Afghan Opium Production Soars By 49%

Afghanistan produced dramatically more opium in 2006, increasing its yield by roughly 49 percent from a year earlier and pushing global opium production to a new record high, a U.N. report said Tuesday.

Opium production in Afghanistan increased from 4,100 metric tons in 2005 to 6,100 metric tons in 2006, according to the 2007 World Drug Report released by the Vienna-based United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. Opium is the main ingredient for heroin.

In 2006, Afghanistan accounted for 92 percent of global illicit opium production, up from 70 percent in 2000 and 52 percent a decade earlier. The higher yields in Afghanistan have brought global opium production to a new record high of 6,610 metric tons in 2006, a 43 percent increase over 2005.

The area under opium poppy cultivation in the country also expanded, from 257,000 acres in 2005, to 407,715 acres in 2006 — an increase of about 59 percent.

"This is the largest area under opium poppy cultivation ever recorded in Afghanistan," the report said, noting that 62 percent of the cultivation was concentrated in the country's southern region.

Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the U.N. drug office, warned that Afghanistan's insurgency-plagued Helmand province was becoming the world's biggest drug supplier, with illicit cultivation there larger than in the rest of the country put together.

"Effective surgery on Helmand's drug and insurgency cancer will rid the world of the most dangerous source of its most dangerous narcotic and go a long way to bringing security to the region," Costa said in a statement.

"Developments in Afghanistan will continue to determine the levels of global opium production," the report said.

Western and Afghan officials say they expect a similar crop this year.

Christina Gynna Oguz, the representative in Afghanistan for the U.N.'s Office on Drugs and Crime, said Monday, "the yield is likely to go up because of the good weather conditions we've had for all agriculture in this country, so I fear that we will be faced with the same amount as last year, perhaps even a little bit more."

Oguz said there are close links between Taliban insurgents and criminal networks that deal in drugs. A significant portion of the profits from the $3.1 billion trade is thought to flow to Taliban fighters, who tax and protect poppy farmers and drug runners.

Oguz said Afghanistan is producing more heroin and morphine than last year because there are more active labs inside the country that are importing chemicals from European countries and China.

She said by flying over opium-producing areas at night, you "would see a lot of small fires in the mountains" from heroin labs.

She said a couple years ago most of the poppies were trafficked out of the country as opium, but now more of the opium is processed into morphine and heroin in Afghanistan, an indication the drug trade is growing in sophistication.

Meanwhile, the story of a 6-year-old Afghan boy who says he thwarted an effort by Taliban militants to trick him into being a suicide bomber provoked tears and anger at a meeting of tribal leaders.

The account from Juma Gul, a dirt-caked child who collects scrap metal for money, left American soldiers dumbfounded that a youngster could be sent on such a mission. Afghan troops crowded around the boy to call him a hero.

Though the Taliban dismissed the story as propaganda, at a time when U.S. and NATO forces are under increasing criticism over civilian casualties, both Afghan tribal elders and U.S. military officers said they were convinced by his dramatic account.

Juma said that sometime last month Taliban fighters forced him to wear a vest they said would spray out flowers when he touched a button. He said they told him that when he saw American soldiers, "throw your body at them."

The militants cornered Juma in a Taliban-controlled district in southern Afghanistan's Ghazni province. Their target was an impoverished youngster being raised by an older sister — but also one who proved too street-smart for their plan.

"When they first put the vest on my body I didn't know what to think, but then I felt the bomb," Juma told The Associated Press as he ate lamb and rice after being introduced to the elders at this joint U.S.-Afghan base in Ghazni. "After I figured out it was a bomb, I went to the Afghan soldiers for help."

While Juma's story could not be independently verified, local government leaders backed his account and the U.S. and NATO military missions said they believed his story.