Neither individual Afghans nor foreign governments have cause to mourn the collapse of the Taliban regime. But in one respect, it is already being missed abroad if not at home: it managed to eradicate most of Afghanistan’s cultivation of the opium poppy. Now the Taliban are defeated, the country may once again reclaim the dubious honour of being the world’s biggest producer, and the dominant force in the world heroin trade. Rival South-East Asian producers are now scrambling to beat them to market. Police and customs forces throughout Central Asia and Europe are bracing themselves for an influx of cheap heroin, and the United Nations (UN) International Narcotics Control Board, in its annual report, to be published on Tuesday February 26th, will appeal for action to prevent renewed Afghan production. In 1999, Afghanistan produced four-fifths of all the illicit opium grown in the world. It was the source for almost all the heroin used in neighbouring countries, perhaps as much as 80% of that sold on the streets of Western European countries, and up to 90% of the market in some, such as Britain. But in September 1999, the Taliban issued a decree ordering all poppy farmers to cut the area under cultivation by a third. In fact, the actual reduction achieved was probably only about a tenth. But, coupled with a severe drought the next year, it had the effect of bringing total production down by 28%.
The next year, the Taliban went further. In July 2000, Mullah Mohammad Omar, their leader, imposed a total ban on poppy-growing. The Taliban enforced it, as the United Nations’ drug agency euphemistically reports, “vigilantly”. The area sown to poppy fell from more than 80,000 hectares to under 8,000. Production of raw opium fell from its 1999 peak of an estimated 4,600 tonnes to just 200 tonnes.
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An uneasy coalition of returned royalist exiles and the armed opposition to the Taliban, it relies on the support of local warlords and power-brokers. It has, as yet, few police or soldiers of its own, and Mr Karzai has been rebuffed in his requests for a larger foreign peacekeeping force with a mandate that extends beyond Kabul. He does not have the resources to enforce what would be an extremely unpopular ban on opium cultivation. For many farmers trying to rebuild their lives after so many years of warfare, this is the cash-crop of choice. ''
- The Economist (link found at cowlix)
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