Taliban's Eradication of Poppies Is Convulsing Opium Market
By BARBARA CROSSETTE
June 13, 2001
The unexpected success of the Taliban in Afghanistan in eradicating three-quarters of the world's crop of opium poppies in one season is leading experts to ask where production is likely to spring up next.
The director of the United Nations Drug Control Program, Pino Arlacchi, said there was no chance that opium from other sources would compensate this year for the loss of Afghan crops, and the prices of opium and heroin will rise substantially, with opium already worth five to seven times its usual price. His program helped convince the Taliban that opium is a disgrace to Islam.
The chairman of the Central Asia Institute at Johns Hopkins, Frederick Starr, said the West, especially Europe, had been inexplicably slow in recognizing developments in Afghanistan. ''The reduction is probably the most dramatic event in the history of illegal drug markets, not only in scale, but also in the fact that it was done domestically, without international assistance,'' he said. He added that Europe, where most Afghan heroin was consumed, had been ''stunningly dysfunctional'' in helping Afghan farmers who have sacrificed livelihoods and in moving to prevent new fields from springing up in other poor countries.
United Nations narcotics officials are looking at three regions that may be tempted -- Myanmar, Pakistan and Central Asia.
In an interview from the drug agency headquarters in Vienna, Mr. Arlacchi said he was skeptical about including Myanmar, formerly Burma, because Thailand and China have put tremendous pressure on the military junta there to control narcotics production. He said the ethnic groups in northern Myanmar who once were the largest poppy producers have instead turned to making chemical compounds. American experts agree that the greater problem now is synthetic drugs like ecstasy, which are becoming increasingly popular among young Asians.
In Pakistan, Mr. Arlacchi said, the government, working with the United Nations, has completed one of its most successful eradication programs over the last two decades. ''Production is down to almost zero in the last few years,'' he said.
Central Asia, he said, has the most potential for poppy production. The United Nations has been working there with limited funds to cut down trafficking in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. In the last four months, more than two tons of heroin have been seized on the Tajikistan-Afghanistan border.
''But even if in the long term this reduction of supply is a major success, it will be sustainable only with a parallel reduction in the demand in the industrial countries,'' Mr. Arlacchi said. Narcotics experts say they do not see matching efforts in rich countries to cut use.
''The prices of heroin and cocaine have been declining over 10 years,'' Mr. Arlacchi said. ''That trend will now be interrupted. Prices will increase without demand reduction, and there will be more powerful incentives to cultivators and traders.''
Mr. Starr, of Johns Hopkins, said special attention should be paid to Kyrgyzstan, parts of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, as well as Xinjiang, in western China. ''Kyrgyzstan was the largest legal producer of opium poppies in the world during Soviet times,'' he said. Opium was used to make morphine for medicinal use. ''Presumably the people who made it work then are still on the ground -- and unemployed.''