KABUL, March 3: Afghanistan’s illicit opium crop, by far the biggest in the world, is likely to increase sharply this year with villagers planting more opium poppies in defiance of a ban, the UN drugs office said.

Farmers have already planted more poppies than last year with production expected to increase in 13 provinces, according to a UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) report.

Cultivation was likely to stay steady in 16 provinces and only decrease in three, according to the report based on a December-January survey of 496 villages.

Pending eradication programmes, this could translate into a sharp increase in output of the lucrative crop used to make most of the heroin consumed in Europe.

“Farmers in those (13) provinces are aware of the government’s ban on opium poppy cultivation and the planned eradication campaign, but do not believe that those measures will be enforced,” said the report posted on the UNODC website.

The steepest increase in area planted was in southern Helmand province, which last year produced the most opium (25 per cent) and this year had 50 per cent more land under cultivation, it said.

Afghanistan produces about 87 per cent of the world’s illicit opium. Production dropped last year for the first time since the removal in 2001 of the Taliban.

The new government and its international allies are determined to cut opium production, which threatens to turn the country into a narco-state.

The US State Department has however warned there are persistent problems in Afghanistan’s efforts to stem the drug trade.

In its annual review of the global fight against narcotics trafficking, the department said on Wednesday Kabul’s law enforcement efforts were hampered by the ongoing insurgency, lack of police capacity and drug-related corruption.

“Afghanistan’s huge drug trade severely impacts efforts to rebuild the economy, develop a strong democratic government based on rule of law, and threatens regional stability,” the department said.

The UN and the Afghan government have estimated the total export value of Afghanistan’s opium in 2005 at 2.7 billion dollars, equivalent to 52 percent of the country’s official gross domestic product.

Last year there was a 21 percent drop in land planted with poppies although this only translated into a 2.4 percent drop in output to 4,100 tonnes because of favourable weather conditions for the crop, the UNODC said.

The Afghan government has said it aimed to further cut the area under cultivation by 40 percent this year. Eradication programmes last year uprooted more than 5,100 hectares of the 104,000 under cultivation.

The government has urged mosques to preach against the growing of opium, which is forbidden under Islam, and has been pushing farmers to turn to legitimate crops.

But the UNODC report said villagers were planting opium poppies because it brought them up to 10 times what they would make from cereals.

A farmer could earn about 4,000 dollars a hectare (2.47 acres) from opium, compared to 450 dollars for wheat and 1,650 dollars for maize, it said.

Several of the provinces where the sharpest increase in production is expected — such as Helmand, Zabul and Uruzgan — are among the areas of Afghanistan worst-hit by a deadly anti-government insurgency and there have been suggestions of a link between the violence and the drugs trade.

GOVERNOR’S VOW: The governor of Helmand province, the main producer of the country’s huge opium crop, has vowed to destroy all the opium poppies in his province in two months.

The production of opium is wrapped up with deadly unrest in southern Helmand and must be eradicated, said governor Mohammed Daoud. The province is one of the worst-hit by violence blamed on the Taliban.

“The area of under opium cultivation is going to increase this year,” Daoud said in an interview in the provincial capital Lashkargah this week.

“But next week we will begin a total eradication programme. In two months, there will be no opium in this province,” he said. Helmand last year produced 25 percent of Afghanistan’s opium.

Helmand is also one of Afghanistan’s most dangerous provinces and has seen some of the deadliest clashes between police and militants.

“Drugs and terrorism are very close, they feed each other. As the production of opium increases, the terrorists entrench themselves,” Mr Daoud said.

Mr Daoud acknowledged that many of the farmers were poor and could not afford irrigation, which made opium a good crop for them.

Nonetheless, ‘we are going to eradicate it all, it doesn’t matter who owns the field’, he said.

He said a force of about 1,500 men would be deployed throughout the province, with the support of British troops, to carry out the eradication, which experts have said is unrealistic.

Britain is due to send about 3,300 troops to southern Afghanistan in the coming months to help with reconstruction and fighting the drug trade in Helmand.—AFP