KOHAT, March 24: In an operation the authorities in Orakzai Agency, assisted by Thall Scouts, destroyed standing crop of poppy on 200 acres in Buland Khel area on Sunday, says a press release issued here.

About 400 men, including 200 militiamen of Thall Scouts destroyed the crop which was ready for opium extraction, the authorities claimed. The operation was led by Lt-Colonel Wajahat Ali Shah.

Earlier, the authorities had warned the tribesmen to destroy the crop voluntarily otherwise the army would do it.

The tribesmen had failed to comply with the orders and had been resisting the move for so many months.

According to reports reaching here the poppy crop on a large area in the inaccessible parts of the agency was still to be destroyed.

Similarly, poppy cultivated on thousands of acres in the North and South Waziristan Agencies is yet to be destroyed pending dialogue with defiant tribesmen.

It may be recalled that the tribesmen belonging to these two bordering areas had announced last summer to cultivate the banned crop to protest against the interruption in the electricity supply to the tube wells used for watering the apple orchards.

The tribesmen had to install generators which cost them between Rs60,000 to Rs70,000 in the season, therefore, they resorted to poppy cultivation to makeup for their losses, Malik Bakhta Jan told Dawn by telephone on Sunday.

He said that it was also a signal to the US that if it continued operations on their land and inside Afghanistan they would start cultivating poppy for export.

To a question he further said they acquired quality poppy seed from Jalalabad, Afghanistan, and would sell the product in the Kandahar international opium market.