Taliban deny earning revenue from bumper opium cropWed 06 May 98 - 10:35 GMT KABUL, May 6 (AFP) - Afghanistan's Taliban on Wednesday denied the country's opium cultivtion helps to fund their strict Moslem administration. An official from the militia's commission for drug control said the war-torn country's opium growers are required to give a percentage of their crop to the militia as tax which they then burn. "All agricultural crops are subject to tax based on Islamic Sharia and related to applicable law throughout Afghanistan," explained the body's secretary general Mir Najibullah Shams. "But all opium collected is burned." Farmers in the eastern province of Nangarhar, which is currently enjoying a bumper opium crop, say the militia collect a one-eighth tax on opium and a one-tenth tax on everything else. They say the tax is payed in kind, with large quantities of potent opium paste being collected by the local Taliban governer. "This system of tax on farmers is not restricted to Nangarhar: it is like this all over Afghanistan," Shams said, adding tax above the 10 percent prescibed by Islamic law is set by local authorities. But according to Shams, public burnings of the drug are not held because most drugs seized or collected are burned immeditely after falling into Taliban hands. "We burn it not for publicity but for religious and international obligations," he asserted. "Also many Taliban who find drugs to not pass it on to central authorites: they get so angered about them they burn it all on the spot," he added. Afghanistan, which has been at war for 18 years, is a major producer of opium, and the Taliban-held eastern province of Nangarhar is currently in the midst of its annual harvest. Following a mild winter and only light spring rains in the country's most fertile province, farmers say they expect a bumper crop of the potent narcotic. According the United Nations Drug Control Programme (UNDCP) -- which enjoys little success in it's supply-side battle against drugs -- 80 percent of heroin seized in Europe originates in Afghanistan. Dried opium paste -- which locally sells for around 20 dollars a kilo (2.2 pounds) -- is processed into heroin along land-locked Afghanistan's porous borders and smuggled through Pakistan, Iran or the Central Asian states. Poppies are grown both in the Taliban two-thirds of the country and areas controlled by the ousted Kabul government in northeastern Afghanistan. Top-quality potent hashish is also widely grown here, although for cultural and social reasons there are few drug addicts in the deeply conservative Moslem country. Although the Taliban say they are in principle opposed to the cultivation of drugs, they demand greater financial aid to farmers in return for a cut in production. The commission for drug control also complain that opium poppies have many useful and safe by-products used locally, while they argue heroin is a western invention not consumed here. |