Afghanistan plans to destroy 15,000 hectares of poppy fields this year in its latest efforts to control the heroin trade that fuels endemic violence and corruption, officials said.
Poppy crops will be ploughed up by tractor or flattened by teams of men as part of the programme starting in the southern and western provinces of Kandahar, Helmand, Farah and Nimroz.
The target is 50 percent higher than 2012 but already 24 police officers and seven soldiers have died in this year’s eradication campaign, the ministry of counter-narcotics said in a press conference.
Many of those killed have been blown up by mines planted in fields or shot by insurgents keen to protect the lucrative crop, which is grown in some of Afghanistan’s most violent regions.
“Our goal is to destroy 15,000 hectares of poppy fields this year,” ministry spokesman Abdul Qayum Saamer told reporters as the annual poppy harvest begins. “Last year 10,000 hectares were destroyed successfully.”
Saamer said the overall area of poppy cultivation was up slightly on last year and only 10 percent of the total crop would be destroyed by the programme.