium and eventually heroin, soared in the small northeastern area of Afghanistan controlled by the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance. Overall production in Afghanistan, which had been the world's largest producer, dropped 94 percent in one year -- to an estimated 185 tonnes compared to 3,276 tonnes in 2000. Frahi said the fall in production last crop year had not translated into a reduction in supply or a rise in heroin prices on the streets of Europe, where most Afghan opium production has headed, because of stocks left from previous years. However, he was sceptical of western charges that the Taliban themselves were trafficking in drugs, saying old stocks had been held by everyone along the supply chain from farmers, to local buyers, to the smugglers who send it out of the country. ``If the Taliban had organised the drug trafficking, they would have kept the production,'' said Frahi, a former lawyer who spent 10 years with French narcotics police. In an endorsement of the cooperation the United Nations has received from the Taliban, Frahi said control of future Afghan opium production would depend on which government succeeds the Taliban. ``We have to remain optimistic that we will get a broad-based government ... and at high political levels we will have the same support to do this kind of intervention,'' he said. <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. 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