AFGHANISTAN-PAKISTAN: More international support needed to stem flow of Afghan drugs

[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

ISLAMABAD, 13 May 2005 (IRIN/PLUSNEWS) - Pakistan needs more international technical and financial support to stem the flow of heroin from neighbouring Afghanistan - the biggest opium producing nation in the world. There is also a need to drastically reduce domestic drug production and a build a domestic capacity to counter drug-related crime in Pakistan, a top UN official said on Thursday.

"The significant increase in opium cultivation in Afghanistan in the past few years makes Pakistan the most exposed country due to its long common border extended over some 2,500 km. We need to support Pakistan's efforts to strengthen its enforcement strategies at ports and borders, particularly in the northwest frontier region, to meet the emerging threats," Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said at a press briefing in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad.

In Pakistan, through a series of intensive measures in the eighties and nineties, poppy cultivation was reduced from over 35,000 acres of land to virtual poppy free status in 2000. However, the situation after 2001 gave way to a re-emergence of opium poppy cultivation from 2003 onwards, according to the annual report of the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) for 2004, released in March this year.

"Pakistan's victory over poppy cultivation was a real success story," the UN official said. "But Afghan poppy continues to flood the country, which is marketed to [the] local population along its trafficking routes - this is also increasing the risk of an HIV/AIDS epidemic in the country because of the large number of injecting drug users," Costa said.

The government of Pakistan is also keen to make efforts to resolve the problem.

"We want to bring our country to the level where it was in 2000, for which we need financial and technical assistance. We've discussed all our ongoing efforts and also the future strategies with Mr Costa," said Pakistan's minister for Narcotics Control, Ghous Bux Maher.

The visiting UNODC head underlined Pakistan's vulnerability to the heroin trade.

"We do recognise the significance of the [heroin] threat and importance of increased support," he added and pledged increased cooperation between his office and the government of Pakistan in the fight against drugs and organised crimes.

Costa was anxious to dispel a widely held misperception that opium cultivation dropped during Taliban rule in Afghanistan.

"The statistics from UN sources show that when the Taliban took power in the mid-nineties, the amount of production was 2,300 tons of dry opium. Five years later in 2000, the amount of production reached 4,600 tons. That was an enormous increase in cultivation during the Taliban. However, it's true that in the last year of the Taliban in 2001, the cultivation was brought down to a negligible amount. But the fact largely is that the Taliban doubled the cultivation and also trade," he said.

According to the UNODC, Afghanistan produces 87 percent of the world's supply of opium. In 2004, the estimated opium output stood at an alarming 4,600 mt, with the country retaining its title of being the world’s biggest producer of the drug. Some 2.3 million Afghan farmers grow the opium poppy and can make 10 times more money from it than they can by cultivating legal crops.

During his three day tour which started on Tuesday, Costa also visited Pakistan's container terminal at Port Qasim in the southern city of Karachi and was given a briefing about the cargo scanning system in use there.

Brigadier Akbar Niazi is in charge of the scanning system and told the UN official that Pakistan would install 14 scanners costing about US $1 million each on the routes along the Pakistan-Afghan border to check for drug trafficking.

The UNODC has designed a 'Global Container Pilot Programme' to assist port enforcement teams in developing countries. The programme helps to establish profiling systems and modern control techniques to ensure proper checks on illicit activities including trafficking in stolen and forged goods and the smuggling of weapons, explosives, dangerous chemicals, narcotics and human beings.

Under a pilot programme started this year, the ports of four countries which are major hubs of maritime drug shipment, have been designated by the UN anti-drug agency. In the first phase, the programme has been established in Ecuador and Senegal and will be extended to Ghana and Pakistan shortly, according to UNODC.

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