6.5 tons of drugs burned in Kabul

Afghan narcotics officials Sunday destroyed 6.5 tons of drugs and precursor chemicals in a raging bonfire they said symbolized recent successes in their fight against opium poppies and heroin.

The drugs, burned in a large pile on a sloping mountainside on the outskirts of Kabul, were confiscated over the last three to four months, said Gen. Khodaidad Khodaidad, the country’s counter-narcotics minister.

“This is a big success against terrorism, against people who are producing poppies,” said Khodaidad. “Poppy mainly supports the insurgency in Afghanistan.”

The Taliban and other warlords may have earned almost half a billion dollars in 2008 from the opium trade, the head of the U.N.’s Office on Drugs and Crime has said. Afghan officials have also been implicated in the trade.

Khodaidad acknowledged that the 6.5-ton stockpile of heroin, opium, hashish and chemicals used to turn opium into heroin amounted to only a drop in the bucket. A U.N. report last year said Afghan farmers produced 7,700 tons of opium in 2008 with an export value estimated at $3.4 billion.

Gen. Dawood Dawood, the top counter-narcotics officer in the Interior Ministry, said officials hoped to increase the number of poppy-free provinces from 18 last year to 26 this year. Khodaidad, perhaps providing a more realistic assessment, said he hoped the number increases to 22 or 23 this year.

Dawood said Sunday’s bonfire was a “big achievement” for the country’s counter-narcotics police.

“If we do not burn the drugs, thousands of others will become drug addicts,” he said. “By burning this amount of opium and narcotics, we show the people we are committed to the fight against drugs.”