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 News from Around the Americas | August 2007 
Afghan Opium Crop Hits Record
 David Rohde - New York Times
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| | The report is likely to spark renewed debate about the $600 million US counternarcotics program in Afghanistan. |
UN survey sees push by Taliban.
Lashkar Gah, Afghanistan - Afghanistan produced record levels of opium in 2007 for the second straight year, led by a staggering 45 percent increase in the Taliban stronghold of Helmand Province, according to a UN survey.
The report is likely to spark renewed debate about the $600 million US counternarcotics program in Afghanistan, which has been dogged by security challenges and endemic corruption within the Afghan government.
"I think it is safe to say that we should be looking for a new strategy," said William B. Wood, the American ambassador to Afghanistan, commenting on the report's overall findings. "And I think that we are finding one."
Wood said the current American programs for eradication, interdiction, and alternative livelihoods should be intensified, but he added that spraying poppy crops with herbicide remained "a possibility." Afghan and British officials have opposed spraying, saying it would drive farmers into the arms of the Taliban.
While the report found that opium production dropped in northern Afghanistan, Western officials briefed on the assessment said, cultivation rose in the south, where Taliban insurgents urge farmers to grow poppies.
Although common farmers make comparatively little from the trade, opium is a major source of financing for the Taliban, who gain public support by protecting farmers' fields from eradication, according to American officials. They also receive a cut of the trade from traffickers they protect.
In Taliban-controlled areas, traffickers have opened more labs that process raw opium into heroin, vastly increasing its value. The number of drug labs in Helmand rose to roughly 50 from 30 the year before, and about 16 metric tons of chemicals used in heroin production have been confiscated this year.
The Western officials briefed on the report said countrywide production had increased from 2006 to 2007, but they did not know the final UN figure. They estimated a countrywide increase of 10 percent to 30 percent.
The new survey showed positive signs as well, officials said.
The sharp drop in poppy production in the north is likely to make this year's countrywide increase smaller than the growth in 2006.
Last year, a 160 percent increase in Helmand's opium crop fueled a 50 percent nationwide increase. Afghanistan produced a record 6,100 metric tons of opium poppies last year, 92 percent of the world's supply.
In Helmand, the breadth of the poppy trade is staggering. A sparsely populated desert province twice the size of Maryland, Helmand produces more narcotics than any country on earth, including Myanmar, Morocco, and Colombia. Rampant poverty, corruption among local officials, a Taliban resurgence, and spreading lawlessness have turned the province into a narcotics juggernaut.
Poppy prices that are 10 times higher than those for legal crops have so warped the local economy that some farmhands refused to take jobs harvesting legal crops this year, local farmers said. |
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