KABUL - AS THE UN complains about Western inaction to stem a booming drugs trade, experts believe efforts to end opium production in Afghanistan, the world's biggest producer, are inadequate and misguided.

The UN Office on Drugs and Crime (Unocd) said that Afghanistan produces 92 per cent of the world's opium in a trade worth US$65 billion (S$90.7 billion) and feeding 15 million heroin addicts around the world.

The illicit trade is also fuelling the Taliban insurgency, with the militants controlling production and supply, and using the profits to increase their attacks on the 100,000-strong US and Nato presence in Afghanistan.

But there are indications that efforts to cut the illegal cultivation and trade have been hampered by the failure of previous policies, particularly the widespread razing of poppy fields.

Earlier this year Richard Holbrooke, Washington's special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, called the policy 'the least effective programme ever', as it pushed poor farmers to the Taliban by destroying a key cash crop. The highest-ranking US military officer, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff Admiral Michael Mullen, also said that Nato has had 'almost no success in the last seven or eight years' in trying to stem the opium trade.

Western-backed alternative development programmes are being carried out, particularly in the south - the Taliban's spiritual heartland and where most opium is produced - to encourage local farmers to grow other crops. Usaid and Britain's Department for International Development (Dfid), among others, are providing 32,000 farmers with wheat seeds and fertiliser, to secure food supplies amid rising prices and uncertainties about yields. -- AFP