Afghan province to make one-third of world's heroin

The Afghanistan province being patrolled by British troops will produce at least a third of the world's heroin this year, according to drug experts who are forecasting a record harvest that will be an embarrassment for the western-funded war on narcotics. British officials are bracing themselves for the result of an annual UN poppy survey due later this summer. Early indications show an increase on Helmand's 1999 record of 112,500 acres and a near-doubling of last year's crop. "It's going to be massive," said one British drugs official. "My guess is it's going to be the biggest ever." Helmand's bumper harvest highlights the failure of western counter-narcotics efforts that have cost at least $2 billion since 2001. It could undo progress made last year, when poppy cultivation dropped 21 percent after a call for a "jihad" on drugs by the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai. It spells particularly bad news for Britain, which is leading the anti-narcotics campaign and has deployed 3,300 soldiers to the lawless province. Afghanistan produces almost 90 percent of the world's heroin, with about a third coming from Helmand. Drug experts say the province is as central to Afghanistan's illegal economy as California is to the United States' legal one. "If you took Helmand out of the picture, Afghanistan would fall from the world's top poppy grower to second or third place," said one US official. British and US officials cannot resort to the tactics of the Taliban, which slashed poppy cultivation in 2001 by threatening to shoot farmers. But western efforts using less violent methods, such as encouraging farmers to grow legal crops, have proved fruitless. The smuggling kingpins who control the $2.5 billion trade have become rich, powerful and apparently untouchable. "Until Karzai arrests and jails one big dealer, people will not believe the central government is behind this drive," said a former US anti-narcotics contractor. The most damaging allegations surround the minister charged with counter-narcotics, Muhammad Daud. Several western officials claim General Daud, a former Tajik warlord, has historical and family links to smuggling. He denies the allegations. "It is very shameful for a big country with such a good reputation to make allegations like this," he said. US members of Congress are increasing the pressure to start poppy eradication with crop-spraying airplanes–a controversial tactic opposed by British and Afghan officials, who say it would be disastrous. "It could drive farmers into the hands of the insurgents," said one.