After reaching record highs again last year, an escalating trend that has continued each year since the 2001 U.S. war against Afghanistan began, the production of opium in Afghanistan has dropped this year, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
This year's Afghanistan Opium Survey found that 18 of 34 provinces in the country are now opium-free, compared with only 13 provinces last year. Production continues "almost exclusively in provinces where the insurgency against U.S. and NATO forces is ongoing." Helmand province accounted for two-thirds of the country's total production. About 98 percent of cultivation is concentrated in seven southwest provinces that include Helmand.
Afghanistan still is the world's largest supplier of opium. As the Washington Post noted yesterday,
The thriving Afghan drug trade has emerged as one of the most embarrassing aspects of the U.S.-led war on terrorism. Afghanistan's Taliban rulers had nearly eradicated the opium trade before they were overthrown by the United States for providing a safe haven to al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden. In 2001, the Taliban had reduced the amount of Afghan land where opium poppies were grown to less than 20,000 acres.
But since the Taliban's ouster, the Afghan opium industry has made massive strides. Last year, Afghanistan had planted more than 476,000 acres of opium poppies, providing Europe with its chief source of heroin....
According to a U.N. official, the Taliban is profiting from a tax on farmers and drug traffickers in areas under its control, earning between $200 and $400 million last year.
