Afghanistan doesn't rate in the news as much as Iraq does. It ought to, not only because Australian is heavily committed to the war underway in that country, but because of the widespread implications of another aspect of life in Afghanistan - opium!
As The Observer reports:
"Afghanistan is hooked on opium. The drugs trade has become the largest employer, its biggest export and the main source of income in a land devastated by decades of war. Opium is grown on 10 per cent of the farmland and employs 13 per cent of the population as labourers, guards and transport workers.
Poppy farmers have had a long cold winter, painstakingly tending their crops by hand using short, flat shovels to tease out weeds and turn the arid soil. The poppies are now in blossom. When the red petals peel away, the seed pods will be lanced and squeezed for opium sap. Any day now, the bazaars, full of pomegranates and oranges, will become the biggest opium markets in the world. UN estimates suggest this year's opium harvest will be the largest in history.
Since the overthrow of the Taliban, land under cultivation for poppy has grown from 8,000 to 165,000 hectares. Ninety per cent of the world's supply of opium will emerge from this corner of Asia over the coming months. The drugs will be smuggled across the Pakistani border or along the Harirut River, through the city of Herat and into Iran where they will be refined into heroin and set on course for Russia and the West.
The ubiquity of the drug has now created the world's worst domestic drug problem, a crisis threatening to engulf any hope of economic revival. The first nationwide survey on drug use, by the Afghan Ministry of Counter-Narcotics and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, estimated that one million in this nation of 30 million were addicts, including 100,000 women and 60,000 children."
As The Observer reports:
"Afghanistan is hooked on opium. The drugs trade has become the largest employer, its biggest export and the main source of income in a land devastated by decades of war. Opium is grown on 10 per cent of the farmland and employs 13 per cent of the population as labourers, guards and transport workers.
Poppy farmers have had a long cold winter, painstakingly tending their crops by hand using short, flat shovels to tease out weeds and turn the arid soil. The poppies are now in blossom. When the red petals peel away, the seed pods will be lanced and squeezed for opium sap. Any day now, the bazaars, full of pomegranates and oranges, will become the biggest opium markets in the world. UN estimates suggest this year's opium harvest will be the largest in history.
Since the overthrow of the Taliban, land under cultivation for poppy has grown from 8,000 to 165,000 hectares. Ninety per cent of the world's supply of opium will emerge from this corner of Asia over the coming months. The drugs will be smuggled across the Pakistani border or along the Harirut River, through the city of Herat and into Iran where they will be refined into heroin and set on course for Russia and the West.
The ubiquity of the drug has now created the world's worst domestic drug problem, a crisis threatening to engulf any hope of economic revival. The first nationwide survey on drug use, by the Afghan Ministry of Counter-Narcotics and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, estimated that one million in this nation of 30 million were addicts, including 100,000 women and 60,000 children."
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