Pubdate: Sat, 05 Mar 2005
Source: Washington Post (DC)
Copyright: 2005 The Washington Post Company
Contact:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/491
Author: Arshad Mohammed
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/heroin.htm (Heroin)

U.S. REPORT WARNS OF AFGHAN DRUG STATE

Heroin production in Afghanistan represents "an enormous threat to world 
stability," and the country is "on the verge of becoming a narcotics 
state," the State Department said in a report released yesterday.

Despite steps by the Afghan government and foreign donors, the U.S. 
International Narcotics Control Strategy Report said that the Afghan 
"narcotics situation continues to worsen" more than three years after 
U.S.-led forces toppled the Taliban government.

The report said Colombia has made "impressive progress" against the drug 
trade but remains a major producer, and that traffickers continue to move 
drugs through Peru -- the second-largest cocaine producer, after Colombia.

The most dramatic conclusions in the report, an annual survey of the world 
drug trade, were about Afghanistan, where it praised President Hamid 
Karzai's efforts but said Afghan poppy cultivation more than tripled last 
year. "Afghanistan's illicit opium/heroin production can be viewed, for all 
practical purposes, as the rough equivalent of world illicit heroin 
production, and it represents an enormous threat to world stability," it said.

The area devoted to poppy cultivation in Afghanistan rose to 510,756 acres 
last year from 150,731 acres in 2003. Citing International Monetary Fund 
estimates that drugs account for 40 percent to 60 percent of the Afghan 
economy, the report added: "Afghanistan is on the verge of becoming a 
narcotics state."

The report said Afghan political conditions improved last year, but 
"criminal financiers and narcotics traffickers in and outside of 
Afghanistan take advantage of the ongoing instability."

The report provides the backdrop against which the U.S. government in 
September will decide which countries belong on the U.S. list of "major" 
drug-trafficking and drug-producing states.

The Bush administration will also then decide which nations "failed 
demonstrably to make substantial efforts" during the previous year to 
respect international agreements and U.S. legal requirements on 
counter-narcotics, leaving them vulnerable to losing some U.S. aid.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom