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Afghan institutions too weak to handle drugs problem: UN

* UN representative says will take decades to end ‘industry’
* US coordinator says opium increasingly confined to south

KABUL: Afghanistan has done little to stop the corruption propping up its drugs trade and its war-shattered institutions are too weak to handle the problem, the UN representative on drugs here said.

It will take decades to end the industry in the country, which produces more than 90 percent of the world’s illegal opium, UN Office on Drugs and Crime representative Christina Oguz told AFP in an interview. Drugs production, which last year reached new highs and feeds into deteriorating security, will be a main focus of ministers, donors and aid agencies meeting in Tokyo this week to assess progress in Afghanistan.

A paper prepared for the talks Tuesday and Wednesday said the “expansion of the narcotics industry represents the single greatest threat to Afghanistan’s stability, and is increasingly linked to insecurity and terrorist activities.” “The drugs trade funds terrorism, fuels corruption and undermines the very rule of law that should bring security to our people,” said the document on the website of the Joint Coordination and Monitoring Board (JCMB), a committee working to implement the country’s five-year reconstruction plan.

Traffickers provide weapons, funding and personnel to anti-government rebels, while corrupt officials offer protection of drug trade routes, poppy fields and people, it said. Oguz said her message at the Tokyo talks will be: “We need to see action now. Talking is not enough.” But the fact that President Hamid Karzai has not appointed a counternarcotics minister to replace the one who resigned in July speaks for itself, she said.

“It says something about the priority given to this issue, even though the president has said it is one of the most important issues for this country to tackle.” Also, “very little has been done in reality on fighting corruption,” she said.

Confined to south: An opium crackdown is bearing fruit in the north and east of Afghanistan, but progress there has been outweighed by increased production in the south, the US coordinator on the issue said in Tokyo on Monday. Thomas Schweich said pessimism over Afghanistan’s future was based on incomplete information. “To say that the whole place is falling apart is not accurate,” “In the north and the east of the country there has been a very significant shift away from poppy production.”

“We have a very tenacious problem in the south of the country that tends to eclipse the positive developments in the rest of the country. That’s really what we’re focusing on this week,” he said. agencies

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