 Some Afghan farmers are returning to the opium trade because of soaring prices and an ISAF shift from drug enforcement to fighting the Taliban. Mohammed Azhar, the Deputy Minister of agriculture for Counter-Narcotics, said that the price of opium is now seven times higher than wheat, the main staple of the Afghan diet. "There is a $58 billion demand for narcotics, so our farmers have no disincentive to cultivate poppy. We have gotten a lot of help, but it is not enough. Afghanistan is still producing 85 percent of the opium in the world, and it is still a dark stain on our name," he told the Washington Post. According to Azhar, the price of Afghan opium grew from $29 a pound in 2009 to $77 in 2010, and 1.5 Afghan million families now depend on the opium crop for their livelihood.
In 2004, coalition forces began to target the Opium Trade, which the Taliban was using to fund the insurgency, and by 2009 poppy growing had ended in 20 of the country's 34 provinces. Minister Azhar, however, noted that in 2010 the insurgents still received $602 million in drug money. Lt Gen Bazz Mohammed Ahmadi, the head of Afghanistan's anti-narcotics police, told the Post that he was excited when he took the job, "but it seems narcotics is no longer a priority. All the attention now is on security, but people don't realize that drugs and insecurity go together."
Monitors such as the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNDOC) warn that 2011 may see a surge in Afghanistan's poppy production because high prices and a crippling drought that has ravaged wheat production will provide powerful incentives for farmers to grow the outlawed crop. The head of UNDOC cautions that "controlling drugs in Afghanistan will not solve all of the country's problems, but the country's problems cannot be solved without controlling drugs."
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