UN details 'devastating' impact of Afghan opium
Pastor Dale Morgan
UN details 'devastating' impact of Afghan opium*
October 22, 2009 - 2:09PM
Afghan opium is unleashing a "devastating" impact across the world,
according to a new UN report, funding the Taliban and other terror
groups and killing thousands in consumer countries.
Afghanistan produces 92 percent of the world's opium in a trade that is
worth some 65 billion US dollars (43 billion euros), feeds some 15
million addicts worldwide and kills around 100,000 people annually, the
report said.
"We have identified the global consequences of the Afghan opium trade.
Some are devastating," said Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of
the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
"I urge the friends of Afghanistan to recognize that, to a large extent,
these uncomfortable truths may be the result of their benign neglect,"
he said at Wednesday's unveiling of the report.
Western nations have 100,000 troops in Afghanistan battling Taliban
insurgents, but the report said the failure to crack down on production
of opium -- the basis of heroin -- has allowed the militants to thrive.
"The Taliban's direct involvement in the opium trade allows them to fund
a war machine that is becoming technologically more complex and
increasingly widespread," said Costa.
The UNODC estimates the Taliban earned 90-160 million US dollars a year
from taxing the production and smuggling of opium and heroin between
2005 and 2009, as much as double the amount they earned while in power
nearly a decade ago.
Costa described the Afghan-Pakistani border as "the world's largest free
trade zone in anything and everything that is illicit", blighted by
drugs, weapons and illegal immigration.
And the "perfect storm of drugs and terrorism" may be on the move along
drug trafficking routes through Central Asia.
Profits made from opium are being funnelled into militant groups in
Central Asia and "a big part of the region could be engulfed in
large-scale terrorism, endangering its massive energy resources", Costa
said.
But Central Asian states intercept just five percent of the drugs
flowing across their territory, the report said, compared to 20 percent
in Iran and 17 percent in Pakistan.
And as opiates reach the more lucrative markets of Europe, interdiction
rates fall as low as two percent in European Union members such as
Bulgaria, Greece and Romania, the UNODC said.
The drugs also have a devastating impact in consumer countries.
Heroin overdoses kill more than 10,000 people in NATO countries every
year -- five times the total number of alliance troops that have been
killed in Afghanistan since the US-led invasion of 2001.
And the report said there was an unaccounted stockpile of 12,000 tons of
Afghan opium -- enough to meet more than two years of worldwide heroin
demand.
"With so much opium in evil hands, the need to locate and destroy these
stocks is more urgent than ever," Costa said.
But the UN agency said the international community was not devoting
enough resources to fighting drug production in Afghanistan.
"Seizing Afghan opium where it is produced is infinitely more efficient
and cheaper than trying to do so where it is consumed," Costa said.
"This is not just a shared responsibility: it's hard-headed self-interest."
The UN report said many of Afghanistan's drug barons with links to the
insurgency "are known to Afghan and foreign intelligence services".
But their names have not been submitted to the UN Security Council,
despite two resolutions designed to ban their foreign travel and seize
their assets, it said.
© 2009 AFP
This story is sourced direct from an overseas news agency as an
additional service to readers. Spelling follows North American usage,
along with foreign currency and measurement units.