Afghan hopes to eradicate poppy crops

Afghan President Hamid Karzai said today that if current trends continue, his war-battered country hopes to eradicate opium poppy cultivation in five to ten years.

Karzai, who is in France for his first official visit as president, said poppy cultivation in Afghanistan emerged out of the despair of its impoverished population years ago. But recent successes in fighting the crop have left him optimistic.

“If we continue the same trend ... we hope that Afghanistan will free itself of poppies in five to ten years,” he said in a speech at the French Institute of International Relations, a Paris think tank.

“I would rather go closer to 10 years,” he cautioned. “It would not be a realistic thing to say we will be getting rid of poppies in five years.”

Karzai said one of the dangers of poppy cultivation was that much of the money that it generates goes to mafia groups – and often finds its way into the hands of terrorists.

“The poppy cultivators would not receive the real money,” said Karzai, who has declared a war on drugs amid concern Afghanistan is in danger of becoming a narco-state.

In an interview in French daily Le Figaro, Karzai said poppy production has fallen 1% this year and continues to decline. The United Nations estimates that Afghaistan still produces about 87% of the world supply of opium and its derivative, heroin.

Afghanistan’s prominent interior minister, Ahmad Ali Jalali, announced his resignation last month after struggling to combat the drug trade. Critics have said Karzai’s commitment to fighting drug trafficking is limited by reticence to challenge regional warlords.

During the speech, Karzai said the September 18 parliamentary elections in Afghanistan had “laid the foundations for the Afghan state,” but “the real work is beginning now.” Final official results are expected later this month.

Since he took power after the US-led coalition eposed the former Taliban regime in 2003, Afghanistan has seen improvement in education, vaccination programs, media freedom and representation of women in government, Karzai said.

“I must caution ... that all is not rosy,” he said, citing a need to improve power generation, tax collection, the civil service and police forces, among other things.

Speaking later to lawmakers, Karzai expressed support for the idea of putting the UN peacekeeping and US-led military operations in Afghanistan under a single command.

“It’s obvious that a single command will help more in the fight against terrorism,” he said. A day earlier, French Defence Minister Michele Alliot-Marie had told Karzai that France wanted to keep the operations separate, her office said.

The Afghan leader met with President Jacques Chirac and other top French officials on Monday, expressing thanks for France’s military and advisory roles in Afghanistan’s as the country emerges from years of war. Karzai also met Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy today.