IEA spurns UN report on spike in opium production

KABUL (Pajhwok): The UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has reported a 19 percent spike in poppy cultivation in Afghanistan in 2024, a claim spurned as baseless by the Ministry of Interior.

In its latest report released on Wednesday, UNODC said poppy cultivation in Afghanistan had surged by 19 percent in 2024, compared to 2023.

But Mufti Abdul Mateen Qane, spokesman for the Ministry of Interior (MoI), wrote on X: “As poppy cultivation is a destructive phenomenon considered haram in Islam, IEA Supreme Leader Maulvi Hebatullah Akhundzada has banned the production and cultivation of drugs in the entire country.”

The MoI spokesman rejected the findings of the UNODC survey, calling the claim far from true. He believed the survey might have been conducted before IEA initiated the campaign against poppies.

Following the launch of the crackdown on drugs, the spokesman noted, police eradicated all poppy fields. In this sense, he argued, the UN survey was a baseless and flawed.

Qane insisted MoI’s view was in conflict the findings of the UNODC study. Drug cultivation and production had been reduced significantly in the past year, he reiterated.

In 2022 and 2023, he recalled, counter-narcotics police were able to cut the illicit drug cultivation and trade in Afghanistan.

In 2024, the MoI spokesman said, they were taking more stringent steps to further reduce the cultivation and production of drugs in the country.

aw/mud