KABUL, Aug 29: Afghanistan has reduced the production and cultivation of opium for the first time since the Taliban government fell in 2001, the United Nations counter-narcotics chief said on Monday.

The area under cultivation for opium poppies dropped 21 per cent over the past year, while the opium harvest fell by just 2.4 per cent, Antonio Maria Costa, head of the UN Office for Drugs and Crime, said.

But Afghanistan remains the world’s biggest producer of opium — which is used to make heroin — churning out 87 per cent of the global supply, Mr Costa added.

“Obviously we’re very pleased because it’s the result of restraint by farmers, an active decision which is important,” said Mr Costa, unveiling preliminary findings from the agency’s first report on Afghan opium production.

The UN and Mr Costa himself have previously warned that Afghanistan could become a failed ‘narco-state’ without help and the international community has already spent millions of dollars on the problem.

The new figures are the first success of any description for the anti-narcotics programme, which has long faced the problem of how to coax poverty-stricken farmers away from growing lucrative opium.

The opium cultivation area had dropped to 103,000 hectares from 131,000 over the last year, Mr Costa said. The opium harvest fell by 100 tons to 4,100 tons this year compared with a year earlier, he added.

The news is likely to boost optimism before parliamentary elections next month, seen as a crucial step on the country’s road to democracy almost four years after US-led forces ousted the Taliban.

“The report shows that Afghanistan has definitely turned the corner in its efforts to eliminate the scourge of narcotics,” Afghanistan’s Minister of Counter Narcotics Habibullah Qaderi said in a statement.

“I am very grateful to all those who have made this possible, especially the farmers who voluntarily changed to growing licit crops.”

However Mr Costa said the results were ‘not yet good news’ for Europe, where 90 per cent of the heroin on the streets comes from Afghan opium.—AFP