OPIUM HARVEST AT RECORD LEVEL IN AFGHANISTAN

KABUL, Afghanistan - Afghanistan's opium harvest this year has
reached the highest levels ever recorded, showing an increase of
almost 50 percent from last year, the executive director of the
United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Antonio Maria Costa, said
Saturday in Kabul.

He described the figures as "alarming" and "very bad news" for the
Afghan government and international donors who have poured millions
of dollars into programs to reduce the poppy crop since 2001.

He said the increase in cultivation was significantly fueled by the
resurgence of Taliban rebels in the south, the country's prime opium
growing region. As the insurgents have stepped up attacks, they have
also encouraged and profited from the drug trade, promising
protection to growers if they expanded their opium operations.

"This year's harvest will be around 6,100 metric tons of opium -- a
staggering 92 percent of total world supply. It exceeds global
consumption by 30 percent," Mr. Costa said at a news briefing.

He said the harvest increased by 49 percent from the year before, and
it drastically outpaced the previous record of 4,600 metric tons, set
in 1999 while the Taliban governed the country. The area cultivated
increased by 59 percent, with more than 400,000 acres planted with
poppies in 2006 compared with less than 260,000 in 2005.

"It is indeed very bad, you can say it is out of control," Mr. Costa
said Friday in an interview before the announcement.

President Hamid Karzai expressed disappointment at the results in a
statement issued on Saturday and urged the international community to
expand its commitment to strengthen the Afghan police and law
enforcement agencies.

The Bush administration has made poppy eradication a major facet of
its aid to Afghanistan, and it has criticized Mr. Karzai for not
doing more to challenge warlords involved in opium production.

On Saturday, a State Department spokeswoman, Joanne Moore, had no
immediate comment on the United Nations report, but she pointed to a
fact sheet posted on the department's Web site that outlined efforts
to support Afghanistan's counternarcotics campaign.

The increase in cultivation was mainly a result of the strength of
the insurgency in southern Afghanistan, which has left whole
districts outside of government control, and the continuing impunity
of everyone involved, from the farmers and traffickers to corrupt
police and government officials, Mr. Costa said.

Afghanistan is already the world's largest producer of opium, and 35
percent of its gross domestic product is estimated to come from the
narcotics trade.

Most of the heroin made from Afghan poppies is sold in Europe and
Asia, drug officials say. Most of the increase in poppy cultivation
has occurred in five provinces in southern Afghanistan, in particular
Helmand, Kandahar and Oruzgan, where security has sharply
deteriorated this year because of Taliban attacks, Mr. Costa said.

"The southern part of Afghanistan was displaying the ominous
hallmarks of incipient collapse, with large-scale drug cultivation
and trafficking, insurgency and terrorism, crime and corruption," he
said in a statement released by his office.

"We are seeing a very strong connection between the increase in the
insurgency on the one hand and the increase in cultivation on the
other hand," he explained in the interview.

The Taliban had distributed leaflets at night, inviting farmers to
increase their poppy cultivation in exchange for protection, Mr.
Costa said. The rebels also profit from levies in return for
protection of drug convoys passing through the border areas they controlled.

There were also signs of a pernicious strategy to encourage farmers
to increase poppy cultivation in an effort to force a government
reaction, which would then turn the population further against the
government, Mr. Costa said.

But he did not blame only the Taliban for the increase. He
specifically accused the former governor of Helmand Province, Sher
Muhammad Akhund, of encouraging farmers to grow more poppies in the
months before he was removed from office. The result was an increase
of 160 percent in that "villain province" from its harvest last year,
he said, the highest rise in the country.

"There is evidence of major pressure exerted by him in favor of
cultivating opium," Mr. Costa said.

In the news briefing on Saturday, Mr. Costa also criticized the
government's action of removing the governor and giving him a
position in the upper house of Parliament.

"I have been on record for asking the president for corrupt officials
not to be moved around but to be removed, to be neutralized; if
records can prove conviction, to be arrested and convicted. So far we
do not have much evidence for that And we hope that more forceful
initiatives will be taken exactly in that area," he said.

One province in the north, Badakhshan, where there is no problem of
an insurgency, also had a significant increase in poppy cultivation.

Mr. Costa attributed that mostly to the lack of government control
and the presence of powerful warlords and corrupt local officials. A
substantial drought also played a part, because no alternative crop
could survive as the poppies did.

While the government had improved its performance at eradication of
the poppy crop, it had failed to do enough to catch traffickers and
corrupt officials, he said.

The United Nations drugs office, which measures the eradication
program, said about 38,000 acres of poppy fields were confirmed to
have been destroyed, whereas only about 12,000 acres were confirmed
destroyed last year. Government reporting on how much was eradicated
was also less exaggerated, Mr. Costa said. In 2005, province
governors had reported eradicating about 87,000 acres and the United
Nations could only confirm 12,000 destroyed. In 2006, governors
reported 57,000 acres destroyed, and the drug office confirmed 38,000, he said.

The United Nations drugs office surveys cultivation in Afghanistan
through satellite imagery and with teams on the ground, who have even
worked in Taliban-controlled areas. Usually they travel undercover on
motorbikes, and they interview farmers and traders in more than 2,000
villages across the country.

International donors have put a lot of money into training judges and
investigators and preparing high-security detention facilities for
drug traffickers, and it was now time for the government to act, Mr.
Costa said.

"I am pleading with the government to be much tougher," he said. A
new high-security prison block would be inaugurated in a few weeks,
he said. "We have room for 100 people and I am asking the government
to fill it within six months," he said.

Afghanistan's minister for counternarcotics, Habibullah Qaderi, said
at the news briefing that the news was a setback for his ministry and
for the country. But he said the government's strategy to combat
opium production would start to show results in the next three years.

He said he hoped the government would be able to capture more
high-level traffickers and corrupt officials. But he said it still
lacked the capacity to investigate and catch the "big fish."

Several hundred people have been arrested and convicted for drug
offenses in recent months, but Mr. Qaderi admitted most were people
who were caught carrying the drugs.

One significant prosecution involved an Interior Ministry official,
Lt. Col. Nadir Khan, who was sentenced to 10 years in prison two
months ago for stealing 110 pounds of heroin that had been impounded
by drug enforcement authorities and selling it, a Western
counternarcotics official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.