VIENNA, 3 March 2005 — Opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan increased further in 2004, posing a threat to the country’s stability, and has reared its head in Pakistan after a long absence, the International Narcotics Control Board said here yesterday.
“In Afghanistan opium poppy cultivation increased from 3,200 tons 2003 to 4,200 tons in 2004 to itself,” the president of the INCB, Hamid Ghodse of Iran, told a press conference in Vienna as the agency released its report for 2004.
“This total comes close to the record of 4,600 tons registered in 1999 under the Taleban regime,” he added, warning that the renewed increase put Afghanistan “on the road to becoming a major drug-trafficking state.” In its report, the INCB estimated that a third of the opium poppies harvested in Afghanistan last year passed through countries in the region, in particular Kazakhstan and Tajikistan.
“The large quantities of Afghan heroin transiting through Central Asia toward the Russian Federation and other countries in Europe is adding to the illicit drug problems in this sub-region,” it remarked.
These problems included an increase in intravenous heroin use, which in turn contributed to the spread of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, in the region, notably in India and Nepal, it said.
The INCB said it noted with alarm that poppy cultivation returned last year to Pakistan, where authorities also confiscated acetic anhydride, a chemical used in the manufacture of heroin. The good news was that the cultivation of opium poppies “reduced significantly” in 2004 in Myanmar and Laos, and Thailand ceased to be an important supplier of opium and heroin, the report said. The INCB said it was also satisfied that the fight against the production of precursors, chemical compounds used in the manufacture of heroin and cocaine, had dropped.
Afghanistan was already the world’s top producer of poppy used to make opium. Last year’s dramatic increase threatens Afghanistan’s efforts to rebuild from decades of conflict, following the US-led invasion that toppled the Taleban in late 2001, the Asian representative for the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, Akira Fujino told reporters in Bangkok.
“The widespread drug problem is a severe threat to the young democracy, and the stability and the economic recovery of the country as a whole,” he said. “Not surprisingly, the unlimited and uncontrolled availability of both narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances in Afghanistan has contributed to a significant increase of drug abuse in the country itself,” he said. “The situation calls for a very swift response by the international community.”
Reacting to the INCB report, the government said that Afghanistan will step up the fight against drugs in coming months. “The government of Afghanistan, within the help of the international community, is firmly pursuing the fight against narcotics on all fronts,” a statement by President Hamid Karzai’s office said. It was taking measures including eradicating poppy fields, curtailing drug production, interdiction and punishing traffickers, it added.
The government said a key part of its drive to make Afghanistan a “narcotics-free country” was to provide alternative livelihoods to farmers who make a living from growing opium poppies. Afghan authorities were “working to close drug markets, seize narcotics which are being smuggled all over Afghanistan and to arrest those involved in drug smuggling and are reforming the judicial systems in order to be able to bring drug smugglers to justice,” the statement said.
In its report, the INCB estimated that one-third of the opium poppies harvested in Afghanistan last year passed through countries in the region, in particular Kazakhstan and Tajikistan. “The large quantities of Afghan heroin transiting through Central Asia toward the Russian Federation and other countries in Europe is adding to the illicit drug problems in this sub-region,” it remarked.
