Afghanistan cuts opium crop

2005-08-29 21:08

Kabul - Afghanistan has reduced the production and cultivation of opium for the first time since the Taliban regime fell in 2001, the United Nations counter-narcotics chief said on Monday.

The area under cultivation for opium dropped 21% over the past year, while the opium harvest fell by 2.4%, Antonio Maria Costa, head of the UN office for drugs and crime, told AFP.

However Afghanistan remains the world's biggest producer of opium - which is used to make heroin - churning out 87% of the global supply, Costa added.

"Obviously we're very pleased, because it's the result of restraint by farmers, an active decision which is important," said Costa, unveiling preliminary findings from the agency's first report on Afghan opium production.

Since US-led forces toppled the fundamentalist Taliban nearly four years ago, the international community has pumped millions of dollars into drug eradication efforts in Afghanistan.

The new figures are the first real success for the anti-drug programme, which has long faced the problem of how to coax poverty-stricken farmers away from growing lucrative, hardy and easily transportable opium.

The decrease in drug production is likely to increase optimism ahead of next month's landmark parliamentary elections in Afghanistan, which are seen as a crucial step on the war-scarred country's road to democracy.

- AFP