KABUL, Sept 2: Opium could destroy Afghanistan and return it to being a haven for terrorism, a US counternarcotics official said on Saturday. A ‘narco-economy’ was already in place and the drugs trade could cause the fragile country to collapse into the chaos that sheltered the Al Qaeda network, the US official on drugs control said.

“This country could be taken down by this whole drug problem again,” Doug Wankel, director of the US drugs control office in Kabul, told reporters.

“We’ve seen what can come from Afghanistan,” he said, referring to the Sept 11, 2001, attacks. “The US doesn’t want to see that again. We’re here because it’s a security threat to Afghanistan, the region and the world.”

Washington is one of the main funders of Afghanistan’s efforts to rid itself of illegal opium even though most of the drug ends up in Europe, Russia and Central Asia.

“The US is here working on this issue not so much because it is a direct problem of heroin in the United States but because the drug cultivation, production, trafficking situation in Afghanistan is a national security threat to Afghanistan, to the region and to the world,” Mr Wankel said.

More than a third of Afghanistan’s gross domestic product already comes from the illicit drugs trade, he said.

“This country is so fledgling, so fragile, and you’ve got a narco-economy now,” Mr Wankel said, warning of the ‘serious corruptive influence’ of the trade.—AFP