Afghan Provinces Get Millions to Reduce Opium Poppies

KABUL — The U.S. on Monday agreed to hand out millions of dollars in development aid to provinces in Afghanistan that have eliminated or reduced the production of opium poppies, the raw ingredient in making heroin.

The poppy crop in Afghanistan, which produces 90 percent of the world's supply of opium, is linked to corruption, addiction and a drug trade that bankrolls the Taliban insurgency.

Curbing the cultivation of poppies is the goal of a U.S. program that has doled out $80 million since 2007. That includes the $38.7 million (26 million euros) the U.S. announced it is giving to 27 of Afghanistan's 34 provinces that either reduced poppy cultivation by more than 10 percent or became poppy-free this year.

"Illicit narcotics is a very serious problem with exports around the world, but we need to recognize that they do grave harm to Afghan society as well," said E. Anthony Wayne, development director at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul. "The narcotics trade also feeds corruption, hindering Afghanistan's ability to build strong, democratic institutions and good governance. Narcotics also fuels the insurgency.

"Afghanistan has one of the highest addiction rates in the world, harming tens of thousands of people, damaging families and communities, limiting economic opportunity and depriving future generations the opportunity to make a better life."

In a separate program, the U.S. has opened 16 drug treatment clinics around the nation, and another 10 are expected in the next few months.

Determining which provinces will get the money is based on the U.N. Office of Drugs and Crime opium survey, which reported poppy cultivation decreased 22 percent this year. The money, which is administered by the Afghan Ministry of Counternarcotics, has been used in the past to provide farm machinery, dig irrigation canals, and build public buildings such as schools, clinics and stadiums.

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Afghan president Karzai's brother 'on CIA payroll'

AHMED Wali Karzai, the brother of the embattled Afghan president and a suspected drug trafficker, has been on the CIA payroll for most of the past eight years.

The US spy agency pays Karzai for a variety of services, The New York Times reports, such as fielding recruits for an Afghan paramilitary force operating at the CIA's direction in and around his home city of Kandahar, a Taliban stronghold.

He also helps the CIA contact and sometimes meet Taliban followers.

Karzai, who is said to have ties to Afghanistan's lucrative illegal opium trade, has a "wide-ranging" relationship with the CIA, the Times said, citing US officials.

On top of helping the agency operate the paramilitary group that targets suspected violent militants - the Kandahar Strike Force, Karzai is also paid for allowing the CIA and US Special Operations forces to rent a large compound outside Kandahar that once served as the home of Taliban founder Mullah Omar.

"He's our landlord," a senior US official told the newspaper.

The CIA has declined to comment.

Karzai denied receiving CIA payments or playing any role in the booming opium trade that helps fund the Taliban-led insurgency.

"I don't know anyone under the name of the CIA," he told the newspaper. "I have never received any money from any organization. I help, definitely. I help other Americans wherever I can. This is my duty as an Afghan."

The report came amid increasingly tense ties between President Barack Obama's administration and Afghan President Hamid Karzai, long a darling of the West but whose legitimacy has been shaken by a fraud-marred first round of elections in August.

A run-off has been set for November 7.

Some US officials argued that relying on Ahmed Wali Karzai undermines Washington's efforts to help develop an effective and reliable Kabul government that can stand on its own.

"If we are going to conduct a population-centric strategy in Afghanistan, and we are perceived as backing thugs, then we are just undermining ourselves," Major General Michael Flynn, the top US military intelligence official in Afghanistan, told the daily.

While some US officials said Karzai was likely linked to drug trafficking, others said the intelligence was inconclusive.

Source: The Australian

Bottom falls out of Afghan opium market - UN

From correspondents in Kabul | September 02, 2009

OPIUM production in Afghanistan has fallen for a second year running, with poppy cultivation down 22 per cent and prices among the lowest in a decade, a UN report said.

The destitute country produces around 90 per cent of the world's opium, used to make heroin sold on the streets of Europe and Central Asia, with profits feeding a resurgent Taliban in an eight-year war.

"The bottom is starting to fall out of the Afghan opium market," UN Office on Drugs and Crime executive director Antonio Maria Costa said in the report, to which the Afghan government contributed.

"For the second year in a row, cultivation, production, workforce, prices, revenues, exports and its GDP share are all down, while the number of poppy-free provinces and drug seizures continue to rise," the report said.

The report said opium cultivation in Afghanistan fell by 22 per cent to 123,000 hectares (304,000 acres), from 157,000 hectares in 2008 with the number of poppy-free provinces up to 20 from 18 - out of the total 34.

Wiping out the crop has been a key component of Western efforts to stabilise Afghanistan - labelled a "narco state" by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton - since the 2001 US-led invasion removed the Taliban regime.

Most Afghan opium is processed into heroin inside the war-torn country, where it feeds rampant government corruption before being smuggled to Central Asia, Europe and the Middle East.

The United Nations puts the potential export value of Afghan narcotics at about $US3.4 billion ($4.1 billion) a year, and Afghan officials have said drug profits provide the Taliban with as much as $US100 million ($121 million) a year.

Source: The Australian

Iran has 1.2 million drug addicts

May 08

IRAN has 1.2 million drug addicts and the average age of victims is 32 years.

"Based on the latest official statistics of the committee to combat narcotics, the number of drug addicts is 1.2 million," a director of the committee, Houman Narenjiha, said.

"The average age of the addicts is 32," he said, adding the average age at which the victims took to drugs was around 23.

Mr Narenjiha did not specify the drugs, but such statistics usually refer to opium and heroin users.
Iranian authorities admit the country has a serious drug abuse problem.

Iran's health ministry says intravenous drug use is the main cause of infection of HIV patients, estimating that it accounts for 77.5 per cent of the total of a least 19,435 people who are infected with the virus.

Iran is situated along one of the main trafficking routes for cannabis, heroin, opium and morphine produced in Afghanistan, and designer drugs have also found their way into the local market in recent years.

Iran's police said in April that 7,700 tonnes of opium was produced in Afghanistan in 2008, of which 3000 tonnes entered Iran, adding that the force had managed to seize 1000 tonnes of the smuggled opium.

Iran has close ethnic and religious ties with Afghanistan, but the Islamic republic has suffered badly from the effects of surging opium production there, as cheap and readily available heroin has fuelled a sharp rise in drug use.

Source: The Australian: