PASHTUNABAD — a poor, wind and flyblown suburb of Quetta — is the type of Pakistani town where commanders in the Afghan Taliban lived after being kicked out of their country in 2001.

The cost of corruption in Afghanistan has risen sharply and half of all citizens paid a bribe to public officials last year, a new United Nations study said.

The cost of corruption in Afghanistan rose sharply last year to 3.9bn US dollars (€2.8bn), and half of all Afghans bribed public officials for services, the UN said today.

POLICING the booming heroin trade is likely to become more difficult across Europe, a top UN report has warned.

IRELAND has the highest mortality rate from drugs in the EU and the third highest across the whole of Europe, according to the UN.

Afghanistan’s opium production declined by almost half this year due largely to the spread of a disease which damaged poppy plants, the UN’s drug agency said today.

IRELAND has the fifth-highest number of cocaine-related drug deaths out of 22 European countries, according to a UN report.

JUST 20% of the heroin being trafficked out of Afghanistan to the rest of the world, including Europe, is being seized, according to a new analysis of the situation.

THE seventh biggest seizure of cocaine in Europe in 2007 was made in Ireland, according to a new UN report.

THE Dunlough bay haul put Ireland on the world cocaine map.

A “HEROIN tsunami” is hitting Europe, the UN drugs agency has warned.

The Americans tried to ban alcohol in the 1920s, but it gave rise to the golden era of the gangsters.

Afghanistan produced dramatically more opium in 2006, increasing its yield by roughly 49% from a year earlier and pushing global opium production to a new record high, a UN report said today.

A “cancer of insurgency” in southern Afghanistan could drive the 2007 opium poppy harvest to record levels, the UN drug agency chief warned.

DRUGS strategy minister Noel Ahern has outlined his concerns over a boom in the supply of heroin, following a sharp increase in opium cultivation in Afghanistan.

COLOMBIAN cocaine traffickers are targeting Ireland in an effort to open up new supply routes into Europe, the United Nations' leading drugs expert has said.

Naomi Campbell has spoken out in support of Kate Moss in the face of cocaine abuse allegations.

BUMPER opium crops in Afghanistan will result in a glut of cheap heroin and could trigger another epidemic in Ireland, drug experts warned yesterday.

PENAL reformers yesterday told UN drug chiefs that clean needles should be made available in prisons to cut the spread of infectious diseases, such as hepatitis and HIV.