Iran's police blamed Britain and the United
States for bumper poppy crops in Afghanistan that are
inflaming social problems in a country where more than
two million people are drug addicts.
Iranian forces marked the UN International
Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking in Tehran
on Saturday by blowing up a huge mound of seized drugs
topped with a picture of a bat-like monster with blood-red
eyes.
They chanted "Death to America"
as the contraband exploded.
"We hold America and Britain responsible
for this situation ... Americans are in charge of Afghanistan's
security and Britons are responsible for fighting fight
drugs there," said anti-narcotics commander Mehdi
Abuee.
Iran is the main route for Afghan drugs
heading west.
The police announced they reckoned almost
48,560 hectares of Afghan farms were under poppy cultivation,
adding this was unprecedented in the country's history.
Iran has built chains of walls and forts
across its porous eastern borders but smugglers have gone
back to old ways, taking drugs through mountain passes
by rucksack and camel.
"Only 10 per cent of poppy farms
have been destroyed and of what remains, 4,100 tons of
opium will be produced this season," Abuee added.
Many Afghan farmers felled their citrus
groves to turn to the more lucrative crop.
Some 3,300 Iranian servicemen have died
in battles with traffickers since the 1979 revolution.
"This is an on-going, all-out, weary
war," Abuee said.
PUBLIC CAMPAIGNS: Iran, where 70 per cent
of the population is under 30, is open about its drugs
problem has shown drug awareness programmes on television
through the week.
Cartoons for children showed an addict
in a park turn into a skeleton then flake to dust.
Opium smoking has been the traditional
Iranian vice and is ingrained in the culture of southern
provinces.
But programmes for youngsters focused
on the risks of recreational drugs such as ecstasy, taken
at raves where young people let off steam from the strict
confines of their society.
Last year Iran said it seized three tons
of heroin, 72 tons of hashish and 111 tons of opium.
But Ali Hashemi, head of the presidential
anti-narcotics staff said this was only about 10 percent
of the opium flooding across the border.
Hashemi said fighting drugs should be
an important focus for international co-operation.
"Political differences aside, we
welcome cooperation with any country to defuse this dangerous
phenomenon," he said.
He added economic dependence, lack of
powerful central government and the international drug
mafia were to blame for the increase in Afghan poppy cultivation.
"Apart from the 4 percent of Iran's
population who are addicts, the rest ask why the Western
powers are not using the new opportunity in Afghanistan
to put an end to drugs problem in the world," Hashemi
said
