Narcotics surge aids Afghan, Colombia militants-UN
(Adds reaction from NGO, paragraphs 15-16)
By Louis Charbonneau
UNITED NATIONS, June 26 (Reuters) - Narcotics supplies have increased sharply in parts of Afghanistan and Colombia where insurgents are in control, helping them fund their activities, the United Nations said on Thursday.
While cultivation of the opium poppy stabilized or dropped in many parts of Afghanistan, five southern regions controlled by Taliban militants produced enough poppy to double the world's opium output between 2005 and 2007, the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime said in its World Drug Report 2008.
On the other side of the world in Colombia, coca cultivation rose by 27 percent in 2007, though coca leaf and cocaine production were concentrated in just 10 of the country's 195 municipalities, the Vienna-based UNODC said.
Afghanistan remained the world's top heroin producer last year while Colombia was the foremost producer of cocaine.
"In Colombia, just like in Afghanistan, the regions where most coca is grown are under the control of insurgents," UNODC Executive Director Antonio Maria Costa said in a statement.
"In the future, we need to be even more proactive," he said. "Recent major increases in drug supply from Afghanistan and Colombia may drive addiction rates up, because of lower prices and higher purity of doses."
Costa's report said that even though there was a sharp rise in the cultivation of coca in Colombia, the actual cocaine output was unchanged in 2007 due to lower yields. This is because planters have had to grow coca on smaller, remote plots to avoid detection by an increasingly aggressive government.
"In the past few years, the Colombian government destroyed the large-scale coca plots by means of massive aerial eradication," Costa said. "It was an unquestionably successful campaign against armed groups and drug traffickers alike."
Coca cultivation also increased in Bolivia and Peru last year, though yields were down there as well. Global cocaine production from coca leaf was virtually unchanged in 2007 at 994 metric tonnes compared with 984 tonnes in 2006.
NEW DRUG SUPPLY ROUTES IN AFRICA
In Afghanistan, Taliban militants also have profited from drugs. Global opium production reached 8,870 metric tonnes last year, with Afghanistan alone accounting for 92 percent of the world's supply of the key ingredient for heroin.
"In the southern areas, controlled by the Taliban, counter-narcotics and counter-insurgency must be fought together," Costa said.
Myanmar, the world's second-biggest opium producer, also recorded an increase in opium poppy cultivation last year and was responsible for most of the non-Afghan heroin.
The UNODC report also described the overall success of drug control policies over the last century and the last decade. One positive example was that global opium output has fallen by 70 percent since it was first surveyed in 1909, despite a fourfold increase in the world's population.
A non-governmental drug research group, the Transnational Institute, rejected UNODC's conclusions, saying the report wrongly gave credit for reduced opium output to drug policies.
TNI said in a statement that proof of what it described as a failure of current anti-drug policies were UNODC's own statistics that global opium output had doubled and cocaine output had risen by 20 percent over the last decade.
The UNODC also described new drug trafficking routes in West Africa, where data showed increases in seizures and use of cocaine. The West Africa distribution route appears to be feeding growing use of cocaine in western Europe.
The biggest consumer market for illicit drugs is in marijuana and hashish. The UNODC estimates that 166 million people -- roughly 4 percent of the world's population between ages 15 and 64 -- used cannabis products in 2006, compared to 16 million who used cocaine and 12 million who used heroin. (Editing by Eric Beech)
