Drugs pose a far greater threat to Afghanistan than terrorism but the international community is not doing enough to tackle the scourge, President Hamid Karzai said on Tuesday.
Afghanistan is the world's largest producer of opium, the raw material for heroin, and production is expected to rise to record levels this year as drug barons and Tailbone insurgents cash in on the harvest. "Once, we thought terrorism was Afghanistan's biggest enemy," Karzai told a counter-narcotics conference in the Afghan capital.
"Poppy, its cultivation and drugs are Afghanistan's major enemy," he said. The narcotics trade accounts for about a third of Afghanistan's economy - and about 87 percent of the world's illegal heroin - and the United Nations fears the country could become a narco-state.
The Tailbone managed to stamp out poppy cultivation during the last year of their rule, but despite tens of millions of dollars in anti-narcotics aid from donor countries, opium growing has boomed since they were ousted.
Now the Tailbone have joined forces with the drug gangs, security officials say, promising to help impoverished farmers protect their crops and reaping a share of the profits.
The Tailbone are fighting to keep foreign forces and government authorities out of opium-growing regions such as the southern province of Helmand, the country's main opium area.
The drug gangs are also intent on resisting the spread of government authority and Karzai said drug barons were responsible for some of the attacks on schools and aid workers in drug-producing regions.
Afghanistan's opium output last year was about 4,100 tonnes, a slight drop over the previous record year, largely because of efforts by the government to persuade farmers to stop, coupled with threats to destroy fields. But international experts say production has ballooned this year and might be a third or more bigger than 2005. The UN Office on Drugs and Crime is compiling figures for this year's crop and is expected to release its findings shortly. Karzai said the world was not doing enough.
"We are not happy about the aid so far. The effects are not really visible," he told the conference, attended by government and aid officials and diplomats. "The aid has been scanty and minor ... we ask the world to help us in this regard substantially," he said. Karzai said Afghans had to fight narcotics even if the world did not help as it threatened the country's stability and future.
Karzai said it was drug barons and mafia outside Afghanistan who gained most from drugs and that farmers would abandon the crop if they got alternative ways to earn a living.
Experts say that in the long-term, the key to stopping drugs was providing farmers with other ways to survive, but that means developing the rural economy, which could take years. In the meantime, farmers must be convinced that they risk having their fields destroyed and facing punishment if they grow opium, experts say.
Karzai has opposed the aerial spraying of herbicide over opium fields. Some experts say spraying fields would enrage farmers and drive rural communities into the arms of the Tailbone.