Most opium now processed into heroin and morphine inside Afghanistan

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.khaleejtimes.ae/DisplayArticle.asp?xfile=data/subcontinent/2007/June/subcontinent_June989.xml§ion=subcontinent

KABUL - Sophisticated laboratories inside Afghanistan are now converting 90 percent of the country’s opium into heroin and morphine before smuggling it around the world, the United Nations said Monday.

Afghanistan, the world’s biggest producer of opium, had until two years ago exported the illicit drug almost exclusively in its raw form, said the United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

‘The amount of the opium being processed (in Afghanistan), I think, is around 90 percent -- at least the lion’s share,’ UNODC representative Christina Oguz told reporters in Kabul.

Oguz said that anyone flying over the major opium producing areas ‘would see a lot of small fires in the mountains. These are heroin labs.’

[MADem]

1. Certainly makes it easier to ship--you can have a diver attach it to a vessel's keel

and then fetch it after the customs inspection has taken place.

BBC did a big story on this on the news today.

[msongs]

2. george w bush is completly responsible for this nt

[Bobbieo]

3. Makes one wonder how many suicide bombers are junked up these days

The word assassin came from the word "hashishin" for those Middle Easterners, a few centuries ago, who smoked hashish prior to their rampages against the infidels. All in the name of Allah!

[High Plains]

4. Progress for Afghanistan. Getting all that value-added now..

...from their poppies.