Afghan drug lords laugh at the whole world

Kirghiz frontier guards will catch heroin smugglers, before whose power the best reforms and plans are powerless.

Kirghiz border services are concerned with the drug flow that increases monthley. The most curious thing is that the drug smuggling has increased to such an extent. Almost nobody crosses the border with a mere several grams of heroin. Now, the drug dealers carry kilograms.

Specialists connect this with the record poppy harvests of Afghan plantations. The saddest thing is that the new Afghan authorities, upon which so many hopes were placed, have not stopped the production of heroin. The Khamid Karzai administration tried to fight this phenomenon by annihilating 25 hectares of opium poppy. However, on the same grounds, new plantations appeared. Moreover, according to the UNO, the plantations even increased by 30 percent; in some provinces, by 45-50 percent.

Attempts to persuade peasants to destroy opium fields compensation brought no results. The authorities proposed 750 dollars for one hectare of annihilated crops; however, the farmers at once calculated that selling opium would bring several times more profit. Moreover, some of them took money to destroy their crops and planted new poppy fields.

As a result, the opium harvest produced 3,000 tons in Afghanistan, of which at least 300 tons of heroin will be produced. Moreover, there are last year's reserves that were not processed were because of the military actions in the northern provinces. This heroin will penetrate the markets of Russia and West Europe as well.

Representatives of the Kirghiz State Commission on Drug Control told journalists that they are hoping for a fungus that can destroy poppy crops. This fungus was created three years ago at the Institute of Genetic and Experimental Biology of Plants of the Uzbek Academy of Sciences. This biological substance is very effective, and, what is very important, it is felining. Tests have shown that the fungus annihilates only plants containing the drug. Some publications report that drug plantations are nearing their end.

However, this year, it turned out that the work over the anti-drug fungus is still being carried out only inside the laboratory. Uzbek Academician Abdusatar Abdukarimov, the head of this unique work, explains that the UN has stopped financing the project. It is as if, with the end of the war, money for Afghans has stopped as well.

There is, however, one more version connected with the notorious drug Mafia. This powerful organiziation not only manages millions of dollars, but it also has a powerful army of lobbyists, which is ready to pay any sum to stop work that blocks the machine producing drug dollars. This organization seems to have used all available levers and blocked the production of the wonder-working fungus.

On the other hand, if the poppy fields are annihilated, who will feed the millions of Afghan peasants? In a free Afghanistan, there is no industry, no infrastructure, and now work. Hungry people are forced to grow poppy. All the more, powerful global organizations are interested in growing and spreading this poison, and they can influence even the United Nations.

Therefore, Kirghiz frontier guards will catch heroin smugglers, before whose power the best reforms and plans are powerless. .

Yury Razgulaev PRAVDA.Ru Bishkek Kirghizia

Translated by Vera Solovieva

Read the original in Russian: http://www.pravda.ru/main/2002/08/05/45174.html