AMRITSAR – Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal’s appeal to Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai to curb smuggling of heroin to India via Pakistan has not come as a surprise for many as Punjab being the border state has emerged as a major transit route for the drug trade.
The United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime’s risk assessment survey had pointed out that opium production was likely to see a rise owing to withdrawal of foreign security forces by 2014.
Twelve Afghan provinces out of over 30 were expected to show a rise in opium cultivation this year owing to various reasons, including remunerative price of opium, the report said.
Afghanistan already produces 90 per cent of the world’s opium from which heroin is derived. Its biggest share is smuggled to European and Central Asian countries, including Russia, Iran, Pakistan and India.
The infamous Golden Crescent that includes three nations, Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan, is Asia’s principal area of illicit opium production. The mountainous regions of these three countries define the crescent. In 1991, Afghanistan earned the dubious distinction of being the world’s primary opium producer with a yield of 1,782 tonnes which was much more than South-East Asia’s Golden Triangle.
