Up against Afghanistan's corrosive opium trade

[Hoping4Change]

Afghanistan boosted opium production by about 8 per cent last year to 3,600 tonnes, by far the world's biggest supply. The United Nations is forecasting an even larger harvest this year.

The country's network of drug producers, smugglers and traffickers accounted for three-quarters of the world's heroin in 2003 and raked in $2.3-billion (U.S.), about half the value of Afghanistan's legal economy and growing much faster.

Mr. Rumsfeld rightly fears that the enormous illicit income will be used to finance opposition groups seeking to undermine the scheduled Oct. 9 national election and the government that emerges from it. That's the immediate threat. Beyond that, UN drug monitors fear that Afghanistan could simply collapse into an utterly ungovernable state controlled by the narcotics traffickers and their political allies.


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