Afghan opium production still high

A number of the posts on this blog have emphasized that poppy/opium production generates most of the income for Afghanistan. It is controlled by groups that are opposed to the US occupation, by groups that are allied with occupation, by criminal cartels or gangs. It is so important that, from what has been reported, the US/NATO poppy eradication program has been scaled back or put on hold out of fear of pushing more Afghans into one or another segments of the Taliban. Malalai Joya stresses in her book, A Woman Among Warlords, that many of the warlords are involved in this industry and yet also hold important positions in the Karzai cabinet or in the national Parliament. However, this is not the whole story. Since the early 1980s, the CIA has been involved in fostering the development and growth of poppy production in Afghanistan, influencing the routes that the poppy shipments take out of the country, perhaps taking some of the profits as well. In the larger picture, there are large financial interests outside of Afghanistan that benefit. You can see a fuller analysis in Alfred W. McCoy's book The Politics of Heroin.

Bob Sheak

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PressTV -

http://www.presstv.in/detail.aspx?id=109291&sectionid=351020403

Afghanistan opium production reaches 6,900 tons

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 02:08:58 GMT

Opium production rate has soared to 6,900 tons in Afghanistan in the past 10 years despite the presence of 100,000 foreign troops in the country for nearly eight years.

A report by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime said on Wednesday that Afghanistan produces 92 percent of the world's opium that has devastating global consequences. The UN report also noted that Afghanistan's illegal opium production is worth 65 billion dollars. The heroin and opium market feeds 15 million addicts, with Europe, Russia and Iran consuming half the supply, UNODC reported. The UN office estimated some 15 million people take the drug each year, out of which 100,000 people die annually, warning that opium use contributes to the spread of HIV and AIDS.

The report indicated that less than two percent of the opium and heroin is seized by the local authorities before it leaves Afghanistan. The Afghanistan-Pakistan border region has turned into the world's largest free-trade zone in anything and everything that is illicit, from drugs and weapons to even people and migrants, added the UNODC study.

The report added that Afghanistan has a stockpile of enough opium to supply global demand for two years underlining the need to locate and destroy these stocks urgently.