'AFGHANISTAN DRUG WAR WILL TAKE A GENERATION TO WIN'

KABUL: Afghanistan will take a generation to wipe out the opium trade,
which is fed by graft and the grip of a small but increasingly
powerful band of drug lords with political connections, a new UN and
World Bank report says.

Efforts to wipe out opium fields often hit poor farmers the most and
care must be taken to avoid making the situation worse, said the
report by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and the World Bank
on Tuesday.

"History teaches us that it will take a generation to render
Afghanistan opium-free," UNODC executive director Antonio Maria Costa
said in a statement.

"I ... propose that development support to farmers, the arrest of
corrupt officials and eradication measures be concentrated in half a
dozen provinces with low cultivation in 2006 so as to free them from
the scourge of opium."

He said this would help double the number of provinces free of the
opium poppy, the raw material for heroin, next year.

The UNODC forecasts a record year for opium in 2006 with cultivation
up 60 percent and production up 50 percent in the country that
supplies more than 90 percent of world output. The drugs racket
accounts for about a third of Afghanistan's still-crippled economy.

The report says efforts to combat the trade have had limited success
and lacked sustainability.

Afghanistan's Western allies say the drugs industry is a major factor
fuelling a revival of the Taliban-led insurgency that has made this
the bloodiest year since the hardline Islamist group was forced from
power by US-led forces in 2001.

Almost 4,000 people have been killed so far this year, about a quarter
of them civilians. Most of the increase in opium growing has been in
the provinces worst hit by fighting. Afghan ministers say neither the
insurgency nor the illegal drugs trade can be defeated without the
other being also overcome.

The report and other experts warn mismanaging efforts to stamp out the
opium industry could hurt the poorest the most, fuelling discontent
and strengthening the insurgency.

"The critical adverse development impact of actions against drugs is
on poor farmers and rural wage labourers," said World Bank economist
and co-editor of the report, William Byrd.

"Any counter-narcotics strategy needs to keep short-run expectations
modest, avoid worsening the situation of the poor and adequately focus
on longer term development." The Afghan government and aid workers say
corruption is a major obstacle with drug lords buying off local
officials or bribing them to spare their crops and destroy others'.

Opium poppy covers only about 4 percent of Afghanistan's cultivable
land, but with the country in the grip of drought and poppy needing
minimal irrigation is becoming an increasingly tempting crop for
farmers in dry areas, experts say.

The UN-World Bank report also called for a "smart and effective"
strategy to curb demand in consuming countries, mainly in the West.
reuters