STATEMENT BY WILLIAM B. WOOD, U.S. AMBASSADOR TO AFGHANISTAN
We are encouraged by the 2008 UNODC Report and its findings. Thanks to Afghan and international efforts, especially the work of several provincial governors, poppy cultivation in Afghanistan fell for the first time in three years, and is now below 2006 levels. Potential production of heroin from the Afghan poppy crop also decreased.
More than half of Afghanistan’s provinces are now poppy free. The gains in the North and East show that counternarcotics efforts can succeed. Nowhere has the potential for success been more dramatically realized than in Nangarhar. In 2007, it ranked as the second highest poppy cultivating province in Afghanistan, but is now poppy free.
But the news is not all good. Almost 90% of the cultivation is concentrated in five southern provinces. Helmand, which alone accounts for more than half the opium poppy in the world, is an especially tragic case: at a time when much of Afghanistan is facing drought and food shortage, Helmand’s yields went up. As a result, Helmand increased potential opium production by 23% on land that could have been devoted to food. The U.S. is providing emergency food aid to assist.