KABUL, May 7 (Reuters) - An Afghan district chief and his two sons have been jailed for 20 years for trafficking drugs through the country's southwest, near the border with Iran, authorities said on Saturday.
The chief of Delaram district, in Nimroz province, was convicted of trafficking narcotics using official vehicles and providing facilities for drug traffickers, the country’s U.S. and British-funded Criminal Justice Task Force (CJTF) said in a statement.
He and three others, including his two sons, were caught in an operation by Afghan Counter Narcotics Police, who seized 35 kgs of opium and 2 kgs of morphine during a house search, the CJTF said.
Afghanistan produces around 90 percent of the world’s opium in an illicit trade estimated to be worth billions to the economy and is blamed for widespread corruption among officials.
Taliban-led militants are also believed to derive between $100 million and $400 million a year in revenues from production and trafficking of the drug, fuelling insecurity.
The CJTF has made over 1,000 convictions for drugs offences since it was set up in 2005, but has been criticised for not tackling the major drug kingpins.
The United Nations said last month in a report opium poppies are being grown this year in parts of Afghanistan where last year there were none, but overall cultivation of the drug will decrease slightly.
Helmand, where around half Afghanistan’s poppy is grown, expects to see a slight decrease in the amount of farmland devoted to poppy this year, which will be enough to outweigh substantial increases elsewhere.
Helmand lies beside Nimroz province, where a long and porous border has fuelled a major drug abuse problem in Iran.
