KABUL, Afghanistan — Afghanistan’s economic future is tied to the new government’s ability to tamp down the rampant drug trade within its borders, the United Nations’ counternarcotics official in Afghanistan said Wednesday.

No serious economic achievement is possible in Afghanistan until the country’s opium trade is brought under control, Andrey Avetisyan, regional representative for Afghanistan for the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, said during a news conference in Kabul.

“Illicit economies cannot live peacefully” alongside legitimate ones and hope to survive, Avetisyan said.

Poppy cultivation has risen by 7 percent this year compared with last year, while opium production is project to rise by 17 percent, according to the 2014 Afghanistan Opium Survey, released jointly by the UNODC and Afghan Ministry of Counter Narcotics. At the same time, Afghan-led efforts to eradicate poppy have fallen by 63 percent.

In 2014, Afghan counternarcotics agents were able to destroy slightly more than 6,600 acres of poppy fields across the country, compared with more than 18,000 acres the year before, according to the report. As a result, the average price of dry opium has fallen from $172 per kilo to $133 since 2013.

“These facts and figures are alarming,” Avetisyan added.

But Avetisyan’s comments on Wednesday undercut the difficult and dangerous work Afghan forces have done, in an attempt to stem the flow of narcotics, Afghan Ministry of Interior Spokesman Sediq Sediqqi told Stars and Stripes in an email.

“Our resolve and sacrifices should not be in question at any time,” he said. “But we will need the broad based support of the international community to be successful,” he said, noting that Afghanistan lacks the resources to combat the opium trade alone.

Afghan forces have been able to keep 15 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces free from poppy production, according to the survey.

The issue will likely be on the agenda during a London Conference on Afghanistan’s economic development and future international investment, scheduled for Dec. 4.

The conference comes at a critical time for new Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, whose administration is faced with overcoming the country’s economic ills, fighting rampant corruption and maintaining a strong security force as international combat troops withdraw by the end of this year.

NATO leaders have committed to an annual contribution of $4.1 billion to finance Afghanistan’s security forces through 2017. Negotiations continue among Western nations as to the level of future investment in Afghanistan’s economy and infrastructure, which is expected to reach into the billions.

The government needs to enforce the law regarding anti-narcotic efforts and show a political will to eradicate poppy production if it is to make headway, said Mubarez Rashedi, Afghanistan’s minister of counternarcotics.

Under former Afghan President Hamid Karzai, the narcotics trade was treated as a “side issue” in Kabul, and combined with allegations of corruption at the provincial level, the drug trade was allowed to flourish, Rashedi said. Drug purveyors saw “we do not have the political will [and] do not take it seriously,” he added. “The issue has been politicized and the law is not being enforced.”

Under the new Ghani administration, Rashedi and Deputy Minister of Interior for Counternarcotics Baz Mohammad Ahmadi said the war on drugs must be on par with the war against the Taliban, in order to put a dent in Afghanistan’s opium trade.

“This fight...is the same,” Ahmadi said Wednesday. “If we do not fight...we will not be successful.”

munoz.carlo@stripes.com