KABUL: The Afghan government should target big drug traffickers — some with links to government officials — who are fueling the country’s multibillion-dollar illicit drug trade, which has reached unprecedented levels, the United Nations said on Wednesday.

Christian Gynna Oguz, country director for the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, said Afghanist-an remains the world’s largest producer of opium and heroin and that drug lords and corrupt government officials operate with impunity.

“Powerful individuals are able to compromise the justice system through bribes and corruption, as well as implicit and explicit threats,” she said. “Such situations can no longer be tolerated if Afghans are to have the type of judicial system and functioning institutional structures that they deserve.”

Afghanistan supplies 93 per cent of the world’s illicit opium and Taliban rebels receive up to $100 million from the drug trade, UN officials have said.

Gynna Oguz also called on the government to stamp out “telephone justice, in which powerful individuals, inside or outside the government, improperly intervene in this process with a simple phone call.”

“There are telephone calls being made to release suspects that have been arrested, and this ‘telephone justice’ ... is unacceptable because it undermines the trust in the government,” she said.—AP