Name: Opium's got Afghanistan on all-time high
Uploaded: 2006-09-15T16:56:45+05:30
Description: A bumper opium crop in Afghanistan will fill the pockets of farmers who grow them, police and the Taliban.

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Kabul: Afghanistan has had a bumper opium crop, with a figure of 6,100 tonne according to United Nations officials. 
 
Expected to fill the pockets of a lot of people, everyone, from farmers who grow them, to the police and the Taliban, benefits from the booming drug trade. 
 
In south-west Afghanistan, just weeks away from the 2004 poppy harvest, with massive security, Afghan officials had come to eradicate opium production. 
 
But it was a wasted mission and the government officials had no power or forces to wage a drug war. 
 
Only a couple of fields out of thousands were damaged and the officials left disappointed. 
 
But needless to say, the farmers and even the police were happy knowing the opium crop will keep bringing in the money. 
 
The result is devastating. More than 1,00,000 Afghans have become opium and heroin addicts. 
 
A handful, for instance, a former civil servant, get treatment in Spartan government clinics. 
 
He claims officials from the Ministry of Defense and Interiors confiscate drugs and then sell them back to addicts like him. 
 
A detective out on the litter strewn streets, who says he works undercover and doesn't want to be seen on camera, explains that he is disappointed that every day he arrests drug dealers here takes them to the police station only to find that they cut a deal and are out on the streets selling drugs again the next day. 
 
At checkpoints around Kabul, police search for drugs, turning up a small-time marijuana user. 
 
But they are looking for the drug king pins though big-time drug arrests are few and far between. 
 
"Corruption is bad, it is there, there are many occasions when police officers are caught smuggling heroin and opium," says Counter Narcotics Minister, Habibullah Qadori. 
 
It's not just police, he says, some senior government officials are part of the drug trade too and so are the Taliban. 
 
These days, no one knows for sure how much the Taliban are making out of the drug trade though an informed source says it could go as high as $ 1 billion. 
 
Afghanistan is teetering on the brink, about to become, if not already, a failed narco state — a threat not only to itself but its neighbours and allies in the war on terror.

Opium's got Afghanistan on all-time high

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A bumper opium crop in Afghanistan will fill the pockets of farmers who grow them, police and the Taliban.

Opium's got Afghanistan on all-time high

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