Press Briefing Held to Launch the Afghanistan Opium Survey 2004

UNIS Vienna organized a press briefing today to launch the Afghanistan Opium Survey 2004, a publication of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) . The briefing was chaired by Nasra Hassan, Director, UNIS Vienna/Spokesperson, UNODC. Sandeep Chawla, Chief, Policy Analysis and Research Branch, UNODC presented the findings of the Survey.

Antonio Maria Costa, Executive Director, UNODC presented the survey in Brussels, at simultaneous launch event, with the participation of Bill Rammell, Minister, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, United Kingdom.

Mr. Chawla pointed out the main findings of the survey, which indicated that opium cultivation in Afghanistan had shown a 64 per cent increase in comparison to 2003. However, due to bad weather and disease, the 2004 opium yield per hectare had been lowered by almost 30 per cent, resulting in a total output at 4,200 tons, which is 17 per cent higher than in 2003. Mr. Chawla said that opium cultivation had spread to all of Afghanistan's 32 provinces, with 56 per cent of total cultivation taking place in only three provinces.

In addition to the main findings, Mr. Chawla presented the implications of the findings such as per capita incomes for the opium growing families, which at US$260 in 2004 (down from US$600 in 2003) compared to US$207 GDP proved not to be very lucrative. He said that there was no clear correlation between production and bazaar prices, which - in July 2004 - were about US$150 per kilo. Mr. Chawla outlined the four drug control goals, which the UNODC Director, Antonio Maria Costa, has asked the Afghan Government to pursue in 2005, and concluded by calling for the support of the international community.

A question-and-answer session followed the briefing. In response to questions about the relationship between war and peace-time opium production and the Taliban opium production ban in 2001, Mr. Chawla said that this had been clearly documented, and stressed that the Taliban ban had been imposed by authoritarian coercive means, and achieving the same by democratic means was much more difficult. He said that the effects of three decades of destruction could not be repaired in just a few years.

With regard to illegal crops being bought and destroyed, Mr. Chawla said that this would send the wrong message that illegal activity was profitable and if it were done once, it would have to be done again. Asked about seized materials, Mr. Chawla replied that there were international programmes in place to destroy seizures in an environmentally safe way. He added that there was very little danger that the seized drugs would be resold.

To a question about 2005 cultivation and production, Mr. Chawla responded by saying that it was hard to predict. There would be a rapid assessment done in January 2005, available in March 2005.

In response to questions about poverty and what the United Nations had achieved in terms of eradicating extreme poverty, Mr. Chawla said that given the average size of a field under poppy cultivation (less than one hectare), this was the only survival strategy for a majority of farmers, and their response to poverty. The circumstances under which this could be changed require sustainable livelihood and development programmes, which the United Nations and individual donor countries had been running in Afghanistan.

Addressing a question regarding traffickers, Mr. Chawla said that too little was known about them, except that Afghanistan was not a cartelized market like Colombia in the 1990s. It had also become clear that trafficking was not as widely spread across the country, which proved that law enforcement had made it more difficult for traffickers to operate freely.

The briefing was well attended by representatives of leading local and international print and electronic media (AP, Austrian Press Agency, BBC Arabic Service, The Hindu, Kyodo News, Bloomberg News, Nikkei, EFE, The Sekkai Nippon, The Independent/Bangladesh), staff from permanent missions and United Nations Staff members. Individual interviews took place after the briefing.

* *** *