Sat 15 July 2023:
In the previous three months, poppy cultivation had been eliminated from 40,000 acres of land in Afghanistan’s Badakhshan province, Local media reported.
The director of the counter-narcotics police division in the northern Afghan province of Badakhshan, Shafiqullah Hafizi, said that the poppy had been eliminated from 40,000 acres of land over the previous three months.
“The poppy eradication campaign started three months ago, and so far, we have destroyed 40,000 acres of poppy, and the process will continue until the poppy fields are completely demolished in the province,” Hafizi said.
The official said the anti-poppy campaign would be over within a few days.
On Wednesday, police in the Jawzjan province of northern Afghanistan dismantled a drug processing lab and detained its owner. Last week, authorities also destroyed 20 acres of poppies in the eastern province of Ghazni.
Earlier, the Iranian permanent representative to the UN, Saeed Iravani, said that the UNSC expressed the expansion of drug production in Afghanistan.
According to Iran’s representative to the UN, drug trafficking in Afghanistan has not been completely abolished, and the illicit trade still thrives there. According to Sharq Daily, Iravani also highlighted concerns about the growth of methamphetamine testing facilities in Afghanistan.
OPIUM CULTIVATION IN AFGHANISTAN DECLINES SIGNIFICANTLY: BBC
Regional countries of using drug concerns to ‘pressurize’ them
The Deputy Spokesman of the Taliban, Bilal Karimi, said poppy cultivation has been eliminated and the production, smuggling and dealing in drugs has stopped.
However, a number of countries are using the issue of drugs to pressurize the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA), Karimi said.
“Unfortunately, some of the concerns of a number of foreign countries are misplaced, either they do not have good and correct information about the objective facts and real situation of our country, or maybe they have other goals and want to use such an unjustified and unreasonable way as pressure tools,” he said.
Recently, a research organization in the UK published a report that found poppy cultivation in southern Afghanistan had indeed dropped by at least 80% compared to last year.
The report stated that poppy cultivation in Helmand province had dropped by 99 percent – after having previously supplied 50% of the world’s opium.
SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES
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