Opium still fuelling terrorism in Afghanistan

Updated October 23, 2009 11:56:55

A new United Nations report has found that opium poppies grown in Afghanistan are fuelling a $US65 billion trade that feeds 15 million addicts around the world.

The report says opium kills five times more people in NATO countries every year than all the NATO lives lost in eight years of fighting against the Taliban. And with the profits funding militant groups throughout the region, the UN is warning that a so-called perfect storm of drugs and terrorism could be heading towards Central Asia.

Presenter: Joanna McCarthy
Speaker: Ashley Jackson, researcher, Oxfam Kabul; Antonio Maria Costa, executive director, UN Office on Drugs and Crime; Professor Amin Saikal, director, Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies, Australian National University

MCCARTHY: The United Nations says more than 90 per cent of the world's opium is produced in Afghanistan. It's a trade that kills 100,000 users every year and funds the Taliban for up to $160 million a year. Antonio Maria Costa is the executive director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime.

COSTA: Europe loses about 10,000 people a year to drug addiction, to Afghan narcotics. NATO forces in Afghanistan during the past six, seven years, since the attack in 2001 have lost a grand total of 1,800 soldiers.

MCCARTHY: It's these figures that the UN hopes will spur the international community to take action. Mr Costa says it's not just a shared responsibility; it's hard-headed self-interest. He says the profits from the trade are funding militant groups in Pakistan and Central Asia and he warns a so-called perfect storm of drugs and terrorism could be heading towards the region, endangering its massive energy resources.

COSTA: There is a large number of insurgent groups, in Turkmenistan, in Uzbekistan .. Fergana valley generally speaking and so forth, that are benefiting from the trade, they are a part of the problem and they are deriving revenue which could be very significant in the future in terms of threat of instability in central Asia.

MCCARTHY:The report says a quarter of Afghan opium is trafficked through Central Asia, 30 per cent through Iran and 40 per cent through Pakistan. Mr Costa describes the Afghan-Pakistan border as the world's largest free trade zone in anything and everything that is illicit. That includes drugs, weapons and people smuggling. Professor Amin Saikal is the director of the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies at the Australian National University.

SAIKAL: There's no question that the long and treacherous border that exists between Afghanistan and Pakistan has become an open border and of course successive governments in Afghanistan as well as in Pakistan and of course the powers which have been involved in Afghanistan from outside have not been able to control that border and I think that's been one of the major sources of instability in Afghanistan. If the United States and its allies had succeeded in somehow gaining control over that border then probably Afghanistan would have not been in the mess that it is today.

MCCARTHY:The report also says the Afghan trade has benefited from a dramatic drop in opium production in countries like Laos and Burma over the last decade. It says more than a quarter of the Chinese opiate market, for example, now comes from Afghanistan. And it calls on the international community to help reduce the supply chain by helping Afghan poppy farmers. Ashley Jackson is a researcher in Kabul for aid agency Oxfam.

JACKSON: A couple of years back UNODC did a survey and they asked farmers why they grew opium. Ninety per cent said they did it primarily for economic reasons and the majority of those said that they wouldn't do it if they had other options. The reason why they don't have other options is often because the towns in the districts are run by the Taliban and they aren't given other options they don't have access to markets to sell their crops and it's in the Taliban's interest to turn these farmers into suppliers. So you know over the long term getting rid of the root causes of poverty and insecurity are going to be critical to making any sustainable impact on the supply of opium.