Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan Fight Opium Smuggling
Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan agreed to bolster regional cooperation to combat drug smuggling at a time when the cultivation of illicit opium poppy is increasing.
Afghanistan provides about 90 percent of the world’s opium, the raw ingredient used to make heroin, and the UN and Afghan government have long tried to discourage the country from producing the lucrative crop.
Money from the sale of opium is also used to fuel insurgency and help buy weapons and equipment for the Taliban, AP reported.
The largest areas of opium poppy cultivation are in the violent south of the country, where it can be hard to make money on legal crops and where there are criminal networks to buy and sell the poppy crop.
Most of the opium from Afghanistan is shipped through Iran and Pakistan, and the three countries have for the past four years been involved in a UN-sponsored initiative to set up joint planning cells in each country to coordinate their efforts.
They pledged to bolster joint operations targeting smugglers and the networks they use to get the drug to the international marketplace.
“Iran is a transit route and the production of drugs in Afghanistan is on the increase,” said Iranian Interior Minister Mostafa Mohammad-Najjar, who heads the country’s counter-narcotics department. “The reason is high demand.”
Ministers in charge of counter-narcotics for Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran met in Kabul at a UN organized gathering.
The UN has said that insecurity and rising opium prices have driven Afghan farmers to increase cultivation of the illicit opium poppy by 7 percent in 2011, despite a major push by the Afghan government and international allies. Production in Afghanistan had dropped significantly in 2010 because of a plant disease that killed off much of the crop.
Anti-Drug Efforts Lauded
UN Undersecretary General and Executive Director of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) Yuri Fedotov praised Iran’s efforts in the campaign against drugs.
Speaking in a meeting with Mohammad-Najjar in Kabul, Fedotov hailed Iran’s efforts and valuable experiences in the war on drug-trafficking.
“Iran has effective experience in the campaign against illicit drugs in the region,” he said.
He further called on the other regional countries to learn from Iran, saying, “Other countries should model on the Islamic Republic of Iran to succeed in the anti-narcotic campaign.”
Mohammad-Najjar also said that the presence of US-led forces in Afghanistan has led to greater insecurity and drug production in the Asian country.
The Iranian interior minister said that the cultivation of poppy and narcotics production in Afghanistan have risen over 40-fold compared to what it was 10 years ago, when the US-led forces initiated the invasion of the war-ravaged country under the widely-publicized pretext of ‘war on terror’, and vowing to reestablish peace and security there by overthrowing the Taliban government. Mohammad-Najjar made the remarks in an interview in the Afghan capital of Kabul, IRNA reported.