KABUL, Aug 20: Poppy cultivation in Afghanistan is close to record levels a year after being nearly wiped out under the hardline Taliban regime, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said in a report obtained on Tuesday.

The assessment report, originally designed to survey the annual food deficit in drought-stricken Afghanistan, found poppy cultivation has surged under the government of President Hamid Karzai despite a ban and steps to entice farmers to stop planting the crop.

According to an FAO official in Kabul an Afghan farmer can make $14,000 per hectare of poppy cultivated land. The raw opium the farmer produces is refined into opium and heroin that is sold mostly to Europe.

Until 2001, Afghanistan was one of the world’s largest producers of opium. The former Taliban regime outlawed its cultivation that year, but farmers resumed growing it after Karzai came to power in December.

With the cash from donor countries, Karzai tried to ban poppy growing and promised to provide $350 for about a quarter of a hectare of poppy cultivated land.

His move came at a time when most opium fields were already sown and subsequently the payment scheme failed to achieve its objectives, the FAO report said.—Reuters