Ezatullah Zawab and Abdul Samad Rohani – Pajhwok Afghan News*
KABUL, Jan 26 2006 (IPS) – The Afghan government s fight against illegal poppy cultivation will be a key point on the agenda at the London conference to discuss Afghanistan s future. More than 70 countries will be attending the two-day meeting, which starts Jan 31.
The international community has pumped in millions of dollars into Afghanistan to stop farmers from growing opium.
The United Nations Organisation for Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has committed 70 million dollars for the development of alternative agricultural livelihoods in just one province, eastern Nangarhar, this year. Opium is the basis of 50 percent of Afghanistan s domestic output and virtually all its export and personal wealth.
According to UNODC s estimates, 21 percent of cultivable land in the mostly mountainous and desert country was under opium last year. Nearly 90 percent of the world s opium is from Afghanistan. Most of it winds up in the illegal heroin trade.
On Jan 21, Afghanistan s Special Anti-Narcotics Force (ASNF) raided drug laboratories, chemical stores and opium storages in Nangarhar province. Over 370 kgs of drugs and eight laboratories containing significant amounts of precursor chemicals were destroyed, a press release from the Counter-narcotics Ministry said.
There have been a series of operations against cultivators and traffickers in many provinces including Badghis, Laghman, Zabul, Helmand and Kandahar.
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Governors of three southern provinces including Helmand who met in Kabul, on Jan 5, agreed to tackle the drugs trade issue head-on. The commander of the US-led coalition forces, Col Owns, who was also present, assured the governors all possible help in boosting security and destroying poppy crops in the lawless provinces.
British Ambassador Rosalind Marsden, who visited Helmand province on Jan. 8, promised that if the farmers quit cultivating poppies, they will be provided with agricultural tools, fertilisers and improved seeds in the short-term plan and in the long-term aid, we will try to find international markets for the their products, help to revive industries in Helmand and reconstruct the irrigation system.
However, many poppy growers are vehemently opposed to the governors decision. Shah Jaehan, a poppy grower from Nad Ali district, vowed that he would protect his crop till death . Last year, Helmand grew more opium than any other province. Its deserts are the hub of a smuggling network that stretches into Pakistan and Iran.
Independent news reports from the province suggest that a resurgent Taliban may have tied up with drug smugglers, and threatening farmers in remote villages with death if they do not cultivate poppy. When the Taliban was in power in Afghanistan, it had condemned poppy farming as unislamic . Now it runs on money from the illegal trade.
Meanwhile, security officials in the western Badghis province, who had conducted operations to destroy poppy crops in early January, were warned by growers that they would return to poppy cultivation if the government failed to provide them with alternative means of living.
One of the cultivators, who did not wish to be named, said: I have grown the crop on 13 acres of land. I will resist if the government doesn t provide me with alternative means of living.
Mulla Mirza from Jond district, said: The agriculture department has not assisted us for over the past two years. We have no other way but to revert to poppy cultivation.
When contacted, the head of the Agriculture Department Shir Aqa Hotak said 75 kgs of fertilisers and 25 kgs of wheat were distributed among farmers but acknowledged that it was not enough. He said there were more than 12,000 farmers in Badghis province, who needed to be provided with enough seeds and fertilisers.
According to police estimates, at least 150 acres of land was under poppy in Badghis province. Police chief, Colonel Ghulam Rasool, who said that 70 acres of land in Panjab and Bala-Murghab districts were cleared in the province in a 10-day operation in January, has warned poppy growers that they would be dealt with an iron-hand .
The ASNF has destroyed more than 150 metric tonnes of opium, over 45 metric tonnes of precursor chemicals and 191 drug-processing laboratories in raids across the country. An unspecified number of people have been arrested on drug-related charges.
The counter-narcotics operations have shown results in Laghman province, where officials say most farms were destroyed in 2005, and as a result the amount of drugs produced was lower than a year ago. Mattiullah, 40, a farmer in Alishang district, said: Growing poppies was forbidden in Islam.
Officials have been working in tandem with religious elders from all the districts who have promised to fight the drugs menace. Laghman governor Shah Mahmood Safi said clerics have been mobilised to convince farmers to destroy the poppy crops at mosque sermons.
Afghanistan s anti-narcotics forces are planning to launch another clean-up operation shortly. Deputy Interior Minister Mohammad Daud Daud has announced that poppy fields in Nangarhar, Balkh, Kandahar, Uruzgan, Badakhshan, Helmand and Farah provinces would be targetted.
Daud said that 1,300 policemen who would be deployed have been given special training for the operation. The Interior Ministry conducted a survey last year that estimates poppy growth has fallen by 40 percent because of counter-narcotics efforts.
(* Released by IPS under agreement with Pajhwok Afghan News)
