Opium

Afghanistan has a monopoly on global opium poppy cultivation (92 per cent), the raw material for the world’s deadliest drug – heroin. The size and impact of the opium economy in Afghanistan were documented in the Afghanistan Opium Survey 2009 published in September. Less well known, however, is the size of the opiate trade once it leaves Afghanistan, and its impact on the world. In a new report, Addiction, Crime and Insurgency: The Transnational Threat of Afghan Opium , UNODC shows the devastating consequences that the 900 tons of opium and 375 tons of heroin that are trafficked from Afghanistan every year have on ... Read Full Story

The Obama administration is considering whether to pay off Afghan farmers to stop them from growing heroin poppies on contract for the Taliban, senior officials said Tuesday. Paying farmers not to plant poppy would essentially supplant U.S. cash for the fees paid up front by the Taliban to its contract farmers. The idea seems to follow logically from the administration's policy of protecting Afghan civilians and eroding support for the insurgency, but skeptics say it won't work because farmers would take the money and plant poppies anyway. No decision has been made on whether to offer the payments, and time is short since some ... Read Full Story

KABUL (Reuters) - The British military is mystified after what was first announced as a major haul of opium poppy seeds amounted to nothing more than a hill of beans. British troops came across a bag of seeds -- weighing 1.3 tons -- during a major operation near the provincial capital of southern Helmand last week, said a British military spokesman. The find was originally trumpeted as a big haul of opium poppy seeds. Afghanistan produces about 90 percent of the world's opium. The fight against opium production is a major element of the battle against the insurgency in Afghanistan because opium is the ... Read Full Story

Opium-poppy eradication has been hailed as a success in much of Afghanistan’s north and east by the Karzi government and U.S. sources, allowing counternarcotics officials to declare 18 provinces there as “poppy-free” despite record opium cultivation in the south and southwest. Great news right…not… UN officials say that many former opium farmers in those poppy-free areas have switched to another lucrative and illegal drug crop: marijuana. Afghanistan is now the world’s largest producer of two illegal drugs — heroin from opium poppies and cannabis. The latest assessment on the Afghan narcotics trade says cultivation of opium poppies in Afghanistan is likely to fall this ... Read Full Story

Past US efforts to combat the Afghan opium trade, a major source of funds for the insurgency, have been wasteful and Washington plans to revamp its strategy, a top regional envoy said Saturday. "The United States alone is spending over 800 million dollars a year on counter-narcotics. We have gotten nothing out of it, nothing," Ambassador Richard Holbrooke said, at the Brussels Forum conference. "It is the most wasteful and ineffective programme I have seen in 40 years in and out of the government," the new US representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan told an audience of senior world politicians and experts. "We are going ... Read Full Story