KABUL (AFP) — Afghan opium cultivation and production dropped in 2008 for the first time in three years, partly because of drought, with almost all the illegal crop grown in unrest-hit areas, the UN said Tuesday.
The destitute country produces around 90 percent of the world's opium, used to make heroin sold in Europe and Central Asia, with production reaching record levels last year and profits said to feed a Taliban-led insurgency.
Last year, the world was "hit by a heroin tsunami," Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, said in a statement. "This year the opium flood waters have started to recede."
The UN agency, in a report on its annual poppy survey, said there was a 19 percent decrease in opium cultivation to 157,000 hectares, down from a record harvest of 193,000 in 2007. It marked the first drop in cultivation since 2005.
The drop was due to strong government leadership in certain areas that discouraged farmers from planting opium through campaigns, peer pressure and the promotion of alternative development, the report said.
But government-led eradication of fields was not a factor: poppy crops were destroyed in four times less area this year than last.
Drought also contributed to crop failure, particularly in the north and northwest, where most of the opium cultivation is rain-fed, the report said.
Ninety-eight percent of the country's opium this year came from seven southwestern provinces, "where there are permanent Taliban settlements, and where organised crime groups profit from the chaos," the report said.
Two-thirds of it was produced in the southern province of Helmand, which experiences some of the most insurgency-linked violence, the report said.
"If Helmand were a country, it would once again be the world's biggest producer of illicit drugs," Costa said. "There is now a perfect overlap between zones of high risk and regions of high opium cultivation."
Opium production -- worth about 731 million dollars to farmers this year, multiplying manyfold as it is traded -- likely provided insurgents with "several hundred million dollars," Costa told AFP in an interview.
This was through a 10 percent "tax" on farmers that is also sometimes claimed by corrupt officials.
The total number of provinces growing the hardy opium plant jumped from 13 to 18 out of 34, with most opium-growing regions in the trouble-hit south.
Due to higher yield, "opium production has dropped less dramatically, down six percent from 8,200 tonnes to 7,700 tonnes," the report said.
Meanwhile, the human toll to eradicate the crop surged to at least 78 people so far in 2008, most of them policemen, killed in attacks linked to the removal, the UN report said. Nineteen people died in such violence in 2007.
Higher wheat prices, in line with global trends, could provide further incentive to persuade farmers to move away from cultivating opium, but the UN statement said the situation was "vulnerable to a relapse."
Costa said prevalent "corruption, disorganisation and warlordism favour opium cultivation" and the government needed to take greater steps to root that out.
Asked about the chances of Afghanistan's opium production remaining on a downward trend, Costa told AFP that remained to be seen.
"The threat of eradication is very weak, development assistance is slow," he said. However, "the move to wheat may endure."
"The situation has to be reviewed within a few months... One year is not enough to be convinced that something structural has changed," he added.
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