UN: Opium Surge to Hit Afghan Neighbors
Pastor Dale Morgan
UN: Opium Surge to Hit Afghan Neighbors*
By AMIR SHAH
The Associated Press
Wednesday, October 31, 2007; 12:43 PM
KABUL, Afghanistan -- A "tsunami" of opium will hit Afghanistan's
neighbors if border security remains weak and officials fail to
intercept the drug, whose profits fund terrorism, the U.N. anti-drug
chief said Wednesday.
Afghanistan's opium poppy harvest poses a "major threat" to global
public health and to the security of neighboring countries because more
than 90 percent of the profits flow to international criminal gangs and
terrorist networks, said Antonio Maria Costa, chief of the U.N. Office
on Drugs and Crime.
Since 2005, new heroin routes have emerged through Pakistan and Central
Asia into China and India, he said.
"If border control is not improved, Afghanistan's neighbors will be hit
by a tsunami of the most deadly drug," Costa said in a statement on the
opening day of an international anti-drug meeting.
Afghanistan saw a record harvest of 9,000 tons of opium in 2007, the
U.N. said, a 34 percent increase from 6,724 short tons in 2006. The
export value of the country's opium is estimated at $4 billion, up 29
percent from 2006. The opium sales equal more than half of Afghanistan's
legal gross domestic product.
Gen. Khodaidad, Afghanistan's acting counter-narcotics minister, who
uses one name, told a group of counter-narcotics officials from
Afghanistan's neighboring countries, the European Union, the United
States and NATO, that the country can't solve its drug problem by itself.
"We all know that opium and heroin cause severe, severe problems,
addictions, corruption, criminality, terrorism," Khodaidad said at the
opening of the two-day meeting. "Afghanistan is not alone. Many
countries in the region share this problem. If we are all part of the
problem we are all part of the solution."
Jean-Luc Lemahieu, a UNODC official, said the international body is
looking at regional border solutions for Afghanistan such as purchasing
communications equipment that officials in neighboring countries could
use to coordinate with each other on drug searches. UNODC is also
exploring the possibility of joint operations by neighboring countries,
he said.
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NATO's International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan has said
it will increase its role in the drug fight next year, stepping up
interdictions of drug traffickers and raiding drug labs.
"We hope they have a far more outspoken role in the drug labs and in the
trafficking," Lemahieu said. "If you see a big drug convoy, don't let it
go."