Pubdate: Tue, 28 Nov 2006
Source: USA Today (US)
Section: Page 1A
Copyright: 2006 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc
Contact:  http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/index.htm
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/466
Author: Donna Leinwand
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/heroin.htm (Heroin)

AFGHAN OPIUM FIGHT HURTS POOREST

Report: Heroin Trade Thrives

U.S. and European efforts to end heroin production in Afghanistan 
have done little to hamper the drug industry and have hurt the 
country's poorest people, according to a report by the United Nations 
and the World Bank.

The report, released today, is the latest indication of the 
difficulties faced by the British-led effort to eradicate 
Afghanistan's opium crop, which drives the economy in parts of the 
embattled nation and has helped to fund a resurgence of the Taliban. 
The report says the cultivation of poppies that produce opium, from 
which heroin is made, permeates daily life in Afghanistan, and 
eliminating the illegal drug trade there could take decades.

The opium trade accounts for about $2.7 billion in Afghanistan's 
economy -- equal to more than one-third of the nation's gross 
domestic product -- and is responsible for thousands of jobs, the 
report says. The Taliban government, which had harbored al-Qaeda, 
virtually eliminated opium production in 2001, before U.S.-led forces 
toppled it. Production has soared since, even as the United States 
and its allies have stepped up efforts to kill fields of opium and 
persuade farmers to grow other crops.

Opium has remained the nation's most lucrative crop by far, and drug 
traffickers -- through incentives and intimidation -- have kept 
farmers in the opium business across Afghanistan, which the United 
Nations says produces about 87% of the world's opium. Last year, 
according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 
Afghanistan produced 4,100 metric tons of opium, nearly as much as 
the biggest harvest in 1999. The U.N. predicts a record harvest in 2007.

Today's report describes how opium farmers' flexibility has helped 
harvests increase. When government officials end the opium trade in 
one province, opium brokers typically move cultivation and trade 
elsewhere, the report says.

Counternarcotics efforts also have fueled corruption, the report 
says. Farmers who can afford it have bribed local officials to 
preserve opium crops, while the poorest farmers have been driven 
deeper into debt when their crops are destroyed, the report says. 
Investigators found several instances in which farmers planned to 
replant opium to pay their debts.

The report also says local government officials sometimes help drug 
lords drive competitors out of the market in exchange for a cut of 
the profits or protection payments.

Antonio Maria Costa of the U.N. Office of Drugs and Crime has 
recommended focusing agents on areas with less opium cultivation to 
keep such farming from spreading and help establish an alternative 
economy. The U.S. State Department's Anne Patterson, acknowledging 
"there is no silver bullet" to the opium problem, has said much of 
the growth in production is in areas with weak local governments.
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MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman