KABUL, Afghanistan, March 17 (UPI) -- The massive scale of the narcotics trade in opium-rich Afghanistan is larger than any single country can handle, Russian drug control officials said in Kabul.
Viktor Ivanov, the head of Russia's Federal Drug Control Service, told a delegation of counter-narcotics representatives at a Kabul conference that Moscow would expand its drug-control mission in Afghanistan, state news agency RIA Novosti reports.
Ivanov said the pervasiveness of Afghan drug trade suggested that "such mass drug production has long outgrown the scope of one country and has given rise to global drug trafficking."
Echoing sentiments expressed by top U.S. and international military officials, the Russian drug czar said there was a direct link between the narcotics trade and the insurgency undermining political development in Afghanistan.
"If we are talking about drug production together with the anti-terrorist operation, one cannot be separated from the other," he said.
Ivanov said illicit drugs produced in Afghanistan are estimated to be worth $65 billion, creating a "gigantic" resource to fund the insurgency.
The U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime in its February report on the opium harvest in Afghanistan said government control is influencing the expected yields for 2010, however.
The UNODC said that in areas where the government has growing influence, more than 60 percent of the farmers chose alternative means of income because of the ban on opium cultivation.
In the south, where lawlessness prevails, less than 40 percent said they would honor the ban, the report said.
