Kabul - Opium production is down by 10 per cent while the area under poppy cultivation in Afghanistan fell 22 per cent in 2009, a new United Nations report said Wednesday.
However, the war-shattered Afghanistan still remains the world's largest supplier of the drug, producing 6,900 tons of opium, from which heroin is derived.
"World demand for opium remains stable (at around 5,000 tons per year), which is several thousand tons lower than what Afghanistan produces every year," a report from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), released in Kabul Wednesday said.
It said production had not fallen "dramatically" because the opium yield this year increased by 15 per cent per hectare.
The decline was also seen in the southern province of Helmand, the largest opium producing province in the country and where Taliban militants are most active. The province grew two-thirds of the national total last year.
"This year, the most significant decrease comes in Helmand province where cultivation declined by a third, from 103,590 hectares in 2008 to 69,833," the report said.
"At a time of pessimism about the situation in Afghanistan, these results are a welcome piece of good news and demonstrate that progress is possible," UNODC executive director Antonio Maria Costa said.
The UN report attributed the decline in production "to more robust counter-narcotics operations by Afghan and NATO forces" and efforts of a small number of governors. It also boasted that the number of opium-free provinces had risen from 18 to 20, of the country's 34 provinces.
NATO-led forces that together with US-led coalition forces have more than 100,000 troops in the country had stayed away from dealing with the drug problem until last year, but the alliance decided to target the drug barons and their labs after more evidence emerged that the militants fund their insurgency partly by drug money.
Cultivation and production has declined since 2007, when the all-time record of 8,200 tons was recorded. Opium production fell 6 per cent and cultivation declined 19 per cent in 2008.
Taliban militants, who ruled Afghanistan for six years, banned the crop and introduced the death penalty for opium growers in July 2000, more than a year before their regime was toppled by a US-led military invasion. The move was widely seen by the militants to help boost the prices for opium, which was lower than previous years due to large stockpiles.
Wednesday's UN report could be small solace for the Western-backed Kabul regime amid an upsurge in insurgent attacks and political limbo caused by the controversial August 20 presidential elections, the official results of which have yet to be announced.
The partial election results showed President Hamid Karzai ahead of his nearest rival, Abdullah Abdullah, by more than 12 per cent, but mounting allegations of fraud and intimidation of voters threaten to undermine the election, the second in the history of Afghanistan.
Major candidates including Abdullah, who repeatedly accused Karzai of running a "narco-state" during the campaign, have warned that they would not accept the outcome, while their supporters threatened to resort to street violence if the election is stolen by fraud.
Costa said opium eradication by Afghan forces supported by international troops "continues to be a failure," as only less than 4 per cent of the planted areas have been eradicated in the past two years.
He urged the government and international community to provide greater support to Afghan farmers to find an alternative, while insisting that "drug lords should be brought to justice."
"In post-election Afghanistan, the rural development push must be as robust as the current military offensive - to feed and employ farmers, not just to search and destroy their drugs," he added.
