Karzai says world not doing enough on Afghan drugs

Karzai says world not doing enough on Afghan drugs

By Yousuf Azmiy
Reuters
Tuesday, August 22, 2006; 6:33 AM

KABUL (Reuters) - Drugs pose a far greater threat to Afghanistan
than terrorism but the international community is not doing enough
to tackle the scourge, President Hamid Karzai said on Tuesday.

Afghanistan is the world's largest producer of opium, the raw material
for heroin, and production is expected to rise to record levels this
year as drug barons and Taliban insurgents cash in on the harvest.

"Once, we thought terrorism was Afghanistan's biggest enemy," Karzai
told a counter-narcotics conference in the Afghan capital.

"Poppy, its cultivation and drugs are Afghanistan's major enemy," he said.

The narcotics trade accounts for about a third of Afghanistan's economy
-- and about 87 percent of the world's illegal heroin -- and the United
Nations fears the country could become a narco-state.

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