Kabul - Opium production was down by 10 per cent and the area under poppy cultivation in Afghanistan fell 22 per cent in 2009, while prices for the illicit crop has fallen to lowest in a decade, Afghan and UN officials 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.
"There were 18 poppy-free provinces last year, but this has gone up to 20 and poppy cultivation is down by 22 per cent," General Khodaidad, Afghan counter-narcotic minister told a press conference in Kabul.
Most of the cultivation is still centered in four southern provinces, where Taliban are most active, Antonio Maria Costa, executive director UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) told the same press conference.
"The very large amount of opium produced by farmers and the income derived by farmers generate a very significant amount of money to those who control the territory and these are the Taliban in the south," he said.
He said that the world demand for opium remained at around 5,000 tons per year, so the "10,000 tons" of excess production in Afghanistan was enough to satisfy the world for two more years even if there was no production in the coming years.
A summery of the report said production had not fallen "dramatically" because the opium yield this year increased by 15 per cent per hectare.
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.
While the total export value of the country's opium production would be published in coming weeks, Afghan UN drug chiefs said that the amount that Afghan farmers earned from opium this year has dropped to nearly 40 per cent - from 730 million dollars in 2008 to 438 million dollars in 2009.
Afghanistan exported 3.4 billion dollars worth of opium in 2008, according to UN report.
Costa said that the prices for opium was also the lowest in a decade, suggesting that the decline could have also been a deliberate move by drug traffickers to skyrocket the prices.
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, specially in the provinces where the cultivation has reached zero per cent.
"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.
