Afghan opium production rose to record levels yet again last year, the US State Department has said, in what has become an annual announcement of failure.Despite a programme to wipe out Afghan opium production by the Americans, the British and the government of Hamid Karzai, production in fact rose by 25 per cent in 2005-6, according to the State Department's annual drugs report.
Many farmers could be made bankrupt because their poppy fields are cleared by force. Some have even sold their own children because they can no longer afford to feed them.
Yet the policy is not working. Afghanistan still accounts for 90 per cent of the world opium trade.
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