JALALABAD, November 19 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Three years after the massive US-led invasion, Afghanistan is still facing the threat of being a corrupt “narco-state” after the opium production rose by two thirds this year.

The UN's annual opium survey reveals that poppy cultivation increased by two-thirds this year, a finding that will come as a deep embarrassment to British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who pledged before the 2001 invasion to eradicate the scourge of opium along with the Taliban, the Independent reported Friday, November 19.

The report from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODOC) says the narcotics trade is far bigger than anybody had realized, urging the US and British forces to take tougher actions.

Most experts in Afghanistan believe it is a more significant factor in the continuing violence and instability than the Taliban presence in the country, the British daily said.

The UN report in 2003 found that one in 10 Afghans -- many of them unemployed returned refugees -- are involved in the drugs trade which last year employed 2.3 million people, and made up 60 per cent of the gross national product.

In just one year, the area under cultivation increased by 64 per cent, with the output estimated at 4,200 tons, a 17 per cent increase on last year with only disease and bad weather acting as drag factors.

The only year with bigger output was 1999, before a Taliban edict completely stopped production, according the British daily.

Taliban had cracked down on drugs cultivators but the regime's 2001 fall led to an increase in production.

‘Failed State’

The Independent accused Blair of reneging on his promises to rid Afghanistan of drugs before the invasion of the country.

On the eve of the Afghan invasion, Blair informed the Labor Party conference that “90 per cent of the heroin on British streets originates in Afghanistan”, using that as a justification for deploying troops to Afghanistan.

Despite evidence from the UN that the Taliban was suppressing the drugs trade, Blair said: “The arms the Taliban are buying today are paid for by the lives of young British people buying their drugs on British streets. That is another part of their regime we should seek to destroy.”

There is growing evidence, however, that despite some improvements, Afghanistan has become a failed state, said the British daily.

It is now ranked by the UN as the second worst country in the world to live in - after Sierra Leone.

The UN report revealed that the engine of economic growth is opium production.

Opium is now the “main engine of economic growth and the strongest bond among previously quarrelsome peoples,” according to the United Nations.

Last year Afghanistan exported 87 per cent of the world's drugs supplies. Most of the opium is smuggled across the Pakistan border.

Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of UNODC, urged Nato and the US-led forces in Afghanistan to fight the drugs trade and gave a warning in words usually reserved for war.

He called on US and Nato-led forces to carry out military operations against drug traffickers.

“In Afghanistan drugs are now a clear and present danger,” he was quoted by the BBC News Online as saying.

“The fear that Afghanistan might degenerate into a narco-state is becoming a reality.”

Costa said there was “no silver bullet” with which to tackle the problem.