Taliban set to profit as blight hits opium yield
Source: Agencies |
May 14, 2010, Friday
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AFGHANISTAN'S opium yield is likely to drop as much as 30 percent this year because blight is destroying fields full of poppies in the south - driving up prices amid a countrywide push to grow legal crops, a United Nations official said yesterday.
Higher prices could also mean more money pouring in to the Taliban, which funds much of its insurgency with profits from the drug. Afghanistan supplies 90 percent of the world's opium, the main ingredient in heroin.
The blight, which turns the poppy plants black as they apparently rot from the inside, has hit about half of the poppy crop growing in the northern part of Helmand Province - the center of Afghanistan's poppy production, said Jean-Luc Lemahieu, the top official for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime in Afghanistan. It is also significantly affecting crops in southern Helmand and in neighboring Kandahar Province, he said.
The lower yield on the surface seems to be a boost to reducing opium poppy cultivation, but it is leading to wild price speculation that instead could encourage farmers to plant more poppies next year.
The price of fresh opium has jumped 57 percent from last year to about US$85 a kilogram in April, while dry opium prices are up 37 percent, according to UN data.
Prices spiked similarly in 2001 to 2003, peaking at just over US$300 a kilogram and sparking a surge in opium poppy cultivation over the next few years. That followed the former Taliban regime's virtual eradication of opium growing during its last year in power before it was ousted in 2001.
"We are monitoring those prices with the utmost caution because the last thing we'd like to witness is another gold rush as during 2001-2003," Lemahieu said.
A spokesman for the Afghan Counter Narcotics Ministry said that higher prices mean interdiction efforts will get more difficult.
Zalmai Afzali said a team for the ministry working on poppy eradication was attacked in eastern Nangarhar Province a few weeks ago and more funds for the insurgents could mean more attacks.
The Afghan government has made progress in recent years in getting provinces declared "poppy-free" and by offering incentives to switch to legal crops.
However, the poppy crop in Helmand and Kandahar has proved stubbornly resilient despite falling prices and stepped-up interdiction efforts.
Though there has been speculation that a poppy-killing blight could have been introduced in secret by NATO forces, Lemahieu said this was unlikely. "My inclination is that this is natural," he said.
Higher prices could also mean more money pouring in to the Taliban, which funds much of its insurgency with profits from the drug. Afghanistan supplies 90 percent of the world's opium, the main ingredient in heroin.
The blight, which turns the poppy plants black as they apparently rot from the inside, has hit about half of the poppy crop growing in the northern part of Helmand Province - the center of Afghanistan's poppy production, said Jean-Luc Lemahieu, the top official for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime in Afghanistan. It is also significantly affecting crops in southern Helmand and in neighboring Kandahar Province, he said.
The lower yield on the surface seems to be a boost to reducing opium poppy cultivation, but it is leading to wild price speculation that instead could encourage farmers to plant more poppies next year.
The price of fresh opium has jumped 57 percent from last year to about US$85 a kilogram in April, while dry opium prices are up 37 percent, according to UN data.
Prices spiked similarly in 2001 to 2003, peaking at just over US$300 a kilogram and sparking a surge in opium poppy cultivation over the next few years. That followed the former Taliban regime's virtual eradication of opium growing during its last year in power before it was ousted in 2001.
"We are monitoring those prices with the utmost caution because the last thing we'd like to witness is another gold rush as during 2001-2003," Lemahieu said.
A spokesman for the Afghan Counter Narcotics Ministry said that higher prices mean interdiction efforts will get more difficult.
Zalmai Afzali said a team for the ministry working on poppy eradication was attacked in eastern Nangarhar Province a few weeks ago and more funds for the insurgents could mean more attacks.
The Afghan government has made progress in recent years in getting provinces declared "poppy-free" and by offering incentives to switch to legal crops.
However, the poppy crop in Helmand and Kandahar has proved stubbornly resilient despite falling prices and stepped-up interdiction efforts.
Though there has been speculation that a poppy-killing blight could have been introduced in secret by NATO forces, Lemahieu said this was unlikely. "My inclination is that this is natural," he said.
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