Opium farming in Afghanistan rising again, bleak UN report admits

[xchrom]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/apr/17/opium-poppy-farming-afghanistan-rising


An Afghan farmer cuts poppy bulbs near Kandahar. Afghanistan is the largest producer of opium poppies in the world – and output is expected to rise, according to the UN. Photograph: Majid Saeedi/Getty Images

Opium farming will increase across Afghanistan in 2012, driven by insecurity, massive corruption and economic fears for the future, spreading to more areas than it has in the past four to five years, the United Nations has warned.

Drugs help fund the Taliban insurgency, but Afghanistan's elite is also earning huge amounts from the trade and the government lacks the political will to clamp down on a crop worth hundreds of millions of dollars a year, the United Nations' leading drug control official in Afghanistan said.

The bleak figures were laid out in an annual risk assessment PDF, which has previously been announced with a press release but this year was uploaded to a UN website with no publicity.

Just 15 of Afghanistan's provinces, or well under half, are likely to be free of opium this year, the report said. In 2009 and 2010 poppy farming was eradicated from 20 provinces.

[hexola]

1. Opium is the "Oil" of the pharmencutical industry.

Just like oil - the USA craves Opiates...and we will fight wars to get it.

I have firmly believed our presence in Afghanistan has more to do with drugs - than oil.

[PDJane]

2. cherchez the CIA.........

funding black ops by the expediency of the drug wars for decades......

[Odin2005]

3. I've heard that in some places in Afghanistan EVERYONE is addicted to opium.