|
Kabul: Corruption in Afghanistan is hobbling efforts to combat the booming opium trade with powerful drug lords evading justice by simply making telephone calls to friends in high places, a United Nations official said on Monday.
Opium production in Afghanistan has risen every year since US and Afghan forces ended Taliban rule in 2001, despite millions of dollars spent on trying to eradicate crops, encouraging farmers to plant something else and in bringing traffickers to book.
"We talk about those who are not behind bars, but who should be," the head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in Afghanistan, Christina Oguz, told a news conference. "They are the people who have committed crimes of corruption or who are the brains and profiteers behind trafficking networks.
"They are people with power and people with powerful friends who can use their mobile phones to release a suspect from detention without a fair trial," she said.
The US government's former point man in the fight against the heroin trade in Afghanistan accused Afghan President Hamid Karzai in an article published on Sunday of obstructing counter-narcotics efforts and protecting drug lords.
Karzai strongly denies the charge.
Vicious cycle
Opium is worth some $3 billion (Dh11 billion) a year to the Afghan economy, locking the country into a vicious circle where drug money helps fund the Taliban insurgency, fuels official corruption, both of which weaken government control over parts of the country which are then free to produce more opium.
"It is very dangerous for any society if people believe strongly ... the government is corrupt," said Oguz.
|
