JALALABAD, Nov 13: Afghanistan’s opium production surged this year to record levels, despite international efforts over the past decade to wean the country off the narcotics trade, according to a report released on Wednesday by the UN’s drug control agency.

The harvest this past May resulted in a staggering 5,500 metric tons of opium, 49 per cent higher than last year and more than the combined output of the rest of the world.

Even Afghan provinces with some past successes in combating poppy cultivation saw those trends reversed, according to this year’s annual UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) report.

The withdrawal of foreign troops from Afghanistan next year would likely make matters even worse, said Jean-Luc Lemahieu, the UNODC regional representative in Kabul. He warned that as international assistance fell off, the Afghan government would become increasingly reliant on illicit sources of income.

Uncertainty is also driving up poppy production, as farmers worried about the country’s future turn to the tried and true.

The big increase in production began in 2010 when farmers rushed to take advantage of soaring prices, a result of a crop disease the previous year, the US military surge in the south and the announcement of the US and Nato’s transition out of Afghanistan, Lemahieu said.

He said those who benefited from the drug trade included farmers, militants and many within the government. Often, he said, they worked together.

Khan Bacha, who cultivates a small plot of land in eastern Nangarhar province, a Taliban stronghold, said this week that the militants charged farmers a “religious tax” of one kilogram of opium for every 10kg produced though the price is “negotiable”.

Past attempts by the international community to combat opium cultivation have included introducing alternative crops and paying farmers in some areas not to plant poppies. That backfired when farmers elsewhere started growing poppies in the hopes of getting money if they stopped.

Cultivation also appears to be spreading to new parts of the country — with Afghans planting poppies in some 209,000 hectares across 17 provinces this year, compared to 154,000 hectares in 15 provinces in 2012, according to the report.

The vast majority of Afghanistan’s poppy cultivation takes place in the south, southwest and east, areas where the Taliban militancy is thriving. But Kabul province in central Afghanistan saw a major spike: a 148 per cent increase in cultivation between 2012 and 2013.

But it wasn’t all bad news in the report, which said Afghanistan had expanded its social services to deal with a growing addiction problem at home. “These are tangible and hopeful signs of improvement,” the report said.

There are roughly one million drug addicts in Afghanistan, 15 per cent of whom are women and children, said Kanishka Turkistan, spokesman for the ministry of public health.—AP