Neatly attired in a dark blue suit, Shah Mohammad Poya deftly wields a long stick as he and 30 other men hack clumps of pink, red and white flowers from the poppy bushes - the crops Afghanistan's government has banned.
But Poya is not harvesting, he is destroying the abundance under a new drive to curb the booming narcotics trade that has fed insecurity inside his country and earned it a bad name around the globe.
One of several new policemen who have received special training, he recently returned from a counter-narcotics course in Egypt and now heads a poppy eradication department in the northern province of Baghlan.
"With this last plot in this village, I can say with certainty that we have completely eradicated the poppy lands in two districts of the province," Poya says, hands on hips and exuding satisfaction as he surveys the stripped field in the village of Zorabi, 40 kilometres south of the provincial capital of Pul-i-Khumri.
During a nine-hour search operation the previous day, his team had discovered the intact poppy crop in Dooshi district and, after collecting their sticks, returned to shred it to the last bush.
Making a 30-minute trek across rough terrain and several small rivers because of the inaccessibility of Zorabi by road, the officers then awaited Poya's order as they stood before the bright swathes of flowers that are just a few weeks from harvest. Within an hour they have decimated about a hectare of the crop.
Farmers have grown poppies in eight of Baghlan's 14 districts, making plenty of work for Poya's men. The following day more than 100 police officers were also due to raid Nahreen district, the heaviest cultivated part of the province. So far, 44 hectares of poppy have been destroyed in the province.
Baghlan is among 18 Afghan provinces where more than 1,000 hectares of land have been turned over to cultivation of poppies, which are the main ingredient in the production of opium and heroin. In eight provinces, farmers had grown less than 1,000 hectares and only the remaining six of the country's 34 provinces are poppy-free.
Little wonder that Afghanistan now accounts for more than 90 percent of the world's illicit opiate supply. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), cultivation in 2006 rose by 59 per cent from the previous year.
A few hours before his convoy left the provincial capital, Poya participated in a meeting with the deputy interior minister for counter-narcotics, General Mohammad Daoud, the provincial governor and police chief, tribal elders and other officials, to decide what action was to be taken to clear the fields.
Daoud told the gathering that with support from the international community the government was prepared to allocate some 2 million US dollars for development projects in provinces where all poppy lands were being destroyed.
Meanwhile, poppy cultivation had also increased sharply in southern provinces that are badly afflicted by the Taliban insurgency, the general said, blaming the militants for helping the drug mafia and vice-versa.
"We know the drug traffickers have very close ties with the Taliban and terrorists and help each other in different fields," Daoud said. Through its campaign the government eradicated more than 24,000 hectares of poppy land across the country so far this year, he said. The target for 2007 was 30,000 hectares, which will be twice the amount of land cleared last year.
But the work often runs into bitter resistance. Adrian Edwards, spokesman for the United Nations in Afghanistan, said that at least 16 people, including farmers and police officers, were killed and several wounded in clashes around targeted fields.
However, Poya said that his units had not encountered any resistance and that locals on occasion even offered them food and water. Today the farmers fled the area before the police arrived. As the officers leave, Ziaullahaq Safi, a representative of Zorabi village, looks at the ravaged field with dismay. Because of the lack of road links, the villagers are compelled to grow poppy as the crop needs less irrigation and no fertilisers, he explains.
"Wheat cultivation barely allows the farmers to break even, whereas by growing poppy they could make 70 times the profit they make from wheat," Safi says. Their work done, Poya's exhausted men begin the walk back to the vehicles, dragging their sticks behind them. Though his hands are badly bruised from flaying the bushes, 21-year-old policeman Abdullah, who like many Afghans goes by a single name, talks instead of the pride he gets from his part in his country's reconstruction after nearly three decades of war.
"I am very happy to be part of a team that destroys the crops that everyone in Afghanistan and in the world hates," Abdullah says as he strides towards his car, pausing to take a last glimpse of the distant field.
-dpa
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