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Thailand Fears Opium Boost After Taliban's Poppy Ban
JAKARTA, July 11 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - An anti-opium edict by the Taliban regime in Afghanistan is having serious consequences on the fight against drug trade in Thailand, officials said on Wednesday.
The Thailand authorities fear that the edict by the Taliban banning opium poppy cultivation would cause a surge in prices. This will eventually cause a flood of drugs entering Thailand via Myanmar and Laos.
Myanmar is regarded as the top heroin-producing nation in the Asian region, and the ban in Afghanistan has pushed the drug warlords to look towards its production facilities.
Most of its drugs production travels via Thailand, where it has a large market dominated by demands from foreigners and locals altogether.
The new government in Bangkok has vowed to contain drug trafficking through its borders, and is working closely with the police in Malaysia, Singapore and the army in Myanmar to achieve its goals.
However, drugs produced both in Myanmar and along the mountainous Thai borders reach the United States and even Australia.
Last year, Myanmar produced about 1,000 tons of opium - equivalent to 100 tons of heroin.
U.S. satellite images reveal Myanmar has about 108,000 hectares (about 417 square miles) given over to poppy fields, from which comes most of Southeast Asia's heroin.
A Singapore newspaper on Wednesday reported that the semi-autonomous United Wa State Army (UWSA) is already well placed to make the most of Afghanistan's loss.
The Wa, a Chinese tribe involved in poppy production, processing and exportation worldwide, has a powerful army of 20,000 men that is well trained and is fully equipped.
They pose the most serious threat to the Thai administration in its battle against drugs, while their drug lords are certainly not an easy group to deal with in Myanmar.
Their decades-old opium trade has helped them organize their army into a stable force and manage their land with apparent success.
Sources said it would be almost impossible to prevent them from taking advantage of the Taliban edict and reap a windfall on increasing demand for heroin worldwide.
Both in Afghanistan and in Myanmar, Thailand, opium is converted into heroin in laboratories tucked away in remote tribal regions. The end product is smuggled out through Pakistan and Central Asia, from Afghanistan.
Last year, Afghan farmers produced over 4,000 tons of opium more than the rest of the world put together, according to the United Nations.
The edict in July 2000 had taken Taliban critics by surprise. The Taliban had been criticized for not doing anything to stop opium cultivation and to benefit from its trade.
On issuing the edict, the Taliban threatened to jail anyone who defies the ban. It arrested several farmers in the wake of the ban.
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