OPIUM TRADE THRIVING IN US-LED AFGHANISTAN: UN

UNITED NATIONS: Despite the establishment of a democratic government and
the presence of a 4,800-strong international peacekeeping force in Kabul,
the cultivation of opium is continuing unabated in Afghanistan, a new UN
study says.

The 222-page document raises difficult questions, Antonio Maria Costa,
executive director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, said on Monday.

"Why is the international presence in Afghanistan not able to bring under
control a phenomenon connected to international terrorism and organized
crime?" and "Why is the central government in Kabul not able to enforce a
ban on opium cultivation as effectively as the former Taliban regime in
2000- 2001?".

Costa says there are no simple answers to these questions. The "opium
economy" in Afghanistan is an intensely complex phenomenon, intermingled
with the country's history, political structure, civil society and economy.

"Spawned after decades of civil and military strife, it has chained a poor
rural population - farmers, landless labour, small traders, women and
children - to the mercy of domestic warlords and international crime
syndicates that continue to dominate several areas in the south, north and
east of Afghanistan," says the study.

Titled "The Opium Economy in Afghanistan: an International Problem", it
points out that the country's opium production has increased more than
15-fold since 1979, the year of the Soviet intervention.

The opium trade was de-facto legal in Afghanistan before and throughout the
Taliban government. In 2000, the Taliban banned opium cultivation, but not
the trade.

By 2000, Afghanistan was the source of 70 per cent of all the illicit opium
produced in the world. Following a decline in 2001, production grew to high
levels in 2002, making Afghanistan the world's largest producer of opium
(followed by Myanmar and Laos), accounting for almost three-quarters of
global opium production.

In January 2002, the government of Hamid Karzai, which was installed by the
US administration, banned the opium trade.

Despite the ban, the drug trade thrives. Revenue from opium rose from about
$720 million in 2000 to over $1.4 billion in 2002.

Costa says that the establishment of democracy and the government's
measures against the cultivation, trade and abuse of opium have been
crucial steps towards solving the drug problem.

"Yet, other news has not been good," he says, adding that last year's opium
poppy harvest was among the most bountiful in the country's history - more
than 3,400 tons.

Drug abuse has increased greatly in the last few years due to prolonged
human deprivation and suffering, the breakdown of traditional social
controls, the return of refugees who developed drug problems in camps, and
the almost unlimited availability of opiates within Afghanistan, the study
says.

"Afghanistan's opium economy can be dismantled if the government, with the
assistance of the international community, addresses the roots of the
matter and not only its symptoms," Costa said.

Certain elements will be essential in any sustainable counter- narcotic
policy, Costa says.

"To help poor farmers decide in favour of licit crops; to replace
narco-usury with a proper credit system and micro-lending; to provide jobs
to women and to itinerant workers; to provide education to children,
particularly girls; to turn opium bazaars into modern commodity markets;
and to neutralize traffickers' and warlords' efforts to keep the evil trade
alive."

According to the study, opiate trafficking profits in neighbouring
countries amounted to some four billion dollars in 2002, about two per cent
of the country's gross domestic product (GDP), illustrating, said Costa,
the problem's international nature.

The study also says that 80 to 90 per cent of the heroin found in European
markets (both eastern and western Europe) has traditionally been trafficked
along the so-called Balkan route (Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey, the Balkan
countries and Europe).

Those figures show that the solution will require an international
commitment. "In other words," Costa said, "all countries that are part of
the Afghan drug problem should be part of its solution".