Source: The New York Times
Author: Jack Healy
KABUL, Afghanistan — Despite increased efforts to destroy fields of opium poppies and wean Afghan farmers off the country’s biggest cash crop, poppy cultivation in Afghanistan rose in 2011 and spread into areas once declared “poppy free,” according to a United Nations survey released Tuesday.
The United Nations drug control agency said that insecurity and soaring opium prices in Afghanistan — the world’s largest opium producer — were the driving factors in a 7 percent increase in the amount of land sown with poppies. It was the second year in a row of rising poppy cultivation.
The increase amounts to a troubling signal for Afghan and Western officials who have spent hundreds of millions of dollars trying to disrupt opium-smuggling operations and the insurgent networks that profit from them, while also cajoling poppy farmers to switch to legal crops like wheat, pomegranates or saffron.
Their efforts have run headlong into the increasingly powerful economic incentives behind poppy growing, whereby one acre of land can produce more than $4,000 worth of opium. Officials are also confronting rising levels of drug addiction as more Afghans take advantage of relatively cheap, high-quality heroin and opium.
Categories: Afghanistan, Crime, Health, War