DUSHANBE, June 4, 2015, Asia-Plus – Afghan news agency Khaama Press reports that mafia and terrorist groups earn up to $70 billion annually from narcotics in Afghanistan.

Khaama Press cited Zabihullah Daim, an official with the Afghan Interior Ministry, as saying that mafia and terrorist groups receive the illegal money from poppy cultivation, producing and smuggling narcotics.

According to him, the investigation conducted by the Counter Narcotics Police of Afghanistan shows that nearly $2 billion of this amount is going to Pakistani Taliban which is one of the causes behind the raise in insurgency both in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

A survey conducted jointly by Afghanistan’s Counter Narcotics Police and United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) showed that an estimated 224,000 hectares of land was planted with poppies in 2014.

United Nations said that Afghanistan was still producing some 90 per cent of world’s illicit opiates and that the country is world’s third largest opium producer after Myanmar and Laos.

President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani has promised strict actions against poppy cultivation in Afghanistan