A deluge of sticky brown resin threatens to submerge the new Afghan state. According to figures released on November 18th by the UN'S counter-narcotics agency (UNODC), Afghanistan has seen a huge rise in opium production for the third year running. UNODC puts the export value of this year's crop at $2.8 billion-equal to 60% of last year's GDP. It could be worse. This year, 131,000 hectares of Afghanistan was sown with opium seed, a 64% increase on last year's figure. Yet the harvest, 4,200 tonnes of opium resin, was up only 17%. Western donors might like to put this down to their efforts to destroy the crop; they would be wrong. UNODC says eradication had little effect on yield. Only bad weather and crop disease prevented Afghanistan smashing its record of 4,600 tonnes of opium, produced under the Taliban in 1999. Nonetheless, over 95% of the heroin reaching Europe derives from Afghanistan.
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