U.N. forsees Afghan poppy harvest boom

KABUL, Afghanistan --A "cancer of insurgency" in southern Afghanistan could drive the 2007 opium poppy harvest to record levels, the U.N. drug agency chief said Monday.

The U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime predicted that last year's harvest record would be broken by an increase in 15 provinces, including Helmand -- the world's largest poppy-growing region and the scene of a growing number of attacks by Taliban fighters who use opium to fund their insurgency.

The office said in a new report that, while cultivation was expected to drop in central and northern Afghanistan, the drug trade is flourishing in the south.

"On balance, the increase in the south may be greater than the decline elsewhere, causing a possible further rise in Afghanistan's aggregate drug supply this year," the U.N. said. A strong eradication campaign could lower the year-end totals, it said.

Antonio Maria Costa, UNODC executive director, said the increase in the south was a result of security problems. Many southern regions have no government presence, and farmers act with impunity. Taliban fighters protect opium growers and transport and tax the crop, he said.

Opium cultivation has surged since the ouster of the Taliban in late 2001. Under strong international pressure, the former regime had enforced an effective ban on poppy growing by threatening to jail farmers -- virtually eradicating the crop in 2000.

But Afghan and Western counter-narcotics officials say Taliban-led militants are now implicated in the drug trade as part of their efforts to increase their support among the people of the region and raise money to help in their fight against NATO forces.

"It's clear that the insurgents are deriving an income, which they use to pay salaries for their foot soldiers (and) to buy weapons," he said. "All of this has created quite a cancer of insurgency and illicit drug cultivation that has to be cut through in the years to come."

Last year, opium cultivation rose an alarming 59 percent, deepening fears that Afghanistan is rapidly becoming a narco-state.

The U.N. said poppies were cultivated this year in each of 28 villages visited in Helmand province and in 27 of 29 villages visited in neighboring Kandahar, the Taliban's former stronghold.

It also predicted a sharp increase in cultivation in Nangarhar -- touted in recent years as an example of the success of efforts to persuade farmers to grow licit crops -- as well as in Kunar and Uruzgan provinces.

The U.N. saw a decrease in cultivation in seven mostly northern provinces, and said there was an indication of a split in attitudes between the north and south.

President Hamid Karzai has vowed to rid Afghanistan of opium. International donors are directing hundreds of millions of dollars in development aid to rural areas to make it profitable for farmers to grow wheat, or plant orchards. Eradication teams have stepped up their campaign to destroy opium poppies in the fields before harvest.

However, critics say corrupt Afghan authorities and security forces are themselves heavily involved in the trade and are unlikely to mount a serious crackdown, while Karzai is wary of a rural backlash against his already weak government.

Costa said a system of incentives for farmers in the north was working well, but that only 1 percent of $100 million in assistance funds had been dispersed by the Afghan government and the international community.

He said the eradication effort needed to be increased to be effective. Last year, about 10 percent of the crop was eradicated, but Costa said that should rise to close to 30 percent.

"If farmers have one chance out of three or four (of having fields eradicated) they will think twice and consequently next year they may consider raising cattle or chicken or cultivating sugar beets," he said.

U.S. Ambassador Ronald Neumann called Helmand a "gigantic problem" that prevents people from seeing progress made in other parts of the country.

"Helmand is threatening the success of the rest of the nation," he told The Associated Press last week after flying over the green poppy fields of southern Afghanistan.

The U.N. said poppies earn an estimated $2,000 an acre, about 10 times the income from legal crops.

"We need to change the risk/reward balance for farmers, increasing both the attractiveness of licit activity and the retribution for not complying with the law," he said.

Afghan drug production already accounts for more than 90 percent of global supply of opium, the raw material for heroin.

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Associated Press reporter Fisnik Abrashi contributed to this report.