2006 came to an end with a grim record: thanks to a huge boom in production, Afghanistan holds a virtual world monopoly on heroin production. The Kabul government and the world community seek countermeasures but show few results. The southern regions, largely under Taleban control, are the richest in poppies. Only a tiny percentage of profit goes to the farmers themselves; the rest fattens local warlords and fighters for Mullah Omar. Their heroin is invading the world market

A Failed War. Despite the tens of millions of dollars spent by the Afghan government to fight the drug trade, opium production reached record levels. In 2006, approximately 15,300 hectares sown with poppies were destroyed, less than 10 percent of total cultivation. The southern provinces of Helmand and Uruzgan lead production with the complicity of government functionaries who close an eye in exchange for money and protection. President Hamid Karzai acknowledges that the Afghan poppy is financing the jihad, and says, “Either we destroy opium, or opium will destroy us.” The government minister in charge of the war on drugs, Habibullah Qaderi, adds, “There are almost a million drug addicts in Afghanistan.” At the same time, heroin “made in Afghanistan” floods world markets.

From Afghanistan to the World. The Sheriff of Los Angeles County reports that heroin deaths in his jurisdiction increased 75 percent from 2002 to 2004. Since other factors influencing drug deaths remained the same, the rising death rate can be attributed to the much more pure Afghani heroin. The US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) announces that in 2001 the Afghani drug constituted 7 percent of the national heroin market, but has doubled in the past three years.

Who’s getting rich? The new boom in heroin is making rich only the lords of war; middlemen every step of the way are reaping increased profits as well. In 2006 raw opium cost roughly 70 euros per kilo in Afghanistan. Refined heroin in Europe and the Americas costs about 70 euros per gram. For Afghan peasants strangled by debt, the poppy represents a means to survival (other crops earn much less), but international traffickers are making huge profits. According to Antonio Maria Costa, director of the United Nations agency dedicated to fighting drugs, “Afghanistan gets the bad reputation, but foreigners are getting huge profits,” which he estimates at 50 billion dollars in 2006 alone.

Solutions? Up to now, poppy eradication campaigns have proven useless. Equally useless are the “awareness-raising” campaigns run by the Afghan government. The farmers are in the hands of the traffickers, and cannot stop growing poppies for fear both of their livelihoods and their lives. The proposal to transfer the illegal trade into a legal one directed to the pharmaceutical industry has been rejected as unrealistic by Antonio Maria Costa: “The illegal trade makes three times the profit, and in any case world production last year alone could satisfy the legal market’s needs for the next five years.” The US has asked the Afghans to undertake aerial fumigation campaigns to destroy poppies in the field, but Britain and Canada have protested. British General David Richards, until February the commander of international ISAF troops in Afghanistan, maintains that aerial spraying inevitably destroys other crops as well, which would increase hostility against foreign troops. At first the Afghan government rejected the proposal, but later accepted a plan to spray poppy fields, but not from the air. It is not yet known when this program would begin, or what its effect might be on the 12 percent of the population that depends on poppies to survive.