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UN: Afghan Drugs Trade Threatens Future Peace - Security Council - Global Policy Forum UN: Afghan Drugs Trade Threatens Future Peace
Agence France Presse
February 27, 2002Future peace in Afghanistan is under threat from the country's drug trade as illicit opium production rises following the collapse of the Taliban regime, UN officials warned on Wednesday.
Afghanistan was in danger of becoming yet again the world's main supplier of poppies, which produce both opium and heroin, the United Nations International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) said in its annual report released on Wednesday. "We are seriously concerned that illicit cultivation of opium poppy in Afghanistan is again increasing and we want to see international cooperation to prevent Afghanistan again becoming the world's largest producer of opium," the board's president Hamid Ghodse said.
He said drug production and drug trafficking was so entrenched within the fabric of Afghan society that sustained peace and security would not be achieved unless drug issues are tackled. In recent years, Afghanistan was the main source of illicit opium with 70 percent of opium production in 2000 and up to 90 percent of heroin in European drug markets understood to have originated in Afghanistan.
For much of their rule, the Taliban militia encouraged poppy cultivation. But in July 2000, the head of the Taliban Mullah Mohammad Omar banned poppy cultivation in an effort to win international diplomatic recognition. However, while the Taliban ban slashed poppy cultivation by 90 percent and the world's opium production by some 60 percent, "illicit cultivation in other areas has continued unabated," the report warned.
Afghanistan's new interim government, led by Hamid Karzai, which took power after the Taliban were ousted in the US-led war on terrorism, has also decreed a ban on poppy production and trade. Ghodse urged the international community to support Afghanistan in implementing the new government's ban, which is "much more comprehensive" than the Taliban's measures.
On Monday, the United States waived narcotics sanctions against Afghanistan despite what it described as the country's demonstrable failure" to curb poppy cultivation, in a move aimed at supporting the interim government. US President George W. Bush said the sanctions were waived in "vital national interests".
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