U.N. survey finds surge in opium cultivation in Afghanistan,
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Afghanistan is on its way to becoming a “narco-state” and U.S. and NATO-led forces in the country should get more involved in fighting the drug trade as well as terrorists, according to a United Nations report released Thursday. “It would be an historical error to abandon Afghanistan to opium, right after we reclaimed it from the Taliban and al-Qaida,” said Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime. The agency found that this year’s cultivation of opium _ the raw material for heroin _ was up by nearly two-thirds. Bad weather and disease kept production from setting a new record, although it still accounted for 87 percent of the world supply, up from 76 percent in 2003. The illegal trade is booming despite political progress in the country, including the first presidential election, and local drug control efforts led by British military advisers. Opium is now the “main engine of economic growth and the strongest bond among previously quarrelsome peoples,” according to the report. It valued the trade at US$2.8 billion (A2.15 billion), or more than 60 percent of Afghanistan’s 2003 gross domestic product. Most is smuggled across the eastern border with Pakistan, where Taliban and al-Qaida remnants hiding out demand transit and protection fees, Costa told a news conference. “Fighting narcotics is equivalent to fighting terrorism,” he said. Calling the problem “overwhelming” for the weak Afghan army and government, Costa called on U.S.- and NATO-led forces to help out more in operations against drug labs and convoys of traffickers. He cited two recent raids conducted by the Afghan army but aided by U.S. air cover and British troops on the ground. “We are not really talking necessarily about even a greater NATO involvement directly in the operation, but a greater assistance to enable the Afghan army progressively so, and the Afghan police to go ahead with this kind of exercise,” Costa said. NATO nations have been reluctant to have their troops get directly involved in the drug fight. But last week in New York, NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer urged the United Nations to come up with a drug-fighting plan for Afghanistan and said the NATO-led mission in Afghanistan would be willing to discuss working under that umbrella. International donors also must lend support with measures to alleviate poverty in the countryside and to root out corruption in the Afghan army, police, judiciary and provincial administrations, he said. Costa also urged the Afghan government to pursue a “significant eradication campaign,” prosecute major drug trafficking cases and take “measurable actions against corruption in government.” “The fear that Afghanistan might degenerate into a narco-state is slowly becoming a reality,” he said in the report. “Opium cultivation, which has spread like wildfire throughout the country, could ultimately incinerate everything: democracy, reconstruction and stability.” More : accessmylibrary.com |