The leader of Afghanistan's ruling Taliban militia has renewed his ban on the cultivation of poppies, a lucrative source of narcotics, as the new sowing season arrived according to state run Radio Shariat.
Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar in a statement broadcast over the radio said Afghan farmers should strictly obey the decree which last year banned the production of opium throughout Afghanistan.
The statement said that no Afghan farmer was permitted to produce opium plants on their land, adding that in case of violation the Taliban authorities would destroy the crop.
Those violating the decree will be given severe punishment, it said but gave no details.
Mullah Omar last year declared that opium growing was un-Islamic and must be stopped. Taliban officials say the decree has been successfully implemented in areas under the militia's rule.
Until last year Afghanistan was the world's largest producer of opium, which is harvested from poppy buds and forms the raw ingredient of heroin.
US Assistant Secretary of State Christina Rocca last month pledged 1.5 million dollars to help UN drug-control efforts in Afghanistan in response to the Taliban militia's ban on poppy cultivation.
"We welcome the Taliban's enforcement of the ban and hope it will be sustained," the Bush administration's senior policy-maker for South Asia said during her visit to Pakistan.
The Taliban seized Kabul in 1996 and controls most of the country with a strict brand of Islamic law.
AFP