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Afghan Sanctions Ignore Taliban Ban On Drugs
by Jean-Claude Chapon
ISLAMABAD (AFP) – U.N. sanctions against Afghanistan's ruling Taliban militia have come at a "very bad time" for efforts to eradicate the country's massive opium crop, the U.N.'s local drug control chief said Friday.
U.N. Drug Control Program representative for Pakistan and Afghanistan Bernard Frahi said the sanctions had "complicated our dialogue with the Taliban" at a crucial time in the opium season.
The organization also punished the Taliban for their alleged involvement in drug trafficking despite the Islamic militia's sincere and apparently successful efforts to ban opium cultivation.
Earlier this year, Taliban Supreme Leader Mulla Mohammad Omar issued a decree banning opium cultivation, and Frahi said initial investigations found the authorities were genuine in efforts to eradicate the lucrative crop.
"According to our information, this decree is working in the province of Kandahar but it's more difficult to estimate in the province of Helmand," he said.
"That's why the Taliban's cooperation is indispensable for us to be able to get on the ground in the spring to verify this significant data.
The southern provinces of Helmand and Kandahar, the Taliban's stronghold, as well as Nangarhar in the east, contribute some 85 %of Afghanistan's annual opium harvest, which last year hit a record 4,600 tons.
This year, the U.N. said it was more like 3,200 tons - still the largest in the world - although experts are unsure whether the reduction is the result of a severe drought or the Taliban's crackdown.
The Taliban are furious at the sanctions and have vowed to close offices of the U.N. Special Mission to Afghanistan (the U.N.'s political section there) and withdraw from U.N.-backed peace talks with the armed opposition.
"We have received more or less an assurance from the Taliban that we can continue to work despite the sanctions," Frahi said.
Most of the financial, diplomatic, travel and aviation sanctions approved on Tuesday by the U.N. Security Council are designed to force the Taliban to give up its alleged support for "terrorists."
But the measures also include a ban on the export to Afghanistan of the chemical used to convert opium into heroin.
"Good intentions, plans and a few demonstration projects for the benefit of international journalists, diplomats and other observers do not prove a fundamental change in policy," the U.S. State Department said on December 12th.
"However, if the Taliban and other Afghan groups prove by their deeds that they are making serious efforts to control the rivers of narcotics flowing out of Afghanistan, then the international community should indeed take notice and find ways to cooperate with those Afghans."
Frahi said the ban had forced smugglers to stockpile supplies and triggered a sharp rise in the price of opium, from around $50 a kilogram (pounds) last year to $260 now.
"Smugglers are stockpiling, in Afghanistan and elsewhere, to provision against the drop in production," he said, adding that large reserves were being kept in northeastern Badakshan province, bordering Tajikistan.
Badakshan is the last province controlled by opposition forces under commander Ahmad Shah Masood and is one of the main drug supply routes into Central Asia and Europe.
Last month, Iran announced that it had deployed a battalion of troops near the borders with Afghanistan and Pakistan to stop the flow of narcotics. Since then, more than 100 people, mostly Afghans, have been killed in eastern Iran.
Iran, a Shiite Muslim state, regularly blames the Sunni Taliban militia that controls most of Afghanistan for the rise in drug trafficking in the region.
Pakistan is also a victim of the Afghan drug trade, with an estimated two million heroin addicts.
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