January 6, 2003	Monday	Ziqa’ad 2, 1423

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QUETTA, Jan 5: Regional director of the Anti Narcotics Force (ANF), Brig Liaquat Ali Toor, said on Friday that the Karzai government had failed to control production of narcotics in Afghanistan.

Speaking at a press conference, he said it was due to this failure that after the debacle of Taliban drug smuggling from the war-torn country through land routes to Balochistan in 2002 had increased.

He said the current Afghan administration was not able to command rural areas of the country where poppy and cannabis crops were cultivated and processed for making narcotics.

The ANF official was of the view that the long international border that Balochistan shares with Afghanistan and Iran comprises very difficult mountainous and desert routes, therefore it cannot be easily monitored by the law enforcement agencies. “Needless to say that drug smugglers take full advantage of the situation,” he remarked.

He said the Taliban government in 2000 had imposed a ban on the cultivation of poppy that proved quite effective.

The ANF official referred to a UNDP report that says the yield of opium in 2000 was 3,276 tons which fell down to just 185 tons 2001 in Afghanistan as the Taliban government took strict steps against violations of the ban.

He said the report also said that after the Taliban government 3,400 tons of opium had been produced in Afghanistan in 2002 while new crops had also been sown. It is expected that the yield in 2003 may even exceed 4,000 tons.