Afghani drugs becoming a major Australian problem

AFGHAN heroin has been smuggled into Australia in increasing quantities in recent years, surpassing Southeast Asia's Golden Triangle as the principal source, as the deepening insurgency and a shift in US counter-narcotics policy block efforts to curb Afghanistan's flourishing opium trade. The Australian Crime Commission and Australian Federal Police say Afghanistan is becoming the dominant source of heroin in this country, accounting for as much as two-thirds of the drug imports in recent years. The latest International Narcotics Control Strategy report from the US State Department says that despite a decade of counter-narcotics efforts, Afghanistan remains the world's largest producer of opium poppies, responsible for 90 per cent of the opium gum used to manufacture heroin worldwide, worth $2.8 billion a year. UN figures show opium production has exploded in the decade since US-led forces invaded Afghanistan, with curbing the heroin trade a key objective. In 2001, poppy fields covered 7600ha and produced 185 tonnes of opium, last year they covered 131,000ha and produced 6900 tonnes.

IN May last year, Afghan national army commandos backed by coalition forces made an eye-popping find when they raided an insurgent stronghold in the town of Marjah in Afghanistan's southern Helmand province. Along with a large stash of bomb-making materials, they stumbled on the biggest opium cache located in Afghanistan. There were 18,000kg of raw opium, 200kg of heroin, 1000kg of hashish, 72,000kg of poppy seed and more than 20,000kg of precursor chemicals used to process opium into morphine and heroin. The discovery of the stash was proof of Afghanistan's emergence as not only the world's largest supplier of opium, responsible for more than 90 per cent of global stocks, but as a leading producer of processed heroin, which is flowing into Western markets including Australia. The narcotics factory at Marjah was one of 25 drug laboratories discovered and destroyed in Afghanistan last year. Tonnes of narcotics have been burned, several big traffickers imprisoned and others extradited to face trial in the US.

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Opium production in Afghanistan may fall in 2010, UN reports

Productivity could stay stable or fall, continuing a trend since 2007 which has seen a one-third drop in production, according to a new UNODC study. The report is based on farmers' intentions at the start of the planting season and gives an early picture of the 2010 crop. The cultivation of opium – raw material for the world's deadliest drug, heroin – in Afghanistan could drop this year, the head of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said today, as bad weather is forecast during the country's current growing season.

It also found a correlation between insurgency and high cultivation, with nearly 80 per cent of villages with very poor security conditions growing poppies but in only 7 per cent of villages untouched by violence. The UNODC report pointed out that in parts of Afghanistan where the Government is more able to enforce the law, nearly two thirds of farmers said they did not grow opium because it is banned, whereas in the southeast, where authorities' reach is weaker, just under 40 per cent of farmers cited the ban as a reason for not cultivating poppies.

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Taliban suspected of stockpiling Afghan opium

Violent Helmand province—a Taliban stronghold—accounts for more than half of Afghanistan's opium production. Antonio Maria Costa of UNODC said that the Taliban militants levy a tax on farmers and also provide protection for convoys smuggling opium into neighboring countries.

A recent UN survey says that the net value of Afghanistan's annual poppy crop is a billion U.S. dollars. The street price is much higher. Opium is processed into heroin, and the UNODC report states that in the short-term, the world's heroin market will be determined by what happens with opium production in southern Afghanistan.

Enough Afghan opium to supply world demand for two years has effectively gone missing, with the Taliban suspected of stockpiling supplies in a bid to corner the market, the United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has revealed.

Afghanistan is the world's leading narcotics supplier. Earlier this month, a U.N. study revealed Afghanistan's opium production had dropped dramatically this year partly because of new aggressive drug-fighting tactics in the country. According to the UNODC report, production dipped by 10 percent this year while cultivation fell by 22 percent.

However, a senior U.N. spokesman warned that this positive news should be treated with caution. "We figure the world needs around 4,000 tons of opium a year for licit and illicit purposes. But this year around 6,900 tons was produced, with 7,700 tons delivered last year and more than 8,500 the year before that. So if the world only needs around 4,000 tons of opium and a further 1,000 is seized, where is the rest of it going?"

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