KABUL, (Reuters) – Members of the Afghan government  are sponsoring slices of the country’s lucrative opium trade, a  senior Afghan minister said, at a time when the president is  under mounting pressure to stamp out state corruption.

President Hamid Karzai, whose own reputation has been  tainted after winning a fraud-marred election, is under  increasing pressure from the West to tackle corruption in his  government head on.

General Khodaidad, who has been nominated to continue his  job as counter-narcotics minister in a new cabinet, said people  at all levels were profiting off the drug — from the lowly  police recruit to government officials running major smuggling  networks.

While catching small dealers was one thing, rooting out  corrupt officials and ringleaders was near impossible,  Khodaidad, who has served as Afghanistan’s counter-narcotics  minister for the past three years, told Reuters in an  interview.

“We can catch small (traffickers) everyday. It is very  difficult to identify … big drug dealers. They are not  involved themselves but they are … behind it, they are behind  the network,” said Khodaidad, who goes only by one name.

Asked who these big players were, Khodaidad said: “They are  inside the government, they are outside of Afghanistan … they  are behind these networks.”

Although poppy cultivation fell by 22 percent this year,  Afghanistan still produces around 90 percent of the world’s  opium, a thick paste from poppy that is processed to make  highly addictive heroin and smuggled abroad.

The Taliban are said to siphon off millions of dollars from  the trade and nearly all cultivation is in areas they control.

Khodaidad points to a map of Afghanistan on his office wall  where a large swathe of bright red represents the country’s  southern provinces.

“Those areas in the map which are red … Helmand,  Kandahar, Uruzgan, Farah (and Nimroz), in these provinces most  of the area is under control of the insurgents,” Khodaidad  said.    “The people are under the pressure of … the insurgents  …, that is why they are growing poppy,” he said.

Khodaidad said he was confident the 30,000 new troops  Washington was sending to Afghanistan would make a difference.

“More troops are coming, conducting operations,  eliminating, destroying and disrupting the network of terrorism  … it is very good news for the counter-narcotics issue,”  Khodaidad said.

Some 10,000 U.S Marines have been pushing through southern  Helmand province since spring, where around 60 percent of the  country’s opium is produced. That Marine force is set to double  in the south over the next few months.

Khodaidad said while foreign troops do not target the crop  directly as this simply alienates the poor farmers, the  offensives helped cut off supply routes for the drug.

Despite the decrease in cultivation over the last two  years, poppy cultivation has soared since the Taliban were  overthrown in late 2001 and this year’s drop seems to be a  result of simple economics, rather than law enforcement  efforts.

Prices for the drug plummeted this year, causing farmers to  switch to other crops. Only 4 percent of the crop was  eradicated — at a great cost to human lives — and only 2  percent of the harvested product was seized. Khodaidad said it  was not enough.

“It is not enough. I think from my side, we should do  more.”