KABUL: Opium cultivation in Afghanistan has hit record-breaking levels this year _ up by more than 40 per cent from last year _ despite hundreds of millions in aid aimed at stopping the nation’s slide into narco-dependency, western anti-drugs officials told journalists on Tuesday.

The increase could have serious repercussions for an already grave security situation, with powerful drug lords joining the Taliban-led fight against Afghan and international forces.

A western anti-narcotics official in Kabul said about 150,000 hectares of opium poppy was cultivated this growing season _ up from 104,000 hectares last year _ citing their preliminary crop projections. The previous highest recorded figure was 131,000 hectares in 2004, according to the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, known as UNODC.

“It is a significant increase from last year ... unfortunately, it is a record year,” said a senior U.S. government official based in Kabul.

Final figures, and an estimate of the yield of opium resin from the poppies, will only be clear when UNODC completes its assessment of the Afghan crop, based on satellite imagery and ground surveys. Its official report is due for release next month.

Last year, the U.N. reported that Afghanistan produced an estimated 4,500 tons of opium _ enough to make 450 tons of heroin _ nearly 90 per cent of world supply.

This year’s preliminary findings indicate a massive failure in attempts to eradicate poppy cultivation and continuing corruption among provincial officials and police _ problems recently acknowledged by President Hamid Karzai.

Mr Karzai told Fortune magazine in an interview published last week that ‘lots of people’ in his administration profited from the drugs trade and that he had underestimated the task of eradicating opium _ estimated by UNODC to account for 52 per cent of the Afghan gross domestic product last year.

“Now what they have is a narco economy. If they do not get corruption sorted they can slip into being a narco state,” the U.S. official warned.

Opium cultivation has sky-rocketed since the fall in late 2001 of the Taliban, which had enforced an effective ban on poppy growing under threat of jail for farmers, virtually eradicating the crop in 2000.

But Afghan and Western counternarcotics officials say Taliban-led militants are now implicated in the trade, encouraging poppy cultivation and using the proceeds to help fund the resistance.

“That kind of revenue from that kind of crop aids and abates the enemy,” said Chief Master Sgt. Curtis L. Brownhill, a senior adviser to the head of the U.S. Central Command, during a recent visit to the country. “They count on having that sort of resource and money.”

Afghanistan has seen its deadliest bout of fighting this year since US-backed forces toppled the Taliban government for harbouring Al QaEda. Officials believe the resistance, most vicious in the south, Afghanistan’s main poppy belt, includes a mosaic of diehard Taliban, warlords, drug lords and smugglers who thrive on the instability.

But fear of fanning the resistance further have constrained efforts to destroy the poppy crops of impoverished farmers _ particularly in Helmand, where the increase has been by far the sharpest. The volatile province accounts more than 40 per cent of cultivation nationwide.

“We know that if we start eradicating the whole surface of poppy cultivation in Helmand, we will increase the activity of the insurgency and increase the number of insurgents,” Tom Koenigs, the top U.N. official in Afghanistan.

He said the international community needed to rethink its anti-drugs strategy to provide alternative livelihood for the farmers, but warned against expecting quick results. “The problem has increased, and the remedy has to adjust,” he told reporters recently.

Since the fall of the Taliban, the international community, led by the US and Britain, has ploughed in hundreds of millions of dollars to fight the drugs trade, amid growing concern over the threat it poses to Afghanistan’s emerging democracy.

There have been some successes. Eastern Nangahar province, with the help of a robust governor and police chief, brought opium output down by 96 per cent last year. Special anti-drugs police units are in place and since March this year, have busted 10 drugs labs and seized 1,225 kilograms of heroin and nearly 800 kilograms of opium.

Next week, the Afghan government is due to present a wide-ranging anti-drugs strategy dealing with both demand and supply reduction and law enforcement. Officials are moving to amend laws, train judges and prosecutors, build high security prisons and establish secure special court chambers, where the big drug barons and other senior drug smugglers will be tried.

But the spike in cultivation this year bodes ill. It follows a 21 per cent drop in cultivation the previous year, suggesting the government has not followed through on warnings to farmers last year against planting poppy.

Although 15,000 hectares of poppy was eradicated this year, according to the ministry for counternarcotics, a campaign by police to destroy crops fell way short of expectation.

Gen Khodaidad, a top official at the ministry, said that virtually all cultivated land in Helmand _ including government-owned land _ has been planted with opium.

“We expected a large number (crop) this year but Helmand unfortunately exceeded even our predictions,” the US official said.—AP

COLOMBO: The fiercest fighting between Sri Lankan troops and Tamil Tiger rebels for four years appears to be an attempt by both sides to gain the upper hand before eventual peace talks, analysts say.

Fighting in northern Jaffna entered its sixth day on Wednesday as the Tamil Tiger rebels claimed they had hit the radio tower at the Palaly Military airport base in Jaffna on Tuesday night. The LTTE earlier said a rebel aeroplane dropped bombs over the Palaly base but the military flatly denied rebel claims, stating that guerillas had suffered heavy casualties and were issuing false reports.

A Norwegian-arranged truce is in tatters and both sides accuse each other of plunging the country towards full-scale war, but they also publicly commit to a faltering peace process that has been on hold since April 2003.

While the two sides argue about casualty figures, there is little doubt the fighting between the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and the army that began on Friday in northern Jaffna peninsula has been the bloodiest in years.

The military says it has lost 150 soldiers and more than 300 have been wounded.

The defence ministry says at least 200 rebels have been killed and over 350 wounded, although the Tigers say they lost only 22 fighters in the first two days of fighting and have given no record of casualties since.

A conservative official estimate places the total loss of life in fighting since December at 1,300. It has made a mockery of the truce with monitors themselves saying the ceasefire is only good on paper.

However, diplomats are optimistic that something could still be salvaged.

“The fighting could be a way the two parties are trying to strengthen their bargaining positions,” a diplomatic source close to the peace initiative said. “The silver lining is that they keep saying that they still want talks.”

Irrespective of who fired the first shots, the Tigers have effectively imposed a blockade on the Jaffna peninsula where 40,000 troops and 350,000 civilians depend on sea and air transport, both of which are hit by fighting.

“Restoring supplies to Jaffna is a challenge for the security forces,” a senior officer said declining to be named. “The Tiger objective seems to be to maintain a siege for as long as they can and then call for talks.”

“The Tigers want to show their military capability,” said defence analyst and retired Sri Lankan diplomat Nanda Godage. “If they can take Jaffna it will give them a huge advantage at the negotiating table.”

The Tigers launched a big push to take Jaffna in 2000. They failed, but managed to expand the area under their control within the peninsula linked to the mainland by a narrow causeway, which for the first time fell into their hands.

On Friday, the Tigers demonstrated that their artillery guns were within striking distance from the Palaly airbase, the main air bridge to the troops in the peninsula.

“What we need to do is neutralise those 130mm artillery guns of the Tigers,” military spokesman Athula Jayawardene said.

However, it has been easier said than done.

The Tigers have also opened another front in the northeast of the island, shelling Trincomalee harbour which is the starting point for sea-borne cargo and troops transported to Jaffna by ship.

Retired army brigadier general Vipul Boteju says the Tigers, who are far fewer in number than the government’s troops, may not be capable of sustaining an offensive for a long period.

A number of high profile assassinations and suicide bombings blamed on the Tigers have caused huge economic and political damage and jolted the entire country.

The LTTE was accused of trying to assassinate Pakistan’s High Commissioner to Sri Lanka, Bashir Wali Mohmand, who escaped unhurt from a mine attack on Monday that killed four of his bodyguards.

Pakistan helped the government in 2000 by supplying multi-barrel rocket launchers that helped stall a Tiger push to capture Jaffna, which is considered the cultural capital of the island’s minority Tamils.

Hours before Monday’s mine attack in Colombo, Sri Lankan war planes were accused by the Tigers of bombing an orphanage. The Tigers said 61 children were killed in the air strike inside rebel-held territory.

The Sri Lankan government ordered the closure of schools fearing rebel reprisals against school children elsewhere in a move analysts said underscored the fear and uncertainty that had gripped the country.—AFP