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Intense American pressure has failed to persuade President Karzai to start chemically spraying Afghanistan’s opium poppy crop in an attempt to cripple the heroin trade.After several days of high-level talks in Kabul, it was announced yesterday that there would be no spraying of this year’s crop, due to be harvested in two months. Mr Karzai has promised that if other, less controversial methods of eradication — notably sending in labourers with sticks to beat the heads off the poppies — fail to have a substantial impact on the harvest, he will turn to herbicide next year, although he has ruled...

Opium production in Afghanistan, which provides more than 90 percent of the world's heroin, broke all records in 2006, reaching a historic high despite ongoing U.S.-sponsored eradication efforts, the Bush administration reported yesterday. In addition to a 26 percent production increase over past year -- for a total of 5,644 metric tons -- the amount of land under cultivation in opium poppies grew by 61 percent. Cultivation in the two main production provinces, Helmand in the southwest and Oruzgan in central Afghanistan, was up by 132 percent.

JALALABAD, Afghanistan (AP) - With profits from this spring's record opium crop fueling a broad Taliban offensive, Afghan authorities say they are considering a once unthinkable way to deal with the scourge: spraying poppy fields with herbicide. Afghans including President Hamid Karzai are deeply opposed to spraying the crop. After nearly three decades of war, Western science and assurances can do little to assuage their fears of chemicals being dropped from airplanes. But U.S. officials in Kabul and Washington are pushing for it. And on Thursday the country's top drug enforcement official said he would contemplate spraying opium crops -...

AS if there hadn’t been enough bad news from Afghanistan of late, now the country’s drug dependency is back in the headlines. On Sept. 2, the head of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime reported that the shattered country is now producing 92 percent of the world’s supply of illegal opium, up from 87 percent in 2004. This deplorable new record will not be reversed by more belligerent counternarcotics measures. Instead, America, NATO and the Afghan government must reform a vital but neglected institution: the local police. In 2004, for the first time in history, farmers in every...

KABUL, Afghanistan, Sept. 2 — Afghanistan’s opium harvest this year has reached the highest levels ever recorded, showing an increase of almost 50 percent from last year, the executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Antonio Maria Costa, said Saturday in Kabul. He said the increase in cultivation was significantly fueled by the resurgence of Taliban rebels in the south, the country’s prime opium growing region. As the insurgents have stepped up attacks, they have also encouraged and profited from the drug trade, promising protection to growers if they expanded their opium operations. “This year’s harvest...

WASHINGTON - The U.S.-backed strategy to fight Afghanistan's massive drug trade has been unsuccessful in stemming opium cultivation, which is expected to hit record levels this year, a senior U.S. official said Thursday. "It's bad news and we need to improve it," said Thomas Schweich, principal deputy assistant secretary of state for international narcotics. "But we don't feel it's a hopeless situation, and we don't think the overall strategy is the wrong strategy." Schweich spoke to reporters as Western officials in Afghanistan were forecasting a possible 40 percent increase this year in land under opium poppy cultivation, despite hundreds of...

Afghan Opium Cultivation Surges KABUL, AFGHANISTAN - Opium cultivation in Afghanistan has hit record levels - up more than 40 percent from 2005 - despite hundreds of millions in counternarcotics money, Western officials told The Associated Press. The increase could have serious repercussions for an already grave security situation, with drug lords joining the Taliban-led fight against Afghan and international forces. A Western antinarcotics official in Kabul said about 370,650 acres of opium poppy was cultivated this season - up from 257,000 acres in 2005 - - citing their preliminary crop projections. The previous record was 323,700 acres in 2004,...

ASADABAD, Afghanistan, May 18 -- Afghanistan has been rocked over the past two days by some of the deadliest violence since the Taliban was driven from power in late 2001. As many as 105 people were reported killed in four provinces as insurgents torched a district government compound, set off suicide bombs and clashed fiercely with Afghan and foreign troops. Between 80 and 90 Taliban fighters were killed in Kandahar and Helmand provinces, according to Afghan, U.S. and NATO officials. Two sites in Kandahar were struck by U.S. warplanes, including a long-range B-1 bomber, which U.S. military officials said destroyed...

A fierce battle has erupted in southern Afghanistan between Taleban fighters and police, with latest reports saying more than 40 people have died. The fighting is in Helmand province where thousands of British troops are currently deployed. Violence also erupted earlier in Kandahar, leaving 18 militants and a female Canadian soldier dead. The attacks came as Canada's parliament narrowly voted to extend the country's combat mission until 2009. A suicide bomber also attacked a convoy of foreign troops in the western city of Herat on Thursday, police said, killing himself and a US soldier. At least 13 Afghan policemen...

<p>BAM: It was once an oasis famous for its dates and ancient Persian heritage. Now, amid a desolate landscape of rubble and wrecked buildings, Bam is a byword for drug abuse and an AIDS problem that threatens to become an epidemic.</p>

PESHAWAR (AIP): Taliban on Monday claimed to have taken complete control of Baghni district in Helmand province after a clash. Taliban fighters completely captured Baghni district of Helmand province following a clash with Afghan forces today (Monday), Taliban spokesman Qari Muhammad Yousaf told Afghan Islamic Press. He said government forces and all the district administration escaped. The Taliban spokesman did not disclosed details of the causalities and said, “I do not have any information in this regard now.” There was no statement from the officials of Helmand province about this claim of Taliban.

ALARM - Attack-suicide counters British in Afghanistan KANDAHAR (Afghanistan) - a suicide attack with the booby-trapped car aimed Friday of the British soldiers in the south of Afghanistan, undoubtedly making casualties among them, indicated a chief of the local police force.

Troops brace for Taliban showdown Canadian soldiers assigned to 'disrupting' area at centre of Afghanistan's heroin trade: Lethal valley Richard Foot CanWest News Service April 03, 2006 KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan are poised for a showdown with the Taliban this week, in the same lethal valley where Private Robert Costall was killed in action last Wednesday. About 200 troops operating north of Kandahar since Thursday were suddenly ordered back to their base on the weekend to prepare for an emergency reinforcement mission to the remote base where Pte. Costall died. The army believes as many as 150...

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (Reuters) - U.S. forces were involved in heavy fighting with Taliban guerrillas in Afghanistan on Saturday but there was no immediate word on casualties, a provincial official said. Afghanistan has seen a surge in attacks by Taliban insurgents and their militant allies in recent months and the Taliban have vowed to launch a spring offensive against U.S.-led foreign forces and the Western-backed government. The clash erupted after U.S. troops backed by helicopter gunships launched an operation in the Sangin district of the southern province of Helmand, said an administrative official in the province. "It's very heavy," the...

Afghanistan will encourage its powerful drug lords to invest their illegally earned profits back into the war-shattered country, according to the governor of the nation’s top opium growing region. The offer comes amid warnings of another bumper poppy crop that will fuel a booming narcotics trade that already accounts for 35 per cent of the impoverished nation’s income. "We as a government will provide them the opportunity to use their money for the national benefit," said Helmand Gov. Moham-med Daud during a two-day trip this week to the region by United States Ambassador Ronald Neumann. "They must invest in industries....

Taking farmers into confidence on opium eradication Sanjay SuriLONDON, Feb 2 (Pajhwok Afghan News) - Proposals being considered for the widespread destruction of opium plantations could end up destroying the lives of millions of farmers, an independent report warns. The report was released a day ahead of the international conference on Afghanistan that concluded in London on Thursday.The report by The Senlis Council, a drug policy advisory forum, says that in the face of mounting violence and instability in Afghanistan, the focus should be on the real stakeholders in Afghanistan's future. ''The Afghan farming communities must be empowered and included...

PINO GORDO, Mexico (Reuters) - Mexican Indians have grown maize, worshiped nature and lived by the light of pine torches in the canyons of the western Sierra Madre mountains for centuries. But this way of life is abruptly changing. Now armed drug gangs are forcing them to plant opium poppies and marijuana in their ancestral lands, which lie in a notorious region dubbed Mexico's 'Golden Triangle' of drug trafficking. The rugged point where the states of Chihuahua, Durango and Sinaloa meet is home to around 90,000 Tarahumara, Tepehuan, Pima and Guarijio Indians, around half of whom are getting caught up...

Iraq and Drugs - Opening A New Front in War on Terror Iraq and Drugs: Opening a New Front ... Insurgents on Drugs? Odd? Maybe. Predictable? Probably. Worrisome? Definitely. Word is trickling back from Iraq, through official and unofficial channels, that “opiates” (likely of Afghan origin) may be showing up in dead Iraqi insurgents. Five questions flow from that trickle. First, is it true? Is there a possibility that, consistent with anecdotal reports of heroin and methamphetamines being discovered more often (especially in the southern Iraqis cites of Basrah and Najaf), insurgents are getting a dose of mind-numbing from heroin...

Drugs Called No. 1 Threat in Afghanistan By Paul Ames Kabul, Afghanistan -- Drugs are a greater security threat in Afghanistan than a Taliban resurgence, NATO's top operational commander said Thursday, despite a rise in attacks blamed on remnants of the hard-line Islamic regime and their al-Qaida allies. Opium production has boomed since the fall of the Taliban, stoking fears that Afghanistan -- source of 80 percent of the world's heroin -- is becoming a narco-state. "For my money, the number one problem in Afghanistan is drugs," U.S. Gen. James L. Jones told reporters during a stopover in Qatar on...

WASHINGTON, Nov 23 (Reuters) - Afghanistan's opium harvest is expected to fall by 10 percent this year as a dramatic decrease in poppy acreage offsets favorable growing conditions, the Bush administration said on Wednesday. Roughly 107,400 hectares (265,400 acres) of farmland in the world's leading opium-growing nation were devoted to the illegal crop this year, a decline of nearly half from the record levels of 2004, the administration said. But favorable weather meant the harvest would not decrease nearly as dramatically, the government said. Current cultivation levels would lead to a potential harvest of 4,475 metric tons of opium, or...