Stability cuts Afghan opium output in north: U.S.

By Daren Butler

ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Political stability has helped cut opium poppy production in northern Afghanistan and output is concentrated in southern areas where the Taliban is active, U.S. drug czar John Walters said on Thursday.

Afghanistan is the world's number one producer of opium poppy, the key ingredient for heroin. Opium production rose as much as 50 percent last year to supply more than 90 percent of global heroin, according to a United Nations estimate.

"This year it looks like what we are seeing is concentrated growth in the southern part of the country where the violence and the Taliban have been active," said Walters, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.

Afghanistan's Western allies regard the heroin trade as a major factor in a revival of the Taliban-led insurgency. Last year was the bloodiest since 2001 when U.S.-led forces forced the hardline Islamist group from power.

Walter said production was declining in the northern and central parts of the country. The number of poppy-free provinces may double this year to 12 as the political leadership in the north radically reduces cultivation.

"It looks like the northern part of the country is reducing its involvement in poppy as it gets more stable," he told Reuters in an interview in Istanbul, where he was attending a conference.

Afghan officials have complained that not enough money and resources are being spent on reconstruction and development to discourage farmers from getting involved in the trade.

Walters said it was a misunderstanding to think farmers were choosing opium solely to make money.

"What we have seen are warlords, drug traffickers and the Taliban threatening people with guns, saying: 'You will grow poppies'," he said.

Tackling the problem required the Afghan people to build an institutional structure in the form of police and a judicial system after decades of war.

Globally, Walters said progress was being made in the fight against illegal drugs that included a sharp decline in the production of heroin in east Asia.

"What we've now seen is a containment of demand and supply which has been growing over the last several decades globally. So we begin to have a boundary which we now obviously want to squeeze down," he said.

He said part of this fight was focused on identifying and sharing intelligence internationally about the criminal networks involved in the trade.

"The global war on terror has shown us how we need to analyze networks to show inner connections between individuals and begin to pull out larger chunks of those networks to cause their capacity to act to collapse," he said.