Afghanistan said today its plan to stamp out cultivation of the opium poppy is back on track after several protests by farmers in major growing regions against what they called inadequate compensation.
The United Nations Drug Control Programme (UNDCP) said poppy growing in war-torn Afghanistan boomed after the Taliban regime was overthrown.
About 1,000 acres of poppies nearly ready for the milking of sap, which hardens into opium, has already been destroyed in the arid southern province of Helmand, Afghanistan's biggest growing region.
The destruction plan there was halted last week after two workers were killed when their tractors hit landmines which local officials alleged farmers had planted to protect their crops.
Eight farmers were killed in Helmand during a protest against the plan to destroy ripening poppies before it went into effect.
In the region around the eastern city of Jalalabad farmers blocked the highway to Pakistan for two days and stoned vehicles in protest against the government's plan to destroy their poppies.
The protests are thought to be linked to the attempt to assassinate Defence Minister Mr Mohammad Fahim in Jalalabad on the day the eradication programme started last Wednesday. A bomb killed five people in the city centre as he drove by.
The government reacted to the protests resulted by raising its compensation offer $100 to $350 an acre.
Deputy head of the Anti-Drug Commission, Mr Abdur Razaaq, said the government also plans to establish a rapid reaction force against drug trafficking in a country which once supplied 70 per cent of the world's opium, from which heroin is derived.