Afghanistan refuses to spray heroin-producing poppies

Kabul: Afghanistan's heroin-producing poppies will not be sprayed with herbicide this year despite a record crop in 2006 and US pressure to allow the drug-fighting tactic, officials said yesterday.

President Hamid Karzai's Cabinet decided on Sunday to hold off on using chemicals for now, said Said Mohammad Azam, spokesman for Afghanistan's Ministry of Counter Narcotics.

"There will be no ground spraying this year," Said told The Associated Press.

Azam said there would be an increased effort to destroy poppy crops with "traditional" techniques - typically sending teams of labourers into fields to batter down or plough in the plants before they can be harvested. "If it works, that is fine," Azam said. "If it does not, next year ground spraying will be a option."

Fuelled by the Taliban, a powerful drug mafia and the need for a profitable crop that can overcome drought, opium production from poppies in Afghanistan last year rose 49 per cent to 6,700 tonnes - enough to make about 670 tonnes of heroin. That's more than 90 per cent of the world's supply and more than the world's addicts consume in a year.

Karzai told foreign and Afghan officials this week that if Afghanistan's poppy crop is not reduced this year he would allow spraying in 2008, according to a Western official who requested anonymity because of the matter's sensitivity.

He had been pressured by several senior members of his government not to allow spraying, the Western official said. Several Afghan officials yesterday said herbicides pose too big a risk of contaminating water, killing produce and harming local residents. Any chemicals would have been spread at ground level, not by planes. The decision caps months of behind-the-scenes pressure from the US for Karzai to allow a technique already used in countries such as Colombia, and comes one month after the top US anti-drug official said that Afghanistan would spray poppies.

John Walters, the director of the US Office of National Drug Control Policy, said last month that that poppies would be sprayed, although he did not say when. Walters, on a visit to Kabul, said Afghanistan could turn into a narco-state unless "giant steps" were made toward eliminating poppies.

However, no top Afghan officials have said publicly that the government would carry out spraying.

Joe Mellott, spokesman for the US Embassy in Afghanistan, said the US "stands ready to assist Afghans if they want to use herbicide". "We always said the ground-based spraying is a decision for the Afghans to make," he said. "We understand they are going to focus on a robust manual and mechanical programme to eradicate poppies this year."