Afghanistan opium production up 43% - UN drugs watchdog

[Disir]

Opium production in Afghanistan has increased by 43% in the past year, United Nations officials have said.

The UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said the area used to farm the poppy plant, the source of opium, increased by 10% to 201,000 hectares.

But better farming conditions resulted in a higher yield per hectare, increasing overall production.

Afghanistan is the world's largest producer of the substance, which is the main ingredient in heroin.

Growing opium is a crime in the country, but it is still a major cash crop for impoverished farming communities.

The Taliban also taxes poppy production in areas it controls, which is a major source of income for its military activities.
Afghanistan opium production up 43% - UN drugs watchdog - BBC News

I am shocked. SHOCKED.

 

[waltky]

Afghanistan havin' another opium poppy bumper crop...

Multiple harvests driving an Afghan opium boom
Tue, Nov 01, 2016 - With poppy seeds hidden in his pouch, farmer Affarmer Nematullah from Afghanistan’s Helmand Province sidled out of Taliban territory to explain how he struck gold — two additional opium harvests a year, which could further roil Afghanistan’s conflict.

Afghanistan has all the trappings of a narco-state, with opium production — the lifeblood of the Taliban insurgency — from the traditional spring harvest alone edging toward a record high. Farmers like Nematullah are now reaping two more crops — in midsummer and autumn — in parts of the volatile south, with experts citing genetically modified seeds and bold farming experiments as irrigation techniques improve and eradication efforts collapse. “We used to have one annual poppy harvest — we now have three,” said Nematullah, a young farmer from the insurgency-wracked Kajaki district in northern Helmand. “Helmand has a lot of war, a lot of land, and very little employment except fighting for the Taliban. Poppies are a blessing — it now gives us work throughout the year,” he said.

Nematullah snuck out of his village, a Taliban hotbed, to meet with reporters in the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah, bringing with him a handful of ivory-colored poppy seeds that he said grow well in the two new seasons. Sourced from local traders, those seeds shorten the growth cycle of the plant to about 70 days compared with the usual five to six months, with largely the same quality of opium resin, many farmers said. “Some parts of Helmand plant twice a year, because of the favorable climate, but three poppy seasons would be thanks to genetically modified seeds,” Afghanistan Analysts Network researcher Jelena Bjelica said. “The seeds are believed to originate in China where legal opium cultivation is undertaken for pharmaceutical use,” Bjelica said, adding that it was unclear who was behind their distribution in Afghanistan.

Pink-and-white poppy blooms, which in some areas grow within eyeshot of government buildings, help bankroll the Taliban’s nationwide insurgency and present an existential threat to the Afghan state. The Taliban, widely likened to a drug cartel, earn up to US$1.2 billion annually from taxing poppy farmers alone, Western officials say. The new crops could further swell insurgent coffers, underscoring the stunning failure of the multibillion-dollar US war on drugs in Afghanistan as it pursued a war on terror there. It could enhance not just their financial muscle to recruit more fighters, but also sway corrupt Afghan forces. “Imagine if our soldiers get 10,000 Pakistani rupees [US$95.4] to defend government checkpoints; our enemy has the capacity to pay 50,000 rupees to abandon the same checkpoints,” a senior Helmand security official said, referring to the new crops.

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[Eugene]

That is absolutely logical.
Why do you think USA and NATO is in Afghanistan?
They do what they planned to and they are successful. Kosovo is logistic base on drugs trafficking to Europe...it was prepared beforehand.