Reuters
08/31/2010
By Andrew Hammond
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U.S. private security guards mingled in the crowd, while Afghan security forces stood on guard on surrounding hilltops and access roads. Afghans in dirty robes ran back and forward with paraffin canisters, two of them with the unfortunate task of climbing over the pile of wood, and seized sacks of drugs to pour on the fuel.

Cameramen, outnumbered by foreign and Afghan diplomats and officials, crowded around for close-ups as bags were slit open, spilling out the cumin-coloured powder. “Today is a big day for the people of Afghanistan,” said General Mohammad Daoud Daoud, the Interior Ministry’s anti-narcotics chief. He said the haul was the result of five drug networks that had been busted in the past five months in Kabul and Nangarhar to the east.

An Afghan pours diesel on a pile of narcotics before burning it, in Kabul, Monday, Aug. 30, 2010. (AP Photo/Mustafa Quraishi)

”It has a big impact,” a British diplomat said as the pyre was torched. “It’s a message; they have to show that the effort is having an effect. They made a lot of big busts recently.”

What was left unsaid was that, impressive as the haul was, it amounted to a drop in the ocean. Afghanistan produced something like 6,900 tonnes of opium last year, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). That alone is far more than the 5,000 tonnes consumed by the world’s addicts a year. It was also about 90 percent of the world’s opium, a thick black paste made from poppies and which is then turned into heroin.

Western governments, with more than 140,000 troops in the country, fear that the Taliban-led insurgency still receives a lot of its funding from the opium. Even more worryingly, they fear that the Taliban has hoarded so much opium — thousands of tonnes — that they can control the world price for years to come.

Ordinary Afghans suffer the most. The United Nations said in June that Afghanistan is not only the world’s top opium exporter but rivals Iran for the highest rates of addiction.

“We have almost one million addicts, it’s a big disaster for the people of Afghanistan,” the general said. “Unfortunately, the first victim is the people of Afghanistan.”

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