VIENNA (U.N. Information Service)
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in Vienna has published a comprehensive new study, The Opium Economy in Afghanistan: An International Problem, analyzing developments that made Afghanistan the world's number one producer of illicit opium and suggesting ways and means to deal with that problem over the long run.
In a preface to the study, Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the UNODC, characterizes the Afghanistan opium economy as an intensely complex phenomenon which - over the past quarter of the century - "reached deeply into the political structure, civil society and economy of the country".
"Spawned after decades of civil and military strife, it has chained a poor rural population - farmers, landless labour, small traders, women and children - to the mercy of domestic warlords and international crime syndicates that continue to dominate several areas in the south, north and east of the country.
Dismantling the opium economy will be a long and complex process. It cannot simply be done by military or authoritarian means. That has been tried in the past, and was unsustainable. It must be done with the instruments of democracy, the rule of law and development", Mr. Costa wrote.
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in Vienna has published a comprehensive new study, The Opium Economy in Afghanistan: An International Problem, analyzing developments that made Afghanistan the world's number one producer of illicit opium and suggesting ways and means to deal with that problem over the long run.
In a preface to the study, Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the UNODC, characterizes the Afghanistan opium economy as an intensely complex phenomenon which - over the past quarter of the century - "reached deeply into the political structure, civil society and economy of the country".
"Spawned after decades of civil and military strife, it has chained a poor rural population - farmers, landless labour, small traders, women and children - to the mercy of domestic warlords and international crime syndicates that continue to dominate several areas in the south, north and east of the country.
Dismantling the opium economy will be a long and complex process. It cannot simply be done by military or authoritarian means. That has been tried in the past, and was unsustainable. It must be done with the instruments of democracy, the rule of law and development", Mr. Costa wrote.