UK SOLDIERS KILLED IN POPPY GROWING AREA OF AFGHANISTAN

Two British soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan, as Western
officials in the country admitted yesterday that despite a US$1
billion ($1.6 billion) a year campaign to curb it the country is
facing its largest ever poppy harvest.

The new British deaths, the fourth and fifth in three weeks, come as
Western military commanders and counter-narcotics officials appear
increasingly at odds over how to approach the drugs problem in the
south of the country, with military commanders fearful that drug
eradication is acting as a recruiting sergeant for the Taleban.

"The trends indicate that the area of cultivation will be
considerably higher than in 2004," said a representative of the
United Nations office on Drugs and Crime, which will publish its
annual report of the Afghan opium harvest in August.

2004 saw the largest ever area of poppy cultivation in Afghanistan of
around 130,000 hectares.

Poor growing conditions that year mean that this year's harvest, with
better conditions across the country, will produce the largest
tonnage of opium ever.

Afghanistan is single-handedly responsible for around 87 per cent of
the world's opium and more than 90 per cent of the heroin consumed on
British streets.

In 2005 the Karzai government announced a "jihad" on poppy
production, backed by the near $1billion international campaign,
which is led by Britain.

It produced a 21 per cent drop in the area of cultivation but those
gains have now been wiped out.

Around a third of this year's harvest has come from a single
province, Helmand, where 3300 British troops are heavily engaged
against Taleban rebels.

Some military commanders now argue that eradication operations
against poppy cultivation in the south should be suspended for a year or more.

"We may have to say to the farmer we are not yet ready to provide an
alternative livelihood," one senior NATO officer told the Independent.

But counter-narcotics officials contend that a suspension of
eradication produce a further surge in poppy production and help fund
elements with a vested interest in maintaining the current instability.

The Afghan drugs economy is currently valued at US$2.7 billion,
equivalent to more than 50 per cent of the legal economy.

By contrast the Afghan government managed to generate legal revenues,
outside of foreign aid, totalling only US$330 million last year.

Farmers in the south claim that in the absence of any other economic
activity, poppy cultivation and high wages paid by the Taleban to
fight for them offer the only sources of income to huge numbers of
unemployed young men.

Poppy cultivation, they say, is the only means of wealth creation
without capital because the smugglers pay in advance.

In Washington there is increasing pressure for a more radical
approach to the drugs problem with the threat of aerial eradication
being held up as the ultimate sanction if the softer methods favoured
by the British and Afghan governments don't work.

Western sources have told the Independent that US counter-narcotics
teams are exploring the possibility of using a form of the defoliant
Agent Orange.

The United Nations remains completely opposed to the move.