London, June 22: A new UN study says the number of drug addicts in Afghanistan has sharply increased in recent years, making the country a leading consumer of opium and its derivatives.
The report released Monday by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime says nearly 3 percent of Afghan adults are addicted to opiates, twice as many as five years ago, as hundreds of thousands of Afghans turn to narcotics to ease the hardships of poverty and war.
Deputy Chief of UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) Robert Watkins said while releasing the report in Kabul that the growing addiction problem in Afghanistan is having a devastating effect on social development in the country.
“The report shows that between 12 and 41 percent of Afghan police recruits test positive for some kind of drug addiction. Clearly, we are not just concerned about the safety, security and well being of those individuals, but we are concerned about the safety, security and well being of an entire nation,” Watkins said.
The UN report called for more efficient international anti-drug efforts to help the Afghan government and the population to overcome the growing problem.
Russia recently urged foreign forces in Afghanistan to fight opium production, criticizing US-led forces for failing to address such issues.
The US-led operations in Afghanistan will be useless if they fail to provide people with alternative economic opportunities, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov said.
He added that Russia is not happy with global efforts to crack down on drug production and smuggling that threaten international peace and security.
NATO must figure out how to start “very primitive social economic life in Afghanistan,” Ivanov said during a security conference in Singapore. “If we don’t do that, any military presence will be in vain.”
“The whole world community and, first of all, those who took the responsibility for ensuring peace and stability in Afghanistan, namely the International Security Assistance Force, should take the trouble and fight this threat,” he said.
The United States says it is carrying on a major war against drugs in Afghanistan.
This is while Russia accuses the United States of conspiring with Afghanistan’s drug producers by refusing to eradicate opium plantations in the country.
US marines, stationed in the opium-growing Helmand province since February, have told the villagers that they do not intend to cut the production, the Russian Foreign Ministry said earlier in May.
——–Agencies