Bid to wipe out Afghan opium failed, says UN

Thus far the British campaign to destroy poppy production has been an abject failure, according to the annual report of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). The biggest growth area is in Helmand province, a Taliban stronghold, where British forces are fighting daily battles.

British and allied forces are looking at ways of targeting the heroin dealers by destroying drug factories inside Afghanistan. However, British ministers are keen to avoid alienating the farmers who are making a living out of the poppy crop.

That has caused tensions with the US administration, which has been pressing Britain to support aerial spraying to destroy the crop. But aerial spraying is opposed by Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai and a senior Downing Street official made it clear yesterday that Mr Brown will call for a more sympathetic approach to the farmers. "We have to work closely with the communities involved," he said.

Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the UNODC, gave new figures showing Afghanistan's export of drugs to the West was fuelling the insurgency in Afghanistan. Releasing the final draft of its 2007 Afghan opium survey, the UNODC chief said poppy growth increased 17 per cent to 193,000 hectares and the growth in heroin production leapt a third to 8,200 tonnes.