Agence France-Presse, 07 August 2006
The war against drugs in Afghanistan needs a change of strategy because it has been unsuccessful so far, the top United Nations official in the world's biggest heroin-producing country said.
"Nobody can say that we have been successful if the poppy production has increased," Tom Koenigs, the UN secretary general's special representative in Afghanistan told a monthly press conference on Monday.
"Certainly the strategy and the effort have to be rethought," said Koenigs, adding: "The problem has increased and the remedy has to adjust".
Figures for Afghanistan's 2006 harvest of opium poppies -- which are used to make heroin -- are not yet known but the UN has said that it is set to pass the 4,100 tonnes produced in 2005.
Last year's haul was worth 2.7 billion dollars, forming a sizeable part of the destitute and insurgency-wracked country's economy.
Afghanistan is the world's top producer of opium and supplies 90 percent of the heroin sold in Europe, despite moves by world powers including the United States and Britain to help combat the trade.
Afghan officials have linked the drugs trade to a soaring insurgency headed by the Taliban, the fundamentalist regime which ironically slashed opium output before its ouster in late 2001 by a US-led coalition.
Koenigs stressed that there was no easy answer to the problem.
"We know that if we start eradicating the whole surface of poppy cultivation in Helmand (the main opium producing province) we will increase the activity of the insurgency and increase the number of insurgents," he said.
The international community had to rethink its plans to help farmers substitute other crops for opium, which is hardy, easily-transportable and reaps relatively big profits for growers, Koenigs said.
"Do we have a market for the alternative product and do we get the product quickly to the market?" he asked.
"We should carefully rethink the concept of what could be the alternative for the farmers and implement and support it with the necessary funds", he said.
He also cautioned against focussing on one province and ignoring other areas in Afghanistan.
"We cannot say, because you have cultivated so much poppy we focus all the development aid on Helmand, and nothing for other provinces."
However coming up with new ideas would be "very difficult and costly" he added.
Koenigs said he was not advocating the legalisation of poppy growing but said "those who make big money" from the trade should be targeted.
Yet the task would be difficult in Afghanistan's unstable environment where the government did not have control over the whole country.
NATO's chief in southern Afghanistan, General David Richards, said Sunday that the rebels involved in the unrest were not only Taliban but also drug traffickers and other criminals upset by the NATO deployment, which is twice the size of the previous US-led coalition force in the south.
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Citation: "War on drugs in Afghanistan needs a change of strategy: UN," Agence France-Presse, 07 August 2006.
Original URL: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060807/wl_sthasia_afp/afghanistanundrugs
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