The European Union (EU) in Afghanistan is distressed at the rising cultivation of opium-producing poppy across Afghanistan, suggesting that the lack of security is the centre of the problem.
Alfred Grannas, deputy head of the EU delegation to Afghanistan, called on the government to do more to end the national and international problem, saying that figures show 90 percent of heroin consumed in Europe is produced in Afghanistan.
"We politically support the Afghan national counter-narcotics strategy, and we support the efforts through the joint coordination and monitoring board to have a faced approach to counter-narcotics in Afghanistan," Grannas told TOLOnews, adding that the EU also supports poppy eradication.
"We do that through a very comprehensive approach, so we do that through capacity building efforts in police, justice, and also border management. We do it through our interventions in areas of health and rural development. So, it is a very comprehensive approach crosscutting through all our development assistance intervention we have here in Afghanistan.
Grannas acknowledged that heroin itself is not produced in Afghanistan, but pointed out that 90 percent of the heroin is produced with Afghan poppy.
"The actual heroin may not be produced in Afghanistan – that is right. [But] the basis for the heroin production done elsewhere comes from Afghanistan... A hundred-percent accurate figure on who produces how much [heroin] we will never have because it's an illegal business, but from the relatively accurate estimates you can say that the poppy production that you have in Afghanistan – if you count through the process of producing heroin – that 90 percent heroin is based on poppy produced in Afghanistan because there is not that much coming from elsewhere," he said.
The Afghan counter-narcotics ministry said Thursday that its findings show that opium is mainly cultivated in insecure parts of the country and that the cultivation has dropped compared to previous years.
"Figures show that six years ago in 2007 there was more than 300 thousand acres of land [cultivating poppy in Helmand] which we don't have in Helmand now. The 2012 survey of Helmand suggested that about 75 thousand acres [are cultivating poppy] which is a decrease compared to 2007, 2008, and 2012," said Zabiullah Daim, legal and public awareness advisor to the Ministry of Counter Narcotics.
However a UN report released Monday said that poppy cultivation is likely to increase this year, and may even return to near record levels of production amid "unusually" high prices for opium.
Some pundits have suggested that the cultivation increase is related to more young Afghans looking for work and heading south to the poppy growing regions to earn short-term incomes scoring poppy.