Afghan opium poppy cultivation could rise
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Afghanistan's 2007 opium poppy cultivation could expand again after a record crop last year, the U.N. drug agency said Monday, underlining the weakness of an international-backed drive against the country's booming narcotics trade.
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BALKH, Afghanistan  - As Afghanistan struggles to cut its raging opium production, aid workers try to find alternative crops, but for some former poppy farmers the choice was easy -- they planted marijuana instead.
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Afghanistan&#39;s opium production has doubled in two years, reaching a new high in 2007, with the country almost the exclusive supplier of the world&#39;s deadliest drug, the United Nations announced Monday.
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Afghanistan&#39;s poppy cultivation increased by almost two-thirds this year and accounts for 87% of world supply of raw opium, a UN report said yesterday, warning of the country&#39;s descent into a drugs-based economy.
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The international community is making significant strides toward ridding northern Afghanistan of opium, a U.S. counter-narcotics official said Friday, despite setbacks in the Taliban-controlled south and forecasts of another record year of poppy cultivation.
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Afghanistan could become a "narco-state" after opium cultivation rose by two-thirds this year, the UN warns.
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KABUL, Sept. 19 -- NATO and Afghan forces launched what officials called a "major military operation" against the Taliban in the southern province of Helmand, a haven for opium poppy cultivation and an insurgent stronghold that is considered Afghanistan's most violent territory.
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Brussels - Opium growing in Afghanistan leapt by two-thirds this year, according to a new UN report on Thursday that warns the former Taliban stronghold could relapse into a &quot;narco-state&quot; and terrorism haven.
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Washington announces a major new initiative to try to tackle the production of illegal drugs in Afghanistan.
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A huge leap in opium poppy growing in Afghanistan, revealed by a US study released Friday, threatens the fragile democracy and increases pressure on anti-narcotics efforts to succeed, top federal officials said.
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KABUL: Responding to a UN report warning it risks becoming a narco-state after opium cultivation jumped to record levels, Afghanistan said on Friday the war on drugs was the top priority but opposed aerial spraying of opium fields.
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Worried about a vast and still growing heroin industry in Afghanistan, the Bush administration has devised a more aggressive counternarcotics strategy aimed at greater eradication of poppy fields, promotion of alternative crops and prosecution of traffickers.
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An Afghan city known as ÂLittle AmericaÂ is today the epicenter of a Taliban resurgence and an explosion in drug cultivation.
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Eradicating Afghanistan's   surging opium production and weaning poor farmers from growing   the raw material for heroin will take at least 10 to 15 years,   the country's president said on Thursday.
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Poppy cultivation and opium production will continue to increase in Afghanistan, expanding the dangerous influence of drug lords at all levels of the government of President
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A record opium crop in Afghanistan is likely to renewed debate about the United Statesâ troubled $600 million counternarcotics program there.
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Afghanistan's heroin-producing poppy crop set another record this season, despite intensified eradication efforts, the American ambassador said Tuesday.