tinyurl.com/s6s5o -> www.nytimes.com/2006/09/03/world/asia/03afghan.html?ex=1157601600&en=67bd0f5cde7536e3&ei=5087
The New York Times - Autos - Collectible Cars Opium Harvest at Record Level in Afghanistan David Rochkind/Polaris The Afghan opium harvest has reached record levels, up 49 percent from last year, the United Nations says.
Go to Complete Coverage He described the figures as alarming and very bad news for the Afghan government and international donors who have poured millions of dollars into programs to reduce the poppy crop since 2001.
Taliban rebels in the south, the countrys prime opium growing region. As the insurgents have stepped up attacks, they have also encouraged and profited from the drug trade, promising protection to growers if they expanded their opium operations. This years harvest will be around 6,100 metric tons of opium a staggering 92 percent of total world supply. It exceeds global consumption by 30 percent, Mr Costa said at a news briefing. He said the harvest increased by 49 percent from the year before, and it drastically outpaced the previous record of 4,600 metric tons, set in 1999 while the Taliban governed the country. The area cultivated increased by 59 percent, with more than 400,000 acres planted with poppies in 2006 compared with less than 260,000 in 2005. It is indeed very bad, you can say it is out of control, Mr Costa said Friday in an interview before the announcement.
Hamid Karzai expressed disappointment at the results in a statement issued on Saturday and urged the international community to expand its commitment to strengthen the Afghan police and law enforcement agencies. The Bush administration has made poppy eradication a major facet of its aid to Afghanistan, and it has criticized Mr Karzai for not doing more to challenge warlords involved in opium production. On Saturday, a State Department spokeswoman, Joanne Moore, had no immediate comment on the United Nations report, but she pointed to a fact sheet posted on the departments Web site that outlined efforts to support Afghanistans counternarcotics campaign. The increase in cultivation was mainly a result of the strength of the insurgency in southern Afghanistan, which has left whole districts outside of government control, and the continuing impunity of everyone involved, from the farmers and traffickers to corrupt police and government officials, Mr Costa said. Afghanistan is already the worlds largest producer of opium, and 35 percent of its gross domestic product is estimated to come from the narcotics trade. Most of the heroin made from Afghan poppies is sold in Europe and Asia, drug officials say. Most of the increase in poppy cultivation has occurred in five provinces in southern Afghanistan, in particular Helmand, Kandahar and Oruzgan, where security has sharply deteriorated this year because of Taliban attacks, Mr Costa said. The southern part of Afghanistan was displaying the ominous hallmarks of incipient collapse, with large-scale drug cultivation and trafficking, insurgency and terrorism, crime and corruption, he said in a statement released by his office. We are seeing a very strong connection between the increase in the insurgency on the one hand and the increase in cultivation on the other hand, he explained in the interview. The Taliban had distributed leaflets at night, inviting farmers to increase their poppy cultivation in exchange for protection, Mr Costa said. The rebels also profit from levies in return for protection of drug convoys passing through the border areas they controlled. There were also signs of a pernicious strategy to encourage farmers to increase poppy cultivation in an effort to force a government reaction, which would then turn the population further against the government, Mr Costa said. He specifically accused the former governor of Helmand Province, Sher Muhammad Akhund, of encouraging farmers to grow more poppies in the months before he was removed from office. The result was an increase of 160 percent in that villain province from its harvest last year, he said, the highest rise in the country. There is evidence of major pressure exerted by him in favor of cultivating opium, Mr Costa said. In the news briefing on Saturday, Mr Costa also criticized the governments action of removing the governor and giving him a position in the upper house of Parliament.
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