Karzai blames west for poppy 'explosion'

By Aunohita Mojumdar in Kabul and Alex Barker and James Blitz,in London,

Financial TimesPublished: Aug 30, 2007

Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, yesterday launch-ed a powerful attack on the international community's failure to come up with a coherent counter-narcotics strategy for his country, blaming the west for Afghanistan's explosion in opium poppy cultivation.
In the aftermath of a United Nations report showing that opium production soared in Afghanistan by 34 per cent last year, Mr Karzai said there was insufficient co-operation among members of the international community in the fight against drug production in Afghanistan.
The president told journalists in Kabul that part ofthe problem facing Afghan-istan was that theinternational community had not respected the Kabulgovernment's proposals to reduce poppy production.
Mr Karzai did not explain which ideas were being over-ruled, but said: "Wherever the government is present, the drug fight is successful but where the government is overshadowed it is not successful."
Mr Karzai's comments were strongly rebutted by the UK government in London, which is leading the international fight against opium production in Afghanistan.
Britain has been under pressure on the issue because this week's report from the UN Office of Drugs and Crime showed that the biggest increase in opium production last year took place in Helmand province, where British troops are fighting the Taliban insurgency.
"The Afghan CounterNarcotics strategy is an Afghan-owned strategy and supported by the international community," a Foreign Office spokesman said last night.
"It has shown signs of progress in some provinces, and we are following the same approach in Helmand. The increase of cultivation in Helmand is a real concern but we are working very hard, side by side withthe Afghan authorities, to provide the security that will allow the counter-narcotics strategy to take hold."
British officials argue that there is no easy solution to Afghanistan's drugs problem.
"Bringing down drugs production [in Afghanistan] will take 10 to 15 years," one senior official said yesterday.
British officials say production has been soaring in Helmand because of rising insecurity and because the Taliban are taking a more active role in the trade.
British officials argue that production can only be brought down by a balanced strategy that improves incentives for farmers to switch crops, better governance and more targetederadication.
Nato has also adjusted its tactics to step up eradication in recognition of the links between the Taliban insurgency and the drugs trade. Nato will therefore provide greater support for Afghan law enforcement.
Senior US officials are keen to use aerial crop spraying as a means of tackling the soaring production rates in some of the country's provinces.
However, crop spraying has been strongly resisted by many European, Afghan and Nato officials who fear it will force farmers to shift their support away from the Afghan government and towards the Taliban insurgency.
Some western officials also believe the Afghans need to be more proactive themselves in the fight against the narcotics trade.
"We do need high-level arrests to begin to disrupt the big traffickers," said one official.
"We're slowly seeing some progress on this from the Afghans."