Afghan drug war will take a generation to win - study

KABUL, Nov 28 (Reuters) Afghanistan will take a generation to wipe out the opium trade, which is fed by graft and the grip of a small but increasingly powerful band of drug lords with political connections, a new UN and World Bank report says.

Efforts to wipe out opium fields often hit poor farmers the most and care must be taken to avoid making the situation worse, said the report by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and the World Bank today.

''History teaches us that it will take a generation to render Afghanistan opium-free,'' UNODC executive director Antonio Maria Costa said in a statement.

''I ... propose that development support to farmers, the arrest of corrupt officials and eradication measures be concentrated in half a dozen provinces with low cultivation in 2006 so as to free them from the scourge of opium.'' He said this would help double the number of provinces free of the opium poppy, the raw material for heroin, next year.

The UNODC forecasts a record year for opium in 2006 with cultivation up 60 per cent and production up 50 per cent in the country that supplies more than 90 per cent of world output.

The drugs racket accounts for about a third of Afghanistan's still-crippled economy.

LIMITED SUCCESS The report says efforts to combat the trade have had limited success and lacked sustainability.

Afghanistan's Western allies say the drugs industry is a major factor fuelling a revival of the Taliban-led insurgency that has made this the bloodiest year since the hardline Islamist group was forced from power by US-led forces in 2001.

Almost 4,000 people have been killed so far this year, about a quarter of them civilians. Most of the increase in opium growing has been in the provinces worst hit by fighting.

Afghan ministers say neither the insurgency nor the illegal drugs trade can be defeated without the other being also overcome.

The report and other experts warn mismanaging efforts to stamp out the opium industry could hurt the poorest the most, fuelling discontent and strengthening the insurgency.

''The critical adverse development impact of actions against drugs is on poor farmers and rural wage labourers,'' said World Bank economist and co-editor of the report, William Byrd.

''Any counter-narcotics strategy needs to keep short-run expectations modest, avoid worsening the situation of the poor and adequately focus on longer term development.'' The Afghan government and aid workers say corruption is a major obstacle with drug lords buying off local officials or bribing them to spare their crops and destroy others'.

Opium poppy covers only about 4 per cent of Afghanistan's cultivable land, but with the country in the grip of drought and poppy needing minimal irrigation is becoming an increasingly tempting crop for farmers in dry areas, experts say.

The UN-World Bank report also called for a ''smart and effective'' strategy to curb demand in consuming countries, mainly in the West.

REUTERS SP PM1243