KABUL, Sept 2: Afghanistan’s opium production will increase by nearly 50 per cent this year to a record 6,100 tons after an ‘alarming’ jump in cultivation in the lawless south, the UN drugs office announced on Saturday.

The area of land planted with opium — of which Afghanistan produces more than 90 per cent of world supply — rose 59 per cent this year as compared to last year, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said.

The sharp increase in the number of acres planted would lead to a likely harvest of 6,100 tons — a 49 per cent hike over the 4,100 tons produced the year before.

“This year’s harvest will be around 6,100 tons of opium — a staggering 92 per cent of total world supply. It exceeds global consumption by 30 per cent,” UNODC global executive director Antonio Maria Costa said in Kabul.

The hike comes despite government and international efforts costing millions of dollars to try to stop Afghanistan’s trade in illegal opium, most of which ends up in the heroin markets of Europe and central Asia.

“These are very alarming numbers. Afghanistan is increasingly hooked on its own drug,” Costa said after presenting the figures to President Hamid Karzai.

The spike follows a 21 per cent drop in cultivation last year and a just over two per cent dip in production. It was the first fall since the Taliban government was toppled in late 2001.

An annual UNODC survey found that the lawless southern province of Helmand planted 162 per cent more opium this year than in 2005, accounting for more than 40 per cent of the total area under cultivation.

In the country as a whole, the area of land planted with opium reached a record 407,550 acres in 2006 compared with 256,880 acres last year, the UNODC statement said.

Officials have linked the drugs trade in Helmand, where the bulk of a British deployment of 4,750 troops is based, to an increase in attacks by Taliban insurgents and drugs traders who benefit from the insecurity.

The UNODC chief warned the southern part of Afghanistan showed “the ominous hallmarks of incipient collapse, with large-scale drug cultivation and trafficking, insurgency and terrorism, crime and corruption.”

The UN survey, to be published in full next month, found that only six of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces were free of opium. Cultivation fell this year in eight provinces, mainly in the north.

“Public opinion is increasingly frustrated by the fact that opium cultivation in Afghanistan is out of control,” Costa said.

“The political, military and economic investments by coalition countries are not having much visible impact on drug cultivation. As a result, Afghan opium is fuelling insurgency in western Asia, feeding international mafias and causing a hundred thousand deaths from overdoses every year.”—AFP