UN reports sharp fall in Afghan opium production

Growing opium is hardly worth the risk any more for Dost Mohammad, a farmer in Helmand, a province of Afghanistan which by itself produces almost enough opium to satisfy all the heroin addicts on earth.

"Opium farmers benefit nothing from the crops and spend their day and night in misery," he told Reuters.

"We spend six months in the field working hard, then the government can destroy it in a single day."

A United Nations report said Wednesday Opium production in Afghanistan has fallen for a second year running with poppy cultivation down 22 percent and prices among the lowest in a decade.

"Bottom starting to fall"

The destitute country produces around 90 percent of the world's opium, used to make heroin sold on the streets of Europe and Central Asia, with profits feeding a resurgent Taliban in an eight-year war.

"The bottom is starting to fall out of the Afghan opium market," U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime executive director Antonio Maria Costa said in the report, to which the Afghan government contributed.

"For the second year in a row, cultivation, production, workforce, prices, revenues, exports and its GDP share are all down, while the number of poppy-free provinces and drug seizures continue to rise," it said.

The report said opium cultivation in Afghanistan fell by 22 percent to 123,000 hectares (304,000 acres), from 157,000 hectares in 2008 with the number of poppy-free provinces up to 20 from 18 -- out of the total 34.

Wiping out the crop has been a key component of Western efforts to stabilize Afghanistan -- labeled a "narco state" by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton -- since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion removed the Taliban regime.

For the second year in a row, cultivation, production, workforce, prices, revenues, exports and its GDP share are all down, while the number of poppy-free provinces and drug seizures continue to rise

U.N. report

Opium money, exports

Adam Khan, a smuggler who trades opium in several districts in Helmand, said the low price and the government's eradication operations in districts and villages previously controlled by the Taliban have badly affected the trade.

"I used to sell five kilos (11 pounds) for 40,000 Pakistani rupees ($480). Now it is not more than 15,000 to 16,000," he said.

Still, farmers like Dost Mohammad believe the traders are making their money, while the farmers suffer in poverty.

"The opium smugglers are immune between the government and Taliban," Dost Mohammad, who farms from the Helmand provincial capital Lashkar Gah, told Reuters.

"In the government's eyes, they are businessmen. With the Taliban, they are their source of lots of money," he said.

Most Afghan opium is processed into heroin inside the war-torn country, where it feeds rampant government corruption before being smuggled to Central Asia, Europe and the Middle East.

The United Nations puts the potential export value of Afghan narcotics at about $3.4 billion a year and Afghan officials have said drug profits provide the Taliban with as much as $100 million a year.

Ninety-nine percent of poppies are cultivated in southern and southwestern areas, among the most dangerous parts of Afghanistan where the Taliban and criminal networks are strongest.

Cultivation was down by a third in southern Helmand province, which grows the most poppies in Afghanistan and where British and U.S. troops launched fresh assaults against Taliban strongholds ahead of last month's elections.

"Dramatic turn-around"

The report attributed the "dramatic turn-around" to governor leadership, a more aggressive counter-narcotics offensive, the increased favoring of legal crops and the successful introduction of food to promote legal farming.

Average prices for dry opium fell by a third in the past year to about $64 a kilogram, from about $95 a kilogram, the lowest since the late 1990s when the Taliban were in power, the report said.

Falling prices and lower cultivation make opium production equivalent to four percent of Afghanistan's official GDP down from 27 percent in 2002.

But the report warned that illicit drug stockpiles may have reached 10,000 tons, enough to satisfy two years of world heroin addiction.

U.S. regional envoy Richard Holbrooke said this week that troops had "really rocked" the drug culture in southern Afghanistan, capturing major caches.

He has slammed past U.S. policy of eradicating poppy crops as ineffectual -- destroying farmers' livelihoods and spawning Taliban sympathizers.

While Wednesday's report called for more help from Afghan forces and NATO's 64,500 troops in Afghanistan, it welcomed military operations for creating a deterrent for traders and farmers.

It called for a regional approach in counter-narcotic operations and said major traffickers should be reported to the U.N. Security Council and brought to justice, rather than executed or pardoned for political expediency.

The opium smugglers are immune between the government and Taliban

Dost Mohammad,. a farmer