DUSHANBE, June 13, Asia-Plus – Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran agreed to crack down on drug trafficking.
The three countries will share intelligence on smuggling routes, bolster frontier security and hold joint counternarcotics operations, ministers said in a statement following talks in Vienna on June 12.
The agreement “can help solve the world”s biggest drug control problem,”” said Antonio Maria Costa, head of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime which hosted the talks.
About 92 percent of the world”s opium, the raw material for heroin, is produced in Afghanistan, where it generates more than $3 billion a year for farmers and traffickers, according to the UN. Revenue from the sale of illegal drugs is being used to finance terrorist training bases across the border in Pakistan, buy weapons and explosives for suicide bombings, and import the chemicals needed for drug refining, the world body says.
The three nations also agreed to destroy drug laboratories, halt money laundering, stop the smuggling of precursor chemicals and tackle political corruption.
Poppy cultivation surged after the Taleban, which banned the practice, was ousted from power by a U.S.-led coalition in 2001.
Afghanistan produced a record 5,644 metric tons of opium last year compared with 4,475 metric tons in 2005, according to the U.S. Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs. Areas under poppy cultivation increased 61 percent in 2006 to 172,000 hectares (424,840 acres) from 107,400 the previous year, the bureau reported in March.
Helmand province in southern Afghanistan, a Taleban stronghold, is the center of the country”s opium production and responsible for almost half of its poppy crop.
