Afghanistan’s opium cultivation surged by 59 per cent this year largely as a result of a Taliban-led insurgency that is pushing the southern part of the country to the verge of collapse, the United Nations drugs agency chief said at the weekend.

Antonio Maria Costa, head of the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime, said in Kabul that the record harvest of 6,100 tons was “staggering” and “very bad news”. The southern part of Afghanistan, where Nato took control from US-led troops on July 31, was “displaying the ominous hallmarks of incipient collapse, with large-scale drug cultivation and trafficking, insurgency and terrorism, crime and corruption”, Mr Costa said in a separate statement released by his office.